Analysis Of Huck's Theft By Steven Mintz

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Recommended: Childhood throughout history

Steven Mintz, author of “Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood” (2004), writes about the conceptualization of childhood in America. He views the history of childhood in this country as having three overlapping phases. Phase one he terms as premodern childhood. This phase took place in the colonial era and in this period of time adults viewed children as adults in training. Mintz suggests that in the premodern phase the parental responsibility was to hurry children toward their adult role and status (Mintz, 2004). Phase two for Mintz was about the middle of the 18th century when children were regarded as innocent, malleable and fragile. Adults viewed the young as needing to be sheltered from contamination. However, childhood was more

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