‘Household Happiness, Gracious Children’

Abstract

According to the Swedish feminist and political radical Ellen Key, the twentieth century was to be the ‘century of the child’ (Key, 1900). It is unarguable that in the last one hundred years there have been significant improvements in the material realities of children’s lives. This is at least true for children in Sweden and Great Britain who have substantially benefited from the ‘Golden Age’ of European State welfarism. Key’s vision encompassed more than material advancement, however. There was hope too for political progress. Now, the ‘century of the child’ is over and there is reason to doubt how far the ‘cultural facts’ (La Fontaine, 1979) of childhood have been transformed and how much progress along the road from ‘marginality to citizenship’ (Wintersberger, 1996) children have achieved.