During the modern Imperial period (1868-1945), daughters of poor Japanese families worked as komori taking care of their own siblings or working as indentured servants for other poor families. The state's efforts to foster Japanese citizenship and feminize the komori led to programs aimed at making them more maternal.

The first song is one that was sung by a teacher who taught komori girls in the town of Matsumoto around the turn of the century. This song was part of the broader educational curriculum designed to replace the songs of the komori that were deemed "coarse" and "vulgar" by teachers and other adults who represented the interests of the modern state.

The second counting song, typical of others by the komori, described exploitative working conditions and grave injustices. Based on peasant songs, those songs sung by the komori (of which there are many versions) enabled workers to express resistance to those who exploited them as well as those who sought to feminize them. Some songs mocked their mistresses and masters; other focused on the foods they were not allowed to eat as well as the inadequacies of their rations. The lyrics of others expressed hostility toward their charges: "What can we do with a naughty child?/Let's put him on the drum/and hit him with green bamboo sticks." The third song included here is representative of those that expressed the emotional pain of the komori and their need for their mothers. Not only did the komori sing about love but also lust, their bodies, sexual desire, and intercourse.

These songs and others that describe their daily lives (working, playing, trysting, venting) are useful sources of information that shed light on the everyday experiences of the komori and the lyrical cultural practices that expressed their alienation and resistance. In what ways are the komori similar to and different from babysitters in other cultures and at different times?

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.

Pocahontas, a legendary figure in American history, was the daughter of a powerful 17th-century Powhatan chief. Allegedly seeking retribution for the murder of two tribesmen by the English, Powhatans captured John Smith, one of the founders of Jamestown, Virginia, an English settlement established in 1607. According to Smith's account, Pocahontas (whose real name was Matoaka) prevented the execution by her father. Continued cultural conflict led the English to capture and ransom Pocahontas six years later. During her captivity, she converted to Christianity and subsequently, changed her name to Rebecca, married John Rolfe (an English tobacco planter), bore a son, and traveled to London where she was presented as Lady Rebecca at the court of Queen Anne. While on board the ship bound for home in 1617 Pocahontas became ill and died.

As the daughter of a "chief" or "king," the English eulogized Pocahontas as a "princess" even though her status in Algonquian society is unclear. Although exoticized and erotocized to some degree, Pocahontas was further romanticized and sentimentalized. In representations such as Pierre Gustave Eugene Staal's printed in World-Noted Women (1858), Pocahontas was portrayed as more Caucasian and Christian than Native American. And by rejecting her "barbarous" girlhood and embracing piety, chastity, submission, and domesticity in Victorian children's stories, Pocahontas modeled feminine civility for daughters of the "new" middle class.

Students might compare this version with Smith's text and others shaped by prevailing ideals about gender, race, and girlhood including the most recent by Disney.

Strongly influencing the invention of Robert J. Clay's mechanized "Creeping Baby Doll" in 1871, were changing notions of childhood that fostered children's development.

Allowing babies to crawl on all fours as did Clay's doll reflected recent changes in childrearing practices. In Early Modern Europe and in early America, the association between crawling babies and the insane and animals, led parents to require babies to stand and walk as soon as they were able. Greater understanding of children's development by the early 19th century led parents to stash the seat-less "standing stool" that had been used for generations. Although in 1835, Amira Phelps, a mother and a female educator, asserted in her diary that she would not let her son "learn to creep," by the time he was able to she accepted crawling as "nature's way."

As notions of childhood continued to change in the years after the Civil War, American men like Robert J. Clay applied their ingenuity to the invention of toys and the development of an American industry. Competing against the Europeans whose dolls flooded the American market, male inventor/businessmen applied machine technology to doll designs. Rather than patent the entire doll as Clay did, most inventors patented a single device (e.g., joints).

Although Clay claimed in his patent that the Creeping Baby Doll would be a "very amusing toy," mechanical dolls disturbed more than delighted consumers. Enoch Rice Morrison's top heavy "Autoperipatetikos" dolls often fell flat on their faces and Edison's "Talking Dolls" had speech problems. Seeking to improve upon Clay's prototype, his employer, Robert Pemberton Clarke, patented an "Improved Creeping Baby Doll."

