The material culture of early childhood in the 21st century is characterized by an emphasis on biological age and related levels of cognitive and motor skill development. All types of objects, including diapers, toys, food products, and clothing, are divided into categories based on the age-appropriateness of a particular object. Descriptions of these categories commonly explain how each object functions to enable a child to attain a particular skill or reach a developmental milestone. Appeals to medical and developmental science are common. Clothing is often marketed for its ability to facilitate different types of developmental movements such as crawling, walking, or rolling over. Children's clothing is also noteworthy for its emphasis on marking very young individuals with their gender. Properly color coding children into pink for girls and blue for boys is of paramount concern in the clothing industry. Similarly, patterns reflect particular gender ideals. It is very difficult, for example, to find a girl's outfit that has a plaid pattern or a car on it, even in pink, or a boys outfit that has a floral pattern or an image of a doll. This type of gender coding at a very young age is culturally important when children are introduced socially into the world- it is a major social gaffe to misidentify a child's gender but if it occurs it is usually because the child is dressed in a gender-neutral color such as yellow or green. Children's clothing points to the importance of gender in our culture, and also the ways that gender roles are taught to children from birth.

The image shows the reverse of a Thai 100-baht banknote, with engravings of of King Chulalongkorn and King Vajiravudha statues. The banknote's background theme is education. The detail on the right illustrates Thailand's traditional education system, showing a monk instructing boys in the courtyard of a temple. Until the 20th century, the village temple was a place where most young boys from peasant families received a basic education. Such temples typically received small boys to serve in the temple as dek wat, or "children of the temple," from the age of eight years old. The dek wat carried out minor housekeeping chores in exchange for instruction in reading and writing. They also memorized scriptural passages appropriate for important rituals. The dek wat served for four years or more, after which they could be ordained as novice monks (samana or samanen) for one or two years. At the age of 20, the novice could advance to higher ordination. Parents often sponsor a child as novice, who still spends time at home, but donations from other villagers help to provide for novices' robes, alms bowls, and other needs.

The detail of the banknote on the left represents modern mass education in Thailand, with boys and girls in uniform exiting a modern school building flying the national flag. In 1921, the Compulsory Primary Education Act was proclaimed, and in 1960, compulsory schooling was extended to seven years. At that time, the government made a series of five-year plans that resulted in widespread construction of wooden village primary schools and concrete-block secondary schools. Universal public education has largely replaced temple and monastery for imparting basic literacy, but some villages still rely on the dek wat system for boys' religious training. While it is no longer the only path toward higher education, a temporary period of ordination as a Buddhist monk is still a valued rite of passage for boys before they marry and start familes. Young men who have served as monks for a few months or years are viewed as better marriage partners and more suitable candidates for village leadership positions. Young men who remain monks for a longer period of education learn traditional scripts and gain the knowledge to officiate at religious ceremonies in the village and surrounding area.

In 1928, Margaret Mead published Coming of Age in Samoa, an anthropological work based on fieldwork she had conducted on female adolescents in Samoa. In 1925, Mead observed, interviewed, and interacted with 68 girls between the ages of 9 and 20 living in three villages on the island of Ta‘ū in American Samoa. After 9 months of study, Mead concluded that unlike stressed American girls, the well-balanced and carefree nature of sexually active Samoan girls was due to the cultural stability of their society free of conflicting values, expectations, and shameful taboos.

According to Margaret Mead, Samoan girls' healthy adolescence was shaped by their upbringing. In this excerpt from her study, Mead describes Samoan birth rituals, infancy, childhood as well as such child-rearing issues as nourishment and punishment.

The focus of the final excerpt is the role of baby-tender thrust on the 6-or 7-year-old girl. This tyranny of toddlers represents "the worst period" in the life-cyle of Samoan females. How do Samoan girls' work responsibilities compare with the komori in Japan and "little mothers" in the U.S.?

Written and illustrated by German painter and poet, Wilhelm Busch, Max und Moritz (1865) is a children's story written in doggerel verse and illustrated in a comic-like style about two unscrupulous boys who taunt adults with their sadistic pranks.

In this illustration, Max and Morris have already tricked the widow into cooking chickens they are now trying to snag by lowering a fishing rod down the chimney. Hearing the commotion, her barking dog summons the widow from below. The story ends when the widow beats the dog she assumes has eaten the chickens that have vanished from her stove. At the end of the book, the boys get their comeuppance: they are ground into grain and devoured by ducks.

