## Metadata - Author: [[David F. Lancy]] - Full Title: The Anthropology of Childhood - Category: #books ## Highlights - 150 years ago, the idea of the useful child began to give way to our modern notion of the useless but also priceless child (Zelizer 1985). Children become innocent and fragile cherubs, needing protection from adult society, including the world of work. Their value to us is measured no longer in terms of an economic payoff or even genetic fitness but in terms of complementing our own values – as book lovers, ardent travelers, athletes, or devotees of a particular sect. ([Location 542](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00N4PM61E&location=542)) - Until recently, as many as one infant in three didn’t survive until its first birthday. Typically women operate from an estimate of the ideal number of offspring and increase their fertility by a factor that reflects the incipient rate of infant mortality. If the world is perceived today as overcrowded, the blame might be placed on the disconnect between public health measures, like child vaccination and sterile obstetrics procedures, which sharply reduced infant mortality, and the reproductive calculus of millions of individual mothers. These mothers continued to use the old “ideal” as the benchmark for gauging how many children to have – Olusanya (1989) refers to them as “fertility martyrs.” The agencies that intervened to reduce infant mortality were not as ready with contraception and family-planning interventions, and the result has been masses of humanity living on the ragged edge of poverty. ([Location 572](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00N4PM61E&location=572)) - The games of youth are among the most mobile of cultural artifacts; “hopscotch” had diffused to every continent before the age of mass media. ([Location 671](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00N4PM61E&location=671)) - Anthropologists find that there is an inverse relationship between restrictions imposed on women and their economic contribution to the household. That is, where women’s labor is critical, attitudes regarding fidelity are, necessarily, more relaxed. ([Location 2282](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00N4PM61E&location=2282))