Part I. Race and colonization. 1. Indian children in early Mexico / Dorothy Tanck de Estrada -- 2. Colonizing childhood: religion, gender, and Indian children in southern New England, 1600-1720 / R. Todd Romero -- 3. Imperial ideas, colonial realities: enslaved children in Jamaica, 1775-1834 / Audra Abee Diptee -- Documents: "The younger sort reverence the elder": a pilgrim describes Indian childrearing ; "I have often been overcome while thinking on it": a slave boy's life -- Part II. Family and society. 4. Sibling relations in early American childhoods: a cross-cultural analysis / C. Dallett Hemphill -- 5. "I shall beat you, so that the Devil shall laugh at it": children, violence, and the courts in New Amsterdam / Mariah Adin -- 6. "Improved" and "very promising children": growing up rich in eighteenth-century South Carolina / Darcy Fryer -- Documents: "A dutiful and affectionate daughter": Eliza Lucas of South Carolina ; "A most agreeable family": Philip Vickers Fithian meets the Carters -- Part III. Cares and tribulations. 7. "Decrepit in their early youth": English children in Holland and Plymouth Plantation / John J. Navin -- 8. Idiocy and the construction of competence in Colonial Massachusetts / Parnel Wickham -- 9. "My constant attension on my sick child": the fragility of family life in the world of Elizabeth Drinker / Helena M. Wall -- Documents: "I had eight birds hatcht in one nest": Anne Bradstreet writes about parenthood -- Part IV. Becoming Americans. 10. From German Catholic girls to colonial American women: girlhood in the French Gulf south and the British mid-Atlantic colonies / Lauren Ann Kattner -- 11. "Let both sexes be carefully instructed": educating youth in colonial Philadelphia / Keith Pacholl -- 12. From saucy boys to Sons of Liberty: politicizing youth in pre-Revolutionary Boston / John L. Bell -- Documents: "Though I was often beaten for my play": the autobiography of John Barnard ; "A bookish inclination": Benjamin Franklin grows up -- In search of the historical child: questions for consideration.