The Ecology of Childhood by Barbara Bennett Woodhouse

Author:Barbara Bennett Woodhouse [Woodhouse, Barbara Bennett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Children's Studies
ISBN: 9780814784655
Google: DbCNzQEACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 44643562
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2020-01-15T03:18:01+00:00

An Exercise in Triangulation: The Meaning of Money

In 2014, I interviewed a seventy-year-old woman, still quite beautiful and widely traveled, who had been born in Anversa degli Abruzzi, a small mountain town located twelve kilometers north and three thousand feet below Scanno. Describing her childhood, she spoke of the freedom to play and the sense of safety and belonging. The town sits above a ravine cut by a swiftly flowing river, and as we walked together through a wooded valley that once had been filled with intensively cultivated farms, she recalled how, in summer months, her mother would give her a sandwich of bread and cheese and she would run down to the valley and spend the day playing with the other children while the women washed laundry on the rocks by the river. But it was not this idyllic memory of an Italian childhood that stuck with me after our talk. I had heard this theme from adults of all ages and even teenagers reflecting on current childhoods in Abruzzo. What struck me was the woman’s observation that money had changed everything. “Before the war, no one needed money. If your family grew crops and my family made ceramic pots, or your family had sheep and my family wanted cheese, we traded with each other. After the war, you could not survive without money. People began leaving in order to find jobs that paid money. Some went to Milano or Bologna, but they might as well have gone to America. Everyone left. The fields were abandoned. Now nobody here makes anything and we use money to buy everything. And there is no way to make money except by going somewhere else.” I think of this town, which is now a shadow of its former self, when I hear Pope Francis speak of the economy that kills. There are towns like this all over America. They may be less picturesque, with their cracked cement sidewalks and their boarded-up storefronts, but they were once home to generations of children.

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