Patent drawings and descriptions of inventions provide more than just technical information: these sources are useful for understanding the construction of dolls and childhood.

Mary Green of Worcester, MA, created this embroidery in 1804 at the age of 16. She based it on the 1796 engraving, "Liberty in the Form of the Goddess of Youth Giving Support to the Bald Eagle," by artist-entrepreneur, Edward Savage (fig. 2).

In this enormously popular allegory that celebrated nationhood in the years after the American Revolution, Liberty is portrayed as a female adolescent. Draped in a long, flowing gown, this stylized Liberty nourishes the Republic (represented by the eagle). She also treads on symbols of British oppression (e.g., the key to the Bastille on a broken chain, a scepter, and the garter of a royal order). An American flag and the Liberty Phrygian Cap float above her head. In what ways does Green's interpretation of Liberty differ from Savage's? What might account for those differences?

The representation of a youthful Liberty was not only allegorical; it also was a prescriptive message that must have resonated with girls like Mary Green. Anxieties about the future of untried democracy led contemporaries to compare the independent states to impetuous youth. In order to ensure the future of the Republic, adolescent girls were trained to fulfill their forthcoming role as "Republican Mothers" who would inculcate their children with civic virtue. The female seminaries launched at the end of the 18th century provided an unprecedented academic curriculum as well as lessons in feminine accomplishments exemplifying refinement and utility. Girls perfected their repertoire of fancy needlework skills (e.g., French and bullion knot stitch) by embroidering popular pictorials (such as this one), commemoratives, and morning art with silk floss. Girls also practiced their knowledge of geography by embroidering map samplers on ivory silk.

"Italian Mother and Baby" appeared in Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890). This image captures the misery of urban poverty as well as the tenacity of life. It is infused with unmistakable sentimentalism and symbolism. This forlorn mother with her swaddled baby is evocative of Mary and of many paintings of "Madonna and Child." The hat hanging on the wall above her head is also suggestive of the halo that long represented the sacred in ancient art and religious iconography.

Many of Riis's photographs provide insight into the struggles of everyday life for immigrant children. What does this photo reveal about infancy among Italian immigrants? In what ways does the material culture of infancy mingle Old World practices and modern ones? While useful for recording the past, documentary photographs need to be seen through a critical lens. For example, historians have observed that children in Riis's photographs are portrayed as innocents, victims, or criminals. How is the baby in this picture represented?

How did Riis stimulate sympathetic feelings and summon sacred associations in this photo's gritty realism? In order to create this rendition of the Virgin Mary and Child Riis developed the "flash" technique that illuminated the basement of this New York City tenement. The halo-like hat was Riis's own and did not belong to the father who barely supported this family as a rag picker. Why might Riis have staged the scene? As a social reformer, Riis used religious imagery in order to capture the attention of the middle-class and inspire them to act on their beliefs to help the poor.

Published in 1858, Der Struwwelpeter (Shaggy Peter) is a German children's book first published anonymously under a different title in 1845 by Heinrich Hoffman. Hoffman, a Frankfurt physician and father, wrote the book after realizing that there were none he wanted to buy for his 3-year-old son for Christmas. The first English translation was published in 1848. While living in Berlin with his family in 1891, Mark Twain translated the book he gave to his three daughters for Christmas. According to one, her father had been motivated by his close identification with the children in Der Struwwelpter. Twain's American version, Slovenly Peter, was published in 1935.1

The 10 cautionary tales told in rhyme are accompanied by vivid illustrations of boys and girls in nightmarish scenarios. The cartoon-like illustrations depict the dire consequences of such disobedient and unwise behavior as: poor hygiene, cruelty, playing with matches, bullying, thumb sucking, eating poorly, fidgeting at the table, and not paying attention while walking. While many German parents today find the tales disturbing, those who raised their children during the early decades of the 20th century found them useful for childrearing. Parents' mention of a specific character in Der Struwwelpeter kids knew well served as short-hand criticism of objectionable behavior.

