Trick-or-treating. Flower girls. Bedtime stories. Bar and bat mitvah. In a nation of increasing ethnic, familial, and technological complexity, the patterns of children's lives both persist and evolve. This book considers how such events shape identity and transmit cultural norms, asking such questions as:
 
    * How do immigrant families negotiate between old traditions and new?
    * What does it mean when children engage in ritual insults and sick jokes?  
    * How does playing with dolls reflect and construct feelings of racial identity?  
    * Whatever happened to the practice of going to the Saturday matinee to see a Western?
    * What does it mean for a child to be (in the words of one bride) "flower-girl material"?  How does that role
        cement a girl's bond to her family and initiate her into society?  
    * What is the function of masks and costumes, and why do children yearn for these accoutrements of disguise?

    Rituals and Patterns in Children's Lives suggests the manifold ways in which America's children come to know their society and themselves.

<table of contents, p. vii>
Contents
Preface	000
Acknowledgments	000
Introduction	000
Part 1. Family
1. The Endurance of Ethnic Family Rituals	000
	Anne Tuominen
2. Stories My Father Told Me	000
	Mark West
Part II: Religion
3. Hindu Samskras: Milestones of Child Development	000
	Jyotsna M. Kalavar
4. Bar and Bat Mitzvah: Rites of Affirmation and Integration	000
	Ellen J. Narotzky Kennedy
Part III: Education
5. The American Girl at Her Sampler, c. 1633-1850: Inspiring a Feminine