Paula S. Fass, Reflections I
Joseph Hawes, Reflections II

Reflections of an Encyclopedia Editor, I

Paula S. Fass

Putting together an encyclopedia on children and childhood is certainly one of the most daunting projects I have undertaken. It is also one of the most rewarding. The difficult part is obvious and does not need to be belabored – lots of tasks, lots of people to coordinate, too little time. I want instead to say why this has been such a satisfying and fun (yes, fun) experience.

First, doing a collective work in a new field such as ours gave me an unusual perch from which to observe the manner in which new subspecialties such as children’s history are created out of pieces of older endeavors (family, education, gender, law, and various regional specialties) while allowing me to see how adopting a new perspective redefines what we know. From a sheerly intellectual perspective, that has been a remarkable experience. This applies as well to the other disciplines to which the history of children is related such as anthropology and sociology. We know a lot more than we may think, but it sometimes requires that we assemble that knowledge together in something like an encyclopedia in order to make this clear.

The intellectual delight was linked in my case with the discovery that collective enterprises really are much greater and more powerful than individual projects. I was very gratified by the cooperative spirit with which many of my colleagues welcomed this project and with their willingness to tease from their knowledge subjects that applied to children and childhood. And they seemed eager to push that knowledge in new directions when given that opportunity. Scholars really did see the value of applying themselves to the larger endeavor and the larger project grew from that spirit. As a social historian, who always believed that what we knew about the past could grow cumulatively, the encyclopedia marked for me a reinvigoration of this perspective and of the value of organized, systematic research.

Finally, the intellectual gave way for me to the pleasure of making contact across the country and across the western world with colleagues whom I had never known before, but with whom I was now quite personally linked through this work. Maybe, it was the subject of childhood that brought out the best in all of us, maybe it was the excitement of defining a new field (or maybe just the alignment of the stars), but despite hurdles and hastles, it was a profound gift to discover all my colleagues and to connect with them in this way. We usually sit there quite lonely in our studies. With this project, much of that isolation disappeared. It also allowed me to connect with people across generations, with those who had early established the field, and those who are currently just beginning their work. And it allowed me to recruit new people, who may never before have thought of themselves as actively engaged in the history of childhood. I should add that all this was made possible by a knowledgeable and cooperative group of associate editors (Peter Stearns, Anne Higonnet, Ning de Conninck-Smith, Stephen Lassonde) and a very capable and experienced staff at Macmillan Reference (don’t leave home without them).

I am extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to do this encyclopedia and yes, I know, that it is a very imperfect enterprise which will need immediately to be revised, but that is something that encyclopedias do—they mark the constant reexaminations that prospering fields require. In the meantime, I can take some comfort in the idea that we, as a community, now have a kind of bench mark for the field, that helps to define what we know and how we have so far organized the subject, at a point in its early development from which we will be able to watch it develop overtime.

Reflections of an Encyclopedia Editor, II

Joseph Hawes

I wondered as I labored on one of my most recent editing ventures (The Family in America, An Encyclopedia 2 vols. (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio 2001) how I had gotten myself into a project of that scope. Of course there were positive aspects—getting to know a host of the younger scholars in our profession—and having to think seriously about what should and should not be included in an encyclopedia on this subject and within the scope of this particular series. But I wouldn’t want anyone to enter into a similar project without fully understanding just what this kind of activity entails.

My assistant editor and I began the project (after we had agreed to take the project on without fully understanding just what we were in for) by developing a brief overview of the field and then preparing a tentative list of possible entries. The overview strseed the explosion of literature touching on the field of family history since the 1970s, while the list of entries grew to a frightening length. We had to realize that we could not be as comprehensive as we might have liked and still stay within the volume limitations. Or, to put it another way, we had to devise some sort schema for deciding which topics were more important and thus deserving of longer entries, which were of lesser importance, and which might be discarded. This first effort did not pare our list nearly enough. Happily other factors intervened to assist us in the paring process.

With our still bloated list we set out to recruit scholars to write the entries. Two processes greatly aided our efforts—going to conferences, especially conferences like those sponsored by the Society for the History of Childhood and Youth, and making use of online discussion lists such as H-CHILDHOOD. Unfortunately there is no list dealing with the history of the family among the many lists sponsored by H-NET, the closest, besides H-CHILDHOOD, being H-DEMOG and H-STATE. We scanned programs of meetings and attended those sessions where presenters who were working in fields related to the history of the family might be found. A substantial number of our authors were recruited through this stalking process, and our newly-found scholars often led us to others in the field. We also posted notices on many of the discussion lists and invited potential authors to respond. The series editors also knew of some authors who could help with some of our entries. The recruiting process continued even as we started to collect entries. And, it must be said that some entries fell by the wayside because we were unable to find scholars willing to undertake them.

Having the entries assigned was not the end of the process, however, as some authors turned in entries that in no way met our guidelines or needs. This could be a delicate problem. I’m not sure we ever fully solved the issue of how to tell authors that their entries did not meet our needs. In some cases we were able to explain in greater detail what we sought, but in others, we had to reassign the entries.

Most entries required some editing. In our experience academic authors seem unable to count. Almost every single entry was too long in the first draft version. Explaining to authors that some of their deathless prose had to go was another diplomatic challenge for us. Happily most authors were willing to cut or revise their original drafts or would allow us to make the revisions.

We were also aided in limiting the scope of our volume by those authors who simply did not produce the entries they had promised. In at least one case we heard from an author asking when we would like the entry—about a year after the volume came out.

Thus at every stage in the development of the volume we met with the frustrations associated with working with a large number of people. The authors came from all over the United States and several foreign countries. But most of the authors submitted their entries on time and happily worked to bring them into line with our space limitations. The resulting volume is thus much more their work than ours

Was it worth the frustration? I think we did the profession a service by making basic information available in a compact way for both students and scholars. I think the volume helped maintain the momentum in the areas of child and family studies in the Untied States and thus contributed to the continued expansion of those fields. It was also the kind of task someone at my career stage (VERY close to retirement) could undertake. I enjoyed coming to know the younger scholars who contributed to the volume, and I was pleased to see that so much work in the area was being done. In a weak moment I might do it again.

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Joseph Hawes is professor of history at the University of Memphis. In addition to editing and co-editing several anthologies and research guides, he has published Children in Urban Society: Juvenile Delinquency in Nineteenth Century (1971), The Children's Rights Movement: A History of Advocacy and Protection (1991), and Children Between the Wars: American Childhood, 1920-1940 (1997). He is currently president of the Society for the History of Children and Youth.
Paula S. Fass in Preston Hotchkis Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. She is coeditor of Childhood in America (2000) and author of The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (1977), Outside In: Minorities and the Transformation of American Education (1989), and Kidnapped: A History of Child Abduction in the United States (1997). She is currently writing as book on children and globalization.