The gruesome ending is in keeping with the strict Prussian-era pedagogy that emphasized ethics, duty, discipline, and obedience. It also influenced Heinrich Hoffmann (1809-1894) in whose Der Struwwelpeter (1845) children were violently punished for their bad behavior. Both works also used "Knittelvers," rhymed couplets of irregular versification (eight or nine syllables often with four stresses per line). Knittelvers came into German literature most strongly in comedies of the 16th century. The comedic heritage and sing-song quality of Knittelvers made the rhyme scheme most appropriate for children's literature that was both humorous and didactic.

How do these mischievous boys compare with other pranksters elsewhere in the world? Why are they often young males? What have mischief-makers and their pranks meant to children? What purposes have they served to adults and society?

The chart shows the proportion of male and female child laborers between the ages of 5 and 14 who are engaged in domestic work for third-party households. As the note on the chart indicates, only those countries in the data sample of 16 nations where domestic work could be distinguished from other kinds of work are featured in this chart. The sixteen sample countries included in the chart were based on nationally representative household surveys conducted between 1999 and 2007. The data comes from a study IPEC Statistical Information and Monitoring Programme on Child Labour (SIMPOC). (Geneva, ILO, 2009). The sample countries and the dates of data in the survey were Colombia (2001), Ecuador (2006), El Salvador (2001), Guatemala (2006), Burkina Faso (2006), Malawi (2002), Mali (2005), Senegal (2004), Cambodia (2001), Mongolia (2002), Philippines (2001), Sri Lanka (1999), Azerbaijan (2005), Kyrgyzstan (2007), Turkey (2006) and Ukraine (1999).

Domestic work includes housekeeping, such as: cleaning, cooking, washing, fetching supplies, and child care. Domestic work for an employer in a third-party household is considered by experts to be among the worst forms of child labor. Children, and especially girls, are often isolated in the household and invisible to others. Reports of abuse are frequent, but much abuse remains out of the public eye. Such children are often given up to other families because of their parents' inability to care for them. Children's earnings are sometimes given over to the person who contracted them through an agent or relative.

Data from the surveys show that while the vast majority of child domestic workers are girls, boys are also subjected to sexual abuse. The primary source text from Ecuador is typical of such stories gleaned by social workers and NGO's from work with children who escape or are removed from such situations.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) established the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) in 1992 with the goal of eliminating child labor. For statistical purposes, a child is considered to be involved in child labour under the following classification: (a) children 5-11 years of age who did at least one hour of economic activity or at least 28 hours of domestic work during the week preceding the survey, and (b) children 12-14 years of age who did at least 14 hours of economic activity or at least 28 hours domestic work during the week preceding the survey. Whether or not particular forms of "work" can be called "child labor" depends on the child's age, the type and hours of work performed, the conditions under which it is performed and the objectives pursued by individual countries.

IPEC classifies acceptable and unacceptable types of child labor. Acceptable work includes children helping parents around the home, earning pocket money after school and on holidays, and even helping in a family business. Such activity is viewed as beneficial to children's development and socialization. Unacceptable child labor, in contrast, is harmful to physical and mental development, to children's dignity, and "deprives children of their childhood." Child labor should be eliminated if it is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; if it interferes with their schooling by preventing them from attending school, obligates them to leave school prematurely, or requires excessively long and heavy work as to compromise children's ability to attend school or learn effectively.

This oil on canvas painting by an unknown American folk artist was painted around 1840. It depicts two siblings at play. While their mother is absent from the picture, she presided over the "private sphere" of the home as prescribed by the ideology of "separate spheres" that defined everyday life in 19th-century America. Charged with raising boys to be citizens (and girls to be wives and mothers of citizens), it was mothers' moral duty to oversee the development of their children's "good character." As a result, sons under the age of 6 inhabited the domestic sphere along with their sisters where they were dressed in the same loose-fitting pantaloons, dresses, and petticoats.

Although both girls and boys both donned silk, satin, and velvet dresses, there were differences in their apparel and activities. Young boys were distinguishable from girls by their hairstyle (boys were more likely to wear side parts) and hats. Boys also engaged in different play activities: it was considered indecent for girls to straddle a rocking horse. Rocking on the "hobby horse" enabled boys like this youngster to practice the balancing ability he would need in order to ride a real horse as he took his place in the "public sphere." Riding the rocking horse and brandishing a whip also provided boys with the opportunity to practice the skills and sensibilities of masculinity—independence, mastery, confidence, control, courage, and dominance. The boy's placement at the center of the painting and protectively above and in front of his older sister, also prescribed his position in the Victorian gender hierarchy where he would perform manliness through initiative, competition, forcefulness, and rationality.

