Book Review: Childhood on the Farm: Work, Play, and Coming of Age in the Midwest

Authors

Elizabeth Hampsten, University of North Dakota

Date of this Version

2006

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY 26:3 (Summer 2006). Copyright © 2006 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Abstract

By "Midwest," Pamela Riney-Kehrberg means the states of Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and the eastern half of Nebraska and Kansas, and by child, "any dependent son or daughter, generally twenty-one or younger, regardless of physical maturity, who remained subject to his or her parents' authority on the farm and in the home." She explains having "chosen 1870 as my starting date" to avoid the Civil War, and "1920 as an ending date because of upheavals occurring in the years that followed" (the automobile, radio, economic depression).