Childhood and normalcy: classification, numerical regularities, and tabulations

This chapter is about the changing status of childhood at the turn of the century. By status, the author means substantially two things. The first is the emergence of the child as a social actor in a given society, which is a tremendous change from a previous period where he or she was deprived of most rights and responsibilities. The second is a reconfiguration by scientific investigation of what is a normal child, since the question of normalcy was not very relevant to the area of childhood before. The systematic scientific investigation of childhood that began in the 19th Century had a certain number of effects, the most important of which was the construction of the normal child. This chapter examines parts of this scientific literature, describing the various forms that redefine the normal child in the fields of public hygiene, pediatrics, and child psychology.