What happens to disobedient children who suck their thumbs when told not to is illustrated in four panels. In the third one, Conrad's thumbs are about to be cut off by the tailor because he did not listen to his mother warning him not to suck his thumbs while she went out.

Students might analyze the text as well as the images in regard to issues of gender and race. (For bullying a boy of color the bullies are dipped in black ink.) The book could also be compared to other proscriptive stories from different periods, nationalities, and cultures. Another rich avenue for research would be to examine children's varied reactions to Der Stuvwwelpeter.

A version of the American translation, Struwwelpeter: Merry Tales and Funny Pictures, is available on The Project Gutenberg EBook.

This photograph, dated 1880, shows Chinese children in a procession in the Tjap Go Meh Festival in Makassar, the largest city on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Tjap Go Meh is a Chinese festival that takes place 15 days after the Chinese New Year and marks the beginning of spring. It is also known as the Lantern Festival. People celebrate with parades and performances, such as acrobats.

In this image, a child dressed in festive costume sits under an umbrella while riding a fantasy animal with long ears mounted on a cart. Other children wearing costumes with conical hats and false beards pull the cart with ropes. The decorations appear to be made of paper maché, straw, and fabric. Tjap Go Meh was widely celebrated among the many Chinese immigrants in Indonesia, and the festival became popular with the local Buddhist and Muslim population as well. The festival was banned for many years, but has made a comeback in cities such as Jakarta as an expression of ethnic and religious diversity. The photograph is the product of a professional studio in Batavia (Jakarta) founded by Britons Walter Bentley Woodbury (1834-1885) and James Page, expatriates from Australia who emigrated to the Dutch East Indies in 1857. The Woodbury & Page studio made portraits of wealthy Europeans and local elites, but also traveled in the countryside to create ethnographic images and photograph the variety of life in the Dutch East Indies.

Although marriage was not forbidden between Europeans and slaves or other non-Europeans, it was quite rare and entailed a drop in social status for the European. Nevertheless, sexual relationships occurred—sometimes coerced, sometimes by mutual agreement. The children born to slave women by these relationships were seldom openly acknowledged by their fathers, and thus usually followed the fate of their mothers. Religious and secular authorities were not at ease with this situation. This can be seen in church proclamations that called on Europeans to baptize all their slave children, and secular laws that sought to regulate the living conditions of slave children, especially of mixed race. In the following excerpt, it is noteworthy that the "children of free heathen" are also mentioned. These "heathens" were probably not Khoikhoi, but rather former slaves, either from East Africa or Asia, who bought or earned their freedom and were known as Free Blacks. In this case, the designation "heathen" might also refer to followers of Islam.

"Phoenix Indian School; Largest in the Southwest and Second Largest in the Country: Need of Military Garrisons in Arizona Grow Less as this School increases Its Influence Among the Nation's Wards -- Over One Hundred and Fifty Boys and Girls," read the headline of the New York Times article written by a journalist after a visit to the school on July 5, 1896. The Phoenix Indian School was one of some 150 institutions for Indian wards of the U.S. Government founded as the Indian wars concluded. The schools' mission was to "civilize" and assimilate the Indians to American society through a process of education that sought to obliterate their native cultures. The model of organization and discipline was military. Student life was highly regimented, with little free time, uniforms and marching drills. Boys and girls were subject to whipping and jailing, the latter a punishment for runaways. Students at the schools performed school maintenance, cleaning, cooking, laundering, caring for farm animals and crops, and selling their handmade crafts. Students were also put out to work locally as domestics and farm laborers for further acculturation and to provide work experience. School officials did not envision preparing Native-American students for higher education. The article expresses the attitudes and expectations of the journalist. It also reflects the ways in which the reporter's views were both validated and revised. The article that appeared in a major newspaper reinforced stereotypes about native American children, affirmed the success of the school's "civilizing mission," and testified to the correctness of the assumption that environment could re-shape the children's identity and override their upbringing.