All+work+and+a+little+play

The community of work and childhood are far apart in todays world,but in the early 1900's you had to work all the time. The children were need to wor because it was to hard for the parents to do it all by them selfs. Also all the parents belived that not working was bad for them. There work was just for the family and was not to be be talked about. There wereso many tasks to be done that small children could have done as much as the older and smater people. You started working on a farm at the age of 6 or 7, on the farm it was absolutely necessary that they worked. Children started with simple chores like shucking corn or weeding the garden, and took on harder tasks as they got older. The yong girls would work with there mothers and older sisters to learn how to sew, cook, and wash and work with the dariey. Boys work woth their dads and brothers in the felids an on the barn. **The pressure of work on children was greatest among poorer families, who often "hired out" their offspring to neighbors. Working for a few cents a day, boys picked stones out of fields or hauled firewood, while girls did housework and cared for children. Susan Blunt of Merrimac, New Hampshire, remembered spending a week keeping house for a neighbor when she was ten years old. She worked "like a little spider" and got 15 cents. But even among better-off families, the discipline of work was almost never absent. Center village children, whose fathers were ministers, lawyers, printers, or storekeepers, did not have a full range of farm tasks to do, but they too recalled that their parents kept them bus**y.
 * Today, the realms of work and childhood are sharply separated. But in early rural New England, work was still seen as virtually continuous with life itself. Children's work was needed in a rural economy with few labor-saving devices, and virtually all parents believed that idleness was a source of moral evil**.
 * In the countryside, the work of the farm and the life of the family were so intertwined as to be indistinguishable. There was such a range of necessary tasks to be done that small and unskilled hands could have just as much to do as older and more knowledgeable ones. From the ages of six or seven on, farm girls and boys were indispensable members of the family labor force. Children began with simple chores like shelling corn or weeding the garden, and took on increasingly difficult tasks as they grew up. Young girls worked along-side their mothers and older sisters learning how to sew, cook, wash, and tend to the dairy. Boys labored with their fathers and brothers in the fields and around the ba**rn.

There was a lot of pressure on poor families childer to work and the would tell there childran that they would half to work for outher people to make mony. They boys would only make a few cents a day picking stones out of feilds or hauled firewood, and girls did work in the house and cared for the children. Susan Blunt of Merrimac, New Hampshire, remembered spending a week keeping house for a neighbor when she was ten years old. She worked "like a little spider" and got 15 cents. but even thought welther famillis but they worked hard. Village children whose fathers were ministers, lawyers, printers, or storekeepers, did not half to work as hard as outher kids but the still had to wrok to keep busy. **Some social commentators in the 1830s were concerned that as rural society changed, New England children might actually have less work to do than was good for them. But reminiscences of growing up during this period tell us that these alarmists had little to fear; the era of childhood leisure was still far in the future**. some people in the 1830s were arfaid that as rural socitey changed, the childen of new elngland maight not have as much work. but thinging of growing up during this time these people had to many fears.

the work in the 19th chentury kids had not alot of controle in the socity but played apart.It took a long time for one generation of children has passed the games on thorught all kinds of traditions that have keept and just like today we plays games just like they did then. **The material world of childhood, toys and other possessions, is immensely more abundant today. Toys in the early New England countryside were few and were simple, homemade contrivances; store-bought, shop-made ones were rare. An average American child's possessions today would have astonished even the wealthiest girl or boy of the 183**0s. the things that are made of childhood such as toys and outher things ,but today things are alot bigger.the toys that they had were simple and they did not have alot of them and if they did it was homemade it was very rare for them to be store-bought, shop-made. even today kids have more toys then wealthiset boys and girls had in 1830s **Time for children was different as well. Nowadays play is what children are expected to do; it fills the hours not spent in school or on homework. In early rural New England play was an afterthought, taking a very distant second place in adult minds to work routines and responsibilities. Children of the New England past may have enjoyed play all the more, of course, for that very reason**.
 * The work of early nineteenth-century children have few counterparts in today's middle-class society; but play provides a link across the decades. Over a long span of time, one generation of children has passed its games on to the next through oral traditions that have allowed plenty of room for regional, local, and neighborhood variation but have also preserved many things intact. The rules of marbles and the game of tag, for example, have changed little. Like their counterparts today, early nineteenth-century New England children played fantasy games, told scary stories, hiked, skated, sledded, and jumped rope. Some once-popular pastimes like rolling hoops or playing "The Graces" have faded from memory. Others have been dramatically reshaped over time; the New England game called "townball" or "rounders" is the ancestor of the present game of baseball**.

time or the kids was dufferent .Kids today are expeced to play .in the early 1900s is was acteded to do after all there work. but also the probley enjoed playing more because the did not get to do it as often