Pricing the Priceless Child
The Changing Social Value of Children
by Viviana Zelizer
1985
Pricing the Priceless Child is something of a classic in sociology. It's an important look at the social construction of childhood, and Zelizer is also important for her studies, including this one, that show how cultural, non-economic factors influence how people think about money, markets, and other topics that professional economists try to lay exclusive claim to.
Zelizer looks at a series of inter-related changes that took place in the US between the 1870s and the 1930s, when American children went from 'useful' - contributing economically to their families by performing either significant housework or farmwork or wage labor outside the home - to 'useless' - contributing only love and affection. In Zelizer's words, by the 1930s, children had become sacred, economically worthless, and emotionally priceless.
The backstory to all this is declining childhood mortality in the 19th century, due in part to medical improvements like the discovery of antibiotics and invention of vaccines. When every parent expected about half their kids to die before reaching adulthood, often in infancy, I think there must have been a certain degree of emotional distancing that was almost universal. As children become more likely to live, it becomes safer to love them more, and with that love comes a new concept of childhood as a sacred time that deserves to be protected from adult realities.
One thing people (eventually) decided their children needed to be protected from was child labor. Middle class reformers decided this first, and child labor remained more common among the working class for longer, in part because those families truly needed the extra money.
What followed was a clash of class-based cultures, as reformers accused working-class parents of exploiting their kids and failing to love them, and poorer parents, who'd grown up learning trades in childhood themselves, argued that it was important for kids to learn industry and a work ethic and avoid the vice of idleness. But after decades of controversy, obviously, the movement against child labor won definitively. Children would work in order to learn how to, and receive an allowance to learn how to spend and save money.
Throughout this period, people came increasingly to believe that the economic value and the emotional value of children were in conflict, that any price attached to kids in the market somehow subtracted from their worth as members of their families. Zelizer argues that a lot of what was happening here was people figuring out how to think about money differently, so that it no longer seemed to profane the sacredness of childhood.
Also during this time, insurance companies began offering child insurance, not to replace a kid's lost wages if they died, but to pay for a funeral and headstone- instead of the anonymous mass graves that were poor kids' previous burying places.
As kids stopped being wage earners, the theory of damages in wrongful death lawsuits had to change too. Parents could no longer sue for lost future income; instead, they asked for compensation for what they'd already invested, and for the emotional pain of the loss.
Foster care and adoption changed too. Working teens used to routinely live with another family, earn room and board, and learn a trade by working for them. Parents who couldn't take care of younger kids had to pay someone - often a 'baby farmer' - to take over the childcare. Essentially these children were sold. Kids too young to work often died.
But as children became expected to provide only love and affection, adoptive parents stopped wanting teens and started wanting infants, and became willing to pay to take them, a total reversal of the earlier situation. But also, by this time, the public was no longer comfortable with the idea of parents 'buying' a child. In the same way that allowance is not supposed to be pay for housework, adoption fees became a way to pay for the work done to transfer custody of a child without actually paying for the child.
Zelizer looks at a series of inter-related changes that took place in the US between the 1870s and the 1930s, when American children went from 'useful' - contributing economically to their families by performing either significant housework or farmwork or wage labor outside the home - to 'useless' - contributing only love and affection. In Zelizer's words, by the 1930s, children had become sacred, economically worthless, and emotionally priceless.
The backstory to all this is declining childhood mortality in the 19th century, due in part to medical improvements like the discovery of antibiotics and invention of vaccines. When every parent expected about half their kids to die before reaching adulthood, often in infancy, I think there must have been a certain degree of emotional distancing that was almost universal. As children become more likely to live, it becomes safer to love them more, and with that love comes a new concept of childhood as a sacred time that deserves to be protected from adult realities.
One thing people (eventually) decided their children needed to be protected from was child labor. Middle class reformers decided this first, and child labor remained more common among the working class for longer, in part because those families truly needed the extra money.
What followed was a clash of class-based cultures, as reformers accused working-class parents of exploiting their kids and failing to love them, and poorer parents, who'd grown up learning trades in childhood themselves, argued that it was important for kids to learn industry and a work ethic and avoid the vice of idleness. But after decades of controversy, obviously, the movement against child labor won definitively. Children would work in order to learn how to, and receive an allowance to learn how to spend and save money.
Throughout this period, people came increasingly to believe that the economic value and the emotional value of children were in conflict, that any price attached to kids in the market somehow subtracted from their worth as members of their families. Zelizer argues that a lot of what was happening here was people figuring out how to think about money differently, so that it no longer seemed to profane the sacredness of childhood.
Also during this time, insurance companies began offering child insurance, not to replace a kid's lost wages if they died, but to pay for a funeral and headstone- instead of the anonymous mass graves that were poor kids' previous burying places.
As kids stopped being wage earners, the theory of damages in wrongful death lawsuits had to change too. Parents could no longer sue for lost future income; instead, they asked for compensation for what they'd already invested, and for the emotional pain of the loss.
Foster care and adoption changed too. Working teens used to routinely live with another family, earn room and board, and learn a trade by working for them. Parents who couldn't take care of younger kids had to pay someone - often a 'baby farmer' - to take over the childcare. Essentially these children were sold. Kids too young to work often died.
But as children became expected to provide only love and affection, adoptive parents stopped wanting teens and started wanting infants, and became willing to pay to take them, a total reversal of the earlier situation. But also, by this time, the public was no longer comfortable with the idea of parents 'buying' a child. In the same way that allowance is not supposed to be pay for housework, adoption fees became a way to pay for the work done to transfer custody of a child without actually paying for the child.
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