1. Peter Berger, "Sociology and Freedom," The American Sociologist 6 (February 1971): 3-4.

2. For example, John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers (New York: Pantheon, 1989); Joseph F. Kett, Rites of Passage (New York: Basic Books, 1977); Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood (New York: Knopf, 1962).

3. Gary Alan Fine and Kent Sandstrom, Knowing Children: Participant Observation with Minors (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1988).

4. For the notion of an oppositional culture, see Raymond Williams, "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory," in Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays by Raymond Williams (London: Verso, 1973), 31-49.

5. For "biformaties," see Michael Kammen, People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization (New York: Vintage, 1972). "Dualisms" are explored in Robert Lynd, Knowledge for What? The Place of Social Science in American Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1939). The logic of "contradictions" is emphasized by Karen Horney in The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (New York: Norton, 1936) and by Daniel Bell in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1976).

6. The definition of a suburb is a difficult issue and, as a result, figures on suburban populations are not easy to come by. These percentages are derived from the population of metropolitan areas, excluding the central city; see Andrew Hacker, ed., U/S: A Statistical Portrait of the American People (New York: Viking, 1983), 27.

7. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1941 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1942), 80; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1987 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1989), 627.

8. On earlier forms of play, see Steven Zeitlin and Amanda Dargan, City Play (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990).

9. For example, Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (New York: Delacorte Press, 1982); Marie Winn, Children without Childhood (New York: Pantheon, 1983).

10. Brian Sutton-Smith, Toys as Culture (New York: Gardner Press, 1986), 37.

11. Ibid., 37-39.

12. J. A. Puffer, The Boy and His Gang (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1912).

13. Frederick Thrasher, The Gang (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927).

14. Anthony D. Pelligrini, "Elementary School Children's Rough-and-Tumble Play and Social Components," Developmental Psychology 24 (November 1988): 802-6; S. R. St. J. Neil, "Aggressive and Non-aggressive Fighting in Twelve-to-Thirteen-Year-Old Pre-Adolescent Boys," Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 17 (July 1976): 213-20.

15. Barry Glassner, "Kid Society," Urban Education 11 (April 1976): 5-22.

16. On case law, see Allan Korpela, "Tort Liability of Public Schools and Institutions of Higher Learning for Injuries Resulting from Lack or Insufficiency continue

of Supervision," in 38 ALR 3rd (1970), 879-80. For liability, see Jennifer Turner-Egner, "Liability of North Carolina Schools for Injuries During Nonschool Hours," School Law Bulletin 19 (Winter 1988): 7-19.

17. Spencer Cahill, "Childhood and Public Life: Reaffirming Biographical Divisions" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Atlanta, Ga., August 1988).

18. L. W. Bowden, "How to Define Neighborhood," Professional Geographer 24 (August 1972): 227-28.

19. Data compiled from U.S. Department of Transportation, Drivers Licenses 1963 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1964); U.S. Department of Transportation, Drivers Licenses 1987 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1989). Nineteen sixty-three is the earliest year for which data are available, but records from 1945 would no doubt demonstrate a much more dramatic increase.

20. Gary Alan Fine, "Small Groups and Culture Creation," American Sociological Review 44 (October 1979): 736.

21. See for example, Richard Ruopp, Jeffrey Travers, Frederic Glantz, and Craig Coelen, Children at the Center (Cambridge, Mass.: Abt Associates, 1979); Spencer E. Cahill and Donileen R. Loseke, "Disciplining the Littlest Ones: Popular Day Care Discourse in Postwar America," (unpublished manuscript, 1990).

22. Gary Alan Fine and Sherryl Kleinman, "Rethinking Subculture," American Journal of Sociology 85 (July 1979): 1-20.

23. John P. Diggins, The Proud Decades: America in War and Peace, 1941-1960 (New York: Norton, 1988).

24. Carol Stearns and Peter Stearns, Anger: The Struggle for Emotional Control in America's History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).

25. See, for example, Beatrice Gross and Ronald Gross, eds., The Children's Rights Movement (New York: Anchor, 1977).

26. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue , 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 69.

27. For historical background, see Viviana Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (New York: Basic Books, 1985).

