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In 1975 it is obviously quite another matter for a child born in America, though by no means is there now a uniform childhood for all. Although our infant mortality rate is higher than that of many Western democracies, it is still overwhelmingly likely (984.5 chances out of 1,000) that a child born in this country will survive infancy. Longevity has more than doubled in two centuries, and so has the duration of childhood. In 1775 a boy or girl of seven or eight, especially if his or her parents were not very well off (and few were), might already be learning a trade or working in the field, or cooking and cleaning and taking care of even younger children. The usual age of students who entered college was 15 or even less. Young people married quite early and began to have children immediately. Now childhood extends, arguably, into the end of the second decade of life. The concept of "adolescence" is ours—and was unknown to colonial parents. Our children are increasingly likely to have been carefully chosen—in the sense that contraceptive devices and pills, along with legalized abortion, have separated sex from the inevitability of childbearing. Families are smaller. Children are by no means hurried into adult responsibilities. In fact, they are granted not only special foods, special doctors, but also a separate and distinct psychology and morality to which the grownup world is urged (moralistically) to accommodate itself—or else. The nearest we come to Satan and his hell is for a child to be cursed by the demon of neurosis or worse. Parents address themselves to that threat by resorting to a psychiatrist rather than prayer and ministerial guidance.
More than the people of any other country in the world, Americans in 1975 publicly talk about and worry about their children. We have the overwhelming majority of the world's child psychologists and child psychiatrists. Our universities and, increasingly, our high schools devote themselves to a proliferation of courses in child development. Journalists offer daily newspaper advice on child rearing. Books (and there are dozens of them) like those written by Dr. Spock attract an enormous, eager and sometimes all too gullible readership. The prevailing concern of parents is not what the child ought to believe and live up to (in the way of standards, rock-bottom beliefs, a religious faith) but what is "best" for the child. Every effort is made to "understand" children, even infants under one: what is going on in their minds and how we might get "closer" to them, become more "empathetic" toward them, succeed in "helping" them along—through various "periods," "crises," and so on.