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Orphans and Destitute Children in the Late Ottoman Empire by Nazan Maksudyan (review)

One of the author’s stated goals for The Nature of Childhood is to take those children seriously as active agents of environmental change who viewed landscapes differently than adults (3–4). Admirable as this is, it is a difficult promise to keep and one that mostly eludes Riney-Kehrberg—except in chapter 5, “Along the High Line.” Thanks to oral histories and the author’s personal reminiscences, Metropolitan Denver’s High Line Canal comes alive as an “urban wild space” shaped by the children who spent their abundant free time exploring its many treasures. We can feel the magnetic pull of the place that young people used as “sanctuary, playground” and destination for a “sulking walk,” whether they were youngsters intent on building a treehouse or adolescents inclined to more illicit activities (143). Horribly, this wild space also witnessed a series of violent crimes that stunned local residents. Even though these tragedies were examples of the sad anomalies that mar virtually all human environments, many parents—understandably but perhaps, the author suggests, unfortunately—saw these events as a reason to forbid their children free access to this beloved environment. It is adult fears—whether real or imagined, Riney-Kehrberg argues—that so frequently shape children’s access to and relationship with the natural world. The specter of adult anxiety haunts The Nature of Childhood, and in the end proves a force at least as powerful as the draw of electronic gadgets for moving children inside. Riney-Kehrberg bemoans the over-scheduled and sedentary childhoods now common in the United States but concludes that it is chiefly adult anxieties, and not necessarily children’s preferences, that have delivered the nation to this unfortunate place.