Eight Important Books on Vanishing Childhood

And a provocative book about the Promised Land.

There is a maxim harder and harder to take to heart. Essayist Joseph Epstein expresses this best. We are told from grade school on not to judge a book by its cover, he writes, “but with so many books in the world, what else are we to do—read the entire work? Let them, I say, make better covers.” Publishers, mindful of money if not aesthetics, compete to do exactly that.

But some truth remains in that tired maxim. Writers and thinkers concerned about the state of childhood have published a spate of relevant books in the past two or three years. All of them have pretty covers. But some of them are worth reading more than others.

As an overview of what is happening to our understanding of childhood, Marie Winn’s Children Without Childhood (Pantheon, 1983) gets my vote to go first on anyone’s reading list. Speaking primarily from a sociological base, Winn calmly but passionately surveys the cultural terrain and finds childhood, on several counts, pushed to the cliff’s edge. She explores, with fairness, the impact of Freud, film, television, teenage literature, childhood sexuality, and economic pressures that have pushed many mothers into the marketplace. Winn is not out to blame anyone for the predicament of childhood; she recognizes that there are several causes, but that we can still make some sense of how we got where we are. The book is strengthened by the dozens of interviews with children and parents Winn conducted while writing. The interviews keep her close to the day-to-day world, and her theorizing, when offered, is consistently plausible.

Neil Postman, in The Disappearance of Childhood (Delacorte, 1982), writes from a much narrower base than Winn. Postman is a communications specialist, and his thesis is that childhood is disappearing because of television. He reminds us that the invention of the printing press changed the world, facilitating democracy, empowering the Reformation. Likewise, Postman believes, television triggers another revolution. Children have to learn to read, and in books certain facts of life such as sexuality and death are available and comprehensible to those who can read, but not to those who are illiterate (namely, young children). Television, on the other hand, does not segregate its audience. A two-year-old witnesses, if not comprehends, sexual intercourse and casual slaughter. Postman has a point, but he overstates it. To him, the printing press created childhood and television will end it. Winn recognizes the dangers of television (she has written a book, calling it “the plug-in drug”) but also acknowledges the considerable impact of other factors.

Vance Packard’s latest effort is Our Endangered Children (Little, Brown, 1983), which could have been subtitled “An Almanac Attesting to Childhood’s Peril.” The book is pregnant and past due with numbers: numbers on how many kids drink, how many commit suicide, how many have poor education, how many are attended to by day-care centers, how many are kicked out of rental apartments, and so on and so on until the tome virtually begs for induced labor.

Doctor Packard, we’re going to have quintuplets here (at least), and could you give us a little more help about what to do with them? What’s that you say? No, we don’t want to know how many quintuplets were born in central Rumania last year!

Packard’s book, though, is good as an almanac. Consult it for statistical verification of trends unfriendly to children and childhood.

Our Endangered Children also has a strength missing in Winn’s and Postman’s books. Packard supplies 38 considerate pages on how to preserve childhood (written, of course, in his sketchy fashion). Utterly unmatched in this category is Rita Kramer’s In Defense of the Family (Basic Books, 1983). The book is not a child-raising manual, though it does lay a firm base for any young parent. It is a soberly brilliant, dignifying apologetic for the traditional family and its crucial importance to children. The reader should be aware of Kramer’s bias—she is definitely politically conservative. But Kramer is bracingly free of the social neuroses that distort the perception of reality for most of us, wherever we fall on the political spectrum. When I have children of my own, this is one book I intend to study at length.

Most readers will probably not be interested in going beyond the four books already discussed. But some may wish to inquire into the history of childhood. Children, like blacks until the 1970s, have been largely excluded from the study of history. There are at least two titles of potential interest to the general reader. Children Through the Ages, by Barbara Kaye Greenleaf (McGraw-Hill, 1978), is a helpful, simply written survey. Anita Schorsch has written Images of Childhood (Mayflower Books, 1979). Her book includes excellent illustrations, from etchings and paintings, of children in the past.

The standard scholarly history of childhood, or the nearest thing to it, is Philippe Aries’s Centuries of Childhood (published in English by Knopf, 1962). Arìes examines only French children, and then largely those children as they were affected by education. It is written in turgid prose, making the reader feel like a python swallowing a boulder rather than an ostrich egg. The historian’s central thesis—that children had it best in the Middle Ages, before childhood was distinctly set apart as a period of life—has been severely challenged by other historians.

A second intellectual work is The History of Childhood, edited by Lloyd deMause (Psychohistory Press, 1974). Running exactly contrary to Arìes, this book sees childhood as terribly bleak before modern times. Especially shocking is the editor’s essay, “The Evolution of Childhood,” which surely exaggerates the horror of childhood in the past, but is eye-opening even when moderated.

Conspicuously missing, as far as I know, is a history of childhood written from a solidly Christian perspective. A good many historians of childhood either deemphasize Christianity’s salutary effects or attack its unfortunate and atypical extremes in relation to children. Since our understanding of the past affects our decisions of what we should discard and what we should conserve, such a history could be significant. It would be a service to the scholarly community, to children, and to the church of Jesus Christ, Savior of us all, child or adult.

Reviewed by Rodney Clapp.

Who Owns The Land Of Israel?

Israelis call it “Israel.” Palestinians call it “Palestine.” Both call it their “Promised Land.” But to whom was it promised. To whom does it rightfully belong?

Colin Chapman has been working with university students in a variety of nations in the Middle East since 1968. He has had to face firsthand the explosive issues that bedevil this Promised Land.

In his book Whose Promised Land? he presents the claims, counterclaims, and arguments that Israelis advance and Palestinians put forward. He analyzes the superficial causes and then the underlying causes behind the uprooting of families, the refugee problem, the violence.

He treats thoroughly the claims of each party—then traces the story behind them, going back to the time of the Bible. What do Bible prophecies concerning this land mean? How were the promises and prophecies (made to ancient Israel concerning the land) understood by Jesus and first-century Christians? How should they be understood today?

The author traces the development of Zionism, of the United Nations partitioning plan, of the founding of the modern state of Israel. He shows how anti-Semitism in the West has been a stimulant to the development of today’s Israel.

The book is divided into four parts. Part I is a historical survey briefly describing major periods and events commencing with Abraham and the patriarchs and ending with the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Part II deals with the role of attitudes that have influenced developments in the Promised Land: anti-Semitism in the West, Zionism (with its several conflicting factions concerning the Promised Land), the role of Great Britain, the response of Arab nations, the role of the UN, and so on. Part III treats the Promised Land as viewed before and after Jesus Christ, with particular attention to the place “the land” had in “the covenant” God made with his people. Part IV evaluates the problem and its background in terms of truth and shows how intrigue, deception, falsehoods, and subterfuge have operated over the years to produce the present crisis.

The book evidences thorough historical research, quoting generously from a wide variety of historical documents.

The author has some devastating things to say about the role of Westerners—and of Christians—who, behind the scene, helped set the stage for much of the violence in the Promised Land and who, under the spotlight of Old Testament prophecies, stand guilty. The book is not comfortable reading for Western Christians in general, evangelicals in particular. But it is highly illuminating and gives an excellent analysis (with thought-provoking questions) of both sides of the problem.

Whose Promised Land?, by Colin Chapman (Lion Publishing Ltd., Icknield Way, Tring, Herts, England, 1983; £1.95 pb, 253 pp.). Reviewed by John W. Alexander, former president of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, Madison, Wisconsin.

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