Compare this work with images of children in other folk art paintings. How else are girls and boys represented?

The billboard shown in the two photographs carries a slogan used widely by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to promote public interest in the plight of abandoned, orphaned and runaway children living on the streets in cities of Africa, Asia, the Americas and elsewhere. The photograph of Ugandan children standing in front of the billboard wall shows two additional messages, "Street children are children. . . [too?]" and a message in the local language. In addition to raising consciousness in the public about their situation, these organizations provide food, shelter and social services such as medical care, drug abuse counseling, HIV/AIDS prevention education, self-help and vocational training, and educational programs, as well as psychological support. Some of are faith-based organizations representing various religions that run ministries to proselytize among the children or offer religious services together with donated services. As British photographer and geography teacher Bob Jones said about East Africa, "Poverty is a major trigger for the creation of street children. Boys are often forced out of homes in rural areas because a lack of employment opportunities as well as the break up of the family unit through the scourge of HIV/AIDS." Other organizations using the slogan operate in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia, Tanzania, and South Africa, to name only a few countries.

Lydia Maria Child included this selection on how to jump rope in The Girls Own Book, a book published in 1833. Why did girls in early 19th-century America need instructions on how to jump rope? Why did Child's feel the need to caution girls? Ever since boys had first begun to jump through hoops and with ropes on cobblestoned streets in 17th-century Europe, jumping rope had been considered a game not suitable for girls.

By the early 19th century, the emergence of a new gendered ideology that promoted passivity and domesticity appeared to reinforce earlier proscriptions that limited girls' play. Yet the recommendations of antebellum child-rearing advisors suggest that many believed that active play was good for girls. Along with Child, other experts predicted that open-air exercise would improve girls' dexterity, scientific inquiry, patience, diligence, as well as strengthen their characters and rid them of debilitating medical conditions.

In contrast to the innumerable depictions of idealized girls playing passively indoors, real girls engaged in unfettered and vigorous games in fields, rivers, quarries—even cemeteries. Girls' new freedom of movement had been made possible by recent changes in clothing fashions. Girls' shorter dresses ("frocks") enabled them to skate, sled, run, and romp. Yet it was the introduction of "pantalettes" or "pantaloons" (the loose pants worn under dresses seen in this illustration) that enabled girls to make the game of jumping rope their own.

Elsewhere in the U.S. and around the world the game has had different methods and meanings (e.g., Chinese jump rope). In the slave South African-American girls transformed jump rope rhymes originally from Germany and England into ones with more transgressive meanings about slavery's ills.

Whether known as Saint Nicholas, Sinterklaas, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, Babbo Natale, Christkind, Père Noël, Santa Claus ("Santa") or by many other names, this legendary gift-giver in European folklore and hagiography is well known around the world.

Writing a letter to Santa is among the numerous traditions surrounding Christmas. Although in 1889, Thomas Nast—the caricaturist credited with the modern portrayal of Santa—presented Santa reading letters from the parents of children in "Santa Claus's mail," writing to Santa is as much of a children's ritual as sitting on his lap. The form of "Dear Santa letters" typically include: a testament of "nice" not "naughty" behavior, a wish-list of toys, courteous mention of Mrs. Claus and the elves, and concern for the reindeer (especially Rudolph). One study found that girls’ letters tended to be longer, more polite, and include more requests for clothing or functional items as well as more gifts for other people. Recent research studies on elementary-school children in the U.S. have found that gender-neutral toys are as popular as sex-typed toys among girls and boys.

Children in Poland, Japan, and Great Britain are allegedly the most prolific writers of letters to Santa. While sample letters are on Internet sites that also sell Santa stationery, far more common is the hand-written letter illustrated with Santas, reindeers, sleds, Christmas trees, presents, etc. Japanese children sometimes include pieces of origami with their letters. Addressed to Santa in Toyland, the North Pole, Lapland, the Arctic Circle, the town of Santa Claus, Indiana, and elsewhere in the world, children’s letters are often answered by postal workers and charity volunteers. While children in Canada use a special postal code (H0H 0H0) those in Mexico and other Latin American countries send their letters attached to helium balloons. Since the turn of the 20th century children have also sent their Santa letters to newspapers where they have been reprinted in articles.

Along with other children who live in Ontario, Mary sent her letter to Eaton’s Department store that sponsored an annual Christmas parade. In what ways is the letter 9-year-old Mary wrote to Santa in 1968 consistent with children’s practices and in what ways is it unique? What might account for the differences? In addition to gender differences do children’s letters to Santa differ according to race, class, and region? What larger purposes might this ritual serve for parents and society?