28. Letty Cottin Pogrebin, "Do Americans Hate Children?" Ms . (November 1983): 47-50.

29. A similar transformation of informal social control into legal entanglements is evident in changing orientations toward adolescent sexual assault. Behaviors, such as fondling and ogling, that in the past might have been handled among peers or informally between the parents involved are now being brought into court. In this transition period, the victim (the teenage girl) may become the target of intense hostility for transforming naughty behavior into criminal behavior: for making a "federal case" out of these sexual assaults. See Doug Grow, "Suicide Ended Kathi's 'Fight for Dignity,'" Star/Tribune (St. Paul, Minn.) (July 5, 1987), 1A, 10A, 11A; Doug Grow, "Inver Grove Incident Highlights Attitudes on Sexual Harassment," Star/Tribune (December 20, 1987), 1A, 8A, 9A.

30. Pat Doyle, "School Faces Dilemma over Disruptive First-Grader," Star/Tribune (December 3, 1989), 1A, 18A. break

31. Peter Asch and David T. Levy, statement prepared for presentation to the House Public Works and Transportation Committee, Subcommittee on Investigation and Oversight, September 18, 1986, p. 208.

32. Joel Best, Threatened Children: Rhetoric and Concern about Child-Victims (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Neil Spitzer, "The Children's Crusade," Atlantic (June 1986): 18-22.

33. Joel Best and G. T. Horiuchi, "The Razor Blade in the Apple: The Social Construction of Urban Legends," Social Problems 32 (June 1985): 488-99.

34. The parallel move for older children in the 1980s has been the establishment of alcohol-free, supervised, all-night "grad night" parties to prevent drinking and driving, as well as sexual activity.

35. Gregory P. Stone, "Halloween and the Mass Child," American Quarterly 11 (Fall 1959): 372-79.

36. Best, Threatened Children , 22-64; Spitzer, "Children's Crusade."

37. Among the groups and singers so linked are Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, and Iron Maiden. See Stephen Markson, "Rock 'n' Roll and the Politics of Cultural Prohibition" (paper presented to the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, California, August 1989).

38. Stephen J. Pfohl, "The 'Discovery' of Child Abuse," Social Problems 24 (February 1977): 310-23.

39. William Kessen, "The American Child and Other Cultural Inventions," American Psychologist 34 (October 1979): 815-20.

40. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child .

41. Elaine May, Homeward Bound (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 135-61.

42. An exception to this projection outside the family is the problem of incest and sexual abuse within the family. In these cases, a parent reluctantly comes to the conclusion that even the partner cannot be trusted.

43. Richard Gelles, Family Violence (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1979); Howard Erlanger, "Social Class and Corporal Punishment in Childrearing," American Sociological Review 39 (February 1974): 68-85.

44. It is said that there are only two ways to exert moral suasion over a child—through bribery and blackmail, and most parents employ both.

45. Elizabeth Walker Mechling and Jay Mechling, "Sweet Talk: The Moral Rhetoric against Sugar," Central States Speech Journal 34 (Spring 1983): 19-32.

46. If the central, broadly defined motif of the 1950s was how to raise a child and maintain a family, the motif of the 1960s was the flexing of adolescent political, cultural, and social muscle. The 1970s were justifiably called the "Me Decade" because young adults generally had too much money and insufficient responsibilities. The themes of the 1980s are the twin themes of the young middle age: parental concerns and economic security. Postwar American culture is in many ways a response to the demographics of the baby-boom generation, and the symbolic meaning that this demographic bulge has. This, too, is part of the symbolic demography of which we write.

47. Harry Stack Sullivan, The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry (New York: Norton, 1953), 227.

48. William Wells Newell, Games and Songs of American Children (New York: continue

Dover, 1983 [1963]); Peter Opie and Iona Opie, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959); Gary Alan Fine, "Children and Their Culture: Exploring Newell's Paradox," Western Folklore 39 (July 1980): 170-83; Jay Mechling, "Children's Folklore," in Folk Groups and Folklore Genres , ed. Elliott Oring (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1986); Simon J. Bronner, American Children's Folklore (Little Rock, Ark.: August House, 1989).

49. Fine, "Children and Their Culture."

50. Mechling, "Children's Folklore," 97-103; Brian Sutton-Smith, A History of Children's Play (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981).

51. Gary Alan Fine, "Good Children and Dirty Play," Play & Culture 1 (1988): 43-56.