Daniel Defoe's novel The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, published in 1722, is a useful historical text for examining the everyday lives of female children as well as the possibilities of girlhood in 18th-century British society. In many ways, Moll Flanders—the illegitimate daughter of a female felon—exemplifies the position of orphaned girls in early modern Britain. At the same time, Moll's character also reveals the range of possibilities utilized by girls who resisted confining social customs and refused marginalizing literary conventions. In this selection, what strategies does Moll use to defy the typical position of girls in society? What authority does Moll claim as the novel's narrator? Compare the figure of Moll to the treatment of other female characters in other novels from the period (such as Matilda in Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto) as well as girls in works published later.

Heinz-Hermann Köhler grew up in a country village in Lower Saxony. In 1936 after completing elementary school, he moved in with relatives in nearby Hildesheim, a mid-sized provincial town, so he could attend the Agricultural School. In contrast to the relatively homogenous and intimate village of his childhood, Hildesheim's economic and social composition was diverse. People of many different classes, occupations, and religious faiths lived and worked in close proximity. Heinz-Hermann fills most of his watercolors and pencil drawings with the rich texture of town life: the games children played, the work adults did, and the movement of vehicles. He also depicted holiday celebrations which, in light of the recent Great Depression, display a relative wealth of decoration and toys that must have impressed him.

Heinz-Hermann was also impressed and influenced by the politics of the Third Reich. In the run up to a plebiscite, he captured the plethora of flags and calls for a "yes" vote on the street. In "Help Them!," Heinz-Hermann imaginatively enters into the domestic space of a typical German farm family, annotating that they have "no work/nothing to eat/the stable is empty." If he is personally familiar with their plight, he nonetheless views the farm from the outside, in a style otherwise associated with romantic images of the countryside but that is here framed by a political slogan: "Give to W[inter] H[elp]." Young Germans were often encouraged to raise money for this Nazi charity; here Heinz-Hermann reiterates a charged political appeal for charity and solidarity with farmers who are implicitly fellow "Aryans."

These images are rather different from classic propaganda images of Nazi parades, rallies, or broadsides, but they are not innocent of Nazi politics. What do they tell us about how Nazi politics operate in everyday life? The artist captured the dynamism of capitalism, urbanity, and modernity for instance in the broadsides he discovered on an pillar which advertised cigarettes next to calls to support 'freedom' with a 'yes' vote. What do they tell us about how children experienced the Third Reich?

Heinz-Hermann never returned to the farm. He was conscripted into the German Army during World War II to help conquer "living space" for the Aryan race. He was killed in battle.

Despite efforts to resist, by the end of the 19th century, almost all of the Middle East had fallen under the control of European powers. Whether in the form of a protectorate or colony, European powers made changes to the indigenous educational system that impacted children.

Europeans offered European-style education to a very small elite group of Middle Eastern students and this education was intended to shape the children into abiding colonial subjects by teaching them that their civilization was backwards. These government schools created under the Europeans charged tuition that most families could not afford. The majority of children were deemed unfit for modern education and colonialists circulated the idea that Middle Eastern parents did not value education.

Expansion of educational opportunities for non-elite classes was also gradual in Europe, the timeline of legislation similar to policies in lands under colonial rule or protectorates. Efforts to provide basic literacy and prepare students for specific types of career training also followed a pattern of using religious institutions as a base of expansion, adding training in reading, writing, arithmetic, and other subjects to enhance the skill set of future workers and identify talented youth for further training in specialized schools. Such children would receive scholarships or stipends to attend boarding schools organized under military-like discipline. Examples of such institutions were the Muhammad Ali's schools of engineering, military science, and medicine.

The following selection relates to education in Egypt under the British protectorate. The single most common feature of most Egyptian childhoods during the British protectorate was participation in the labor force, particularly the cotton industry on which the Egyptian economy was almost exclusively based. During the protectorate, the demand for labor of children and the acquisition of literacy were inversely related.

Many villages circulated petitions demanding the colonizers provide them with schools, but colonial administrators did not fund widespread education efforts. The British justified a lack of investment in indigenous education by saying it was not desired by parents who were too “dead” to know the value of education, as the following selection indicates. The British also attempted to pit the minority Christian Egyptian parents against Muslim Egyptian parents in their efforts to keep the Egyptian population uneducated.

This image from Chamber A1 of Rouffignac Cave was created by a young girl we posit to be between four and five years old from her height and the places in the cave where she has chosen to make her flutings. She was part of a group of people who visited the cave during the Upper Paleolithic Period (sometime between 20,000 and 11,000 years ago). It seemed she was part of a group which included 8 individuals, of whom at least 3 were children. This panel is at the entrance to a chamber a half km into the cave and what is striking about it is not only its design but also that it was drawn with two hands at the same time which means this individual wasn't holding a torch at the time of her drawing. This young girl is one of the most prolific fluters in Rouffignac. We find her flutings in almost every chamber and a panel very similar to this one appears 1.5 km further into the cave. She also produced the first known tectiform, a symbolic form, produced by a child. As time goes on, we hope to learn more and more about the people who visited and decorated Rouffignac cave during the Paleolithic.

These images show a stone grave marker carved with symbols and a terracotta funerary urn containing the charred remains of an infant. The Tophet of Carthage is a cemetery for infants in the ruins of the North African city of Carthage, now located in a suburb of Tunis. It was once located on the edge of ancient Carthage, which was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BCE. The cemetery is the subject of historical controversy because both ancient texts and archaeological evidence point to the possibility that the children buried in the tophet were child sacrifices. The cemetery was used for over 600 years, between 730 BCE and 146 BCE. Changes in the grave markers and burials indicate three different periods of use.

