Childhood on the farm

by Pamela Riney-Kehrberg

As the United States transformed itself from an agricultural to an industrial nation, thousands of young people left farm homes for life in the big city. But even by 1920 the nation's heartland remained predominantly rural and most children in the region were still raised on farms. Pamela Riney-Kehrberg retells their stories, offering glimpses---both nostalgic and realistic---of a bygone era. As Riney-Kehrberg shows, the experiences of most farm children continued to reflect the traditions of family life and labor, albeit in an age when middle-class urban Americans were beginning to redefine childhood as a time reserved for education and play. She draws upon a wealth of primary sources---not only memoirs and diaries but also census data---to create a vivid portrait of midwestern farm childhood from the early post-Civil War period through the Progressive Era growing pains of industrialization.^ Those personal accounts resurrect the essential experience of children's work, play, educatio