These photographs were taken on April 5, 1975 on one of the Pan Am passenger planes that airlifted Vietnamese orphans and Amerasian children of American servicemen and Vietnamese women for Operation Babylift. In the final weeks before the fall of… [more]

This watercolor (fig. 1) of a mother carrying her baby was painted c. 1585 by John White who explored the mid-Atlantic region with other Englishmen including Thomas Hariot. Hariot's A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia published… [more]

In 17th-century New England, Puritan beliefs about "infant depravity" (born with "original sin") generated anxieties about "eternal damnation" that shaped methods of childrearing and notions of death. Puritan beliefs can be "read" on the gravestones… [more]

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… [more]

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… [more]

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… [more]

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… [more]

Thanksgiving was not uniformly celebrated until major efforts to nationalize it were undertaken late in the nineteenth century. Despite Lincoln's proclamation that made Thanksgiving a national holiday during the Civil War, few Americans celebrated… [more]

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). … [more]

"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… [more]