The Carthage tophet has no adult graves, and many of the grave stelae are marked with dedications to Baal and Tanit, the patron deities of Carthage. The word tophet comes from the Hebrew topheth derived from "drum" or "place of burning," an open area for sacrifice. Numerous tophets have been identified in the eastern Mediterranean region. The Tophet of Carthage, excavated between 1920 and 1970, shows burials of young infants, interred in small vaults with beads and amulets, and sometimes the bones of small animals. Low thrones or stones marked the early graves.

In later periods, buried a layer above the original graves, sandstone markers were covered with stucco and painted yellow, red, or blue. Narrow, limestone grave stelae with pediments appear, inscribed with representations of Baal and Tanit. Many featured the sign of Tanit shown on the stela in the image—a triangle with a disc at the apex and a line through the apex with upturned ends, which looks perhaps like a child or a doll with outstretched arms.

Jewish and Christian scriptures refer to places of child sacrifice. Roman writer Diodorus Siculus described the sacrifice of upper class children to the deity Baal in 310 BCE, a reference seen as the main source of the claim of child sacrifice. Later elaborations made by writers even into the 19th century include the description of a metal fire pit in the form of the deity, with grates that mechanically tipped infants into the fire. Sacrifices to appease the deities or to ask favors seem to be supported by some inscriptions, but there may also be evidence that small animals were sacrificed in place of the children.

On the other side of the controversy are claims that the archaeological evidence is too sparse and inconclusive, and the texts may have been written out of ulterior motives, especially in view of Rome's wars with Carthage. No other classical sources mention the practice, and biblical references do not mention the tophet of Carthage.

There is also evidence that children's burial grounds were merely separated from adult cemeteries as well as pictorial evidence that the graves were regularly kept and supplied with offerings. The fact that burials were sometimes massed, and that some graves contain more than one child, may be evidence of disease epidemics as the population of Carthage grew. The inscriptions that refer to gifts and offerings may refer to sacrifice, or may refer to the hope of regeneration or fertility to the family who lost the child, meanings included in concepts surrounding both Tanit and Baal as deities.

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.

Soviet propaganda posters presented positive images of healthy, active people engaged in useful service to the state, including children. This Soviet poster from 1953 was typical of this image. Its slogan, "Pioneers and Students, Get Interested in Modeling!", coupled with the image of a happy child in the open air on a bright, sunny day, suggested the positive results of state-approved actions. The Young Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union was a Soviet youth organization that encouraged students to be physically active and take an interest in occupations appropriate for Soviet adults. Here the students are encouraged to develop an interest in aeronautics. Other Pioneer activities included traveling to the countryside to help with the spring planting or daily exercise in the form of military-styled calisthenics. Propaganda such as this poster was one method for the Soviet regime to create an image of the positive future, an important strategy to help avoid the reality of massive shortages of food and material goods following World War II.

One of Mikhail Gorbachev's most famous reform movements was 'glasnost' (openness), which allowed partial freedom of the press to address social problems and corruption within the Soviet Union. Among the issues raised during the 'glasnost' era were previously forbidden subjects such as the high rate of divorce. An example of this is the following poster, with its plaintive cry from the child in the foreground: "And what about me?" The father in the background seems to have some sort of illness, possibly as a result of alcoholism or one of the many other difficulties associated with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The mother seems to have a large bruise on her face, suggesting spousal abuse. While these parents have an unhappy marriage, the poster reminds the viewer the greater damage is done to children with divorced parents. With this focus on the human cost of divorce for children, the Soviet government could publicly address genuine social problems without attacking the state or the Communist Party.

This unusual bronze figurine of a female runner was possibly made in or near Sparta, Greece, between 520-500 BCE. Ancient Sparta was the only Greek city-state that provided girls with public schooling including physical education. Girls were praised for their swiftness and likened to prized racehorses in choral songs (called partheneia) sung by girls' choruses in Sparta and elsewhere. Spartan "virgins" also participated in the Heraea, games held at Olympia every four years in honor of the goddess Hera. Winners received olive crowns, shared a cow they sacrificed to Hera, and were allowed to dedicate statues of themselves engraved with their names. The bronze rivet on her right foot suggests that this figurine was possibly attached to a vessel or utensil at one time.

In what ways does this girl's body reveal that she was athletic? What might her clothing tell us about notions of girlhood in Sparta? Female athletes wore a short off-the-shoulder tunic like the one donned by this runner. It more closely resembled the semi-nude bare-breasted style of the legendary Amazons than the ornate and heavily draped Korai "maidens" elsewhere in Greece. What might account for the varieties of girlhoods throughout the Greek world?

Credit: London, British Museum 208. Photo: Museum, Courtesy of Trustees.

This small (5.5 inches high) terracotta sculpture was made in Greek southern Italy in the late fourth century BCE. It depicts two adolescent girls playing the game of "knucklebones" (astragaloi in Greek). The game was usually played like the modern game of "jacks": one threw the knucklebones in the air and attempted to catch as many as possible. They were also used like modern "dice." Each of the four long sides of the knucklebone had a value: the convex side was worth 3, the concave 4, and the two flat sides 1 and 6. Most knucklebones were made out of the actual ankle bones of sheep or goats, but fancier ones were made of ivory, bronze, or terracotta. Children of both sexes, adolescent girls, and young women played knucklebones as revealed by statues like this one as well as paintings on vases.

This statue is both a depiction of a game and a representation of gender ideals. Whereas girls in the nearby city-state of Sparta were taught to read and write and engaged in athletic competitions, those in Athens spent their girlhoods largely indoors practicing the domestic arts (e.g., spinning, weaving, cooking, and childcare). Athenian girls typically married at the age of 15 or so and spent the rest of their lives engaged in household activities.