>Question on my mind for obvious reasons: why not children? By Becker logic
>shouldn't there be a market in kids? Does anyone know Becker well enough
>to ask?
>
>Doug
Wasn't it becker that wrote the tome that included a discussion of how it would be best to have an adoption market.
They used to sell babies in the 1800s. Years ago, we hosted a series of talks at The Center with Viviana Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child. She traced the "rise of the priceless child" from 1870s - 1920s or so. Prior to that, people were perfectly capable of putting a price on the head of infants, who were actually worth less than 5-6 year olds and up -- they could actually work.
This is the origin of our notions that children should be protected from the world of adults -- whereas, before, children started working right alongside their parents as soon as they could -- and followed them into the factories as well.
The sentimentalization of childhood, which, as Zelizer argues, has turned out to mean that, perversely, we now have the monetarization of sentiment.
Zelizar thinks that it's about time we taught children to contribute to the life of the family -- and that means they do housework, etc. She pointed out not too long ago that the rise of hiring people to do chores that would ordinarily have been by kids is part of the problem -- we think we have to put them in camp, art classes, play groups, after school sports, band, etc. Kids used to do all that, their homework, and do housework. Today, we think we should protect them from the work. Instead, we put them into the market in a totally differwant way: put them in these programs (art, sports, music, dance, "culcha-cha-cha". All of this is designed to help them compete for esteem and, later, college entrance -- "culcha'ing the kids" to make them _competitive_ on the college market, to make sure they have the social skills and knowledge that will help them compete in the status market, etc. (Think of Bourdeiu).
Bitch | Lab http://blog.pulpculture.org