The history of childhood is often treated as a marginal, excessively sentimental, and under-theorized subject. It is frequently regarded as a subset of family history or as a minor aspect of cultural and intellectual history, focusing on adult ideas about children and artistic, cinematic, and literary representations of childhood. Yet, the history of childhood is anything but a trivial topic. Childhood, I shall argue, is the true missing link: connecting the personal and the public, the psychological and the sociological, the domestic and the state.

As a historian of the United States, this essay will draw on evidence from the US experience to underscore the significance of the history of childhood. Yet while the details would surely differ, I would like to suggest that this US-centric account of the ways that the history of childhood matters for a broad range of political and social issues has a broader purview. Because the implications of the history of childhood are highly context-specific, I hope that this essay will encourage readers to consider the relevance of the history of childhood for the
specific places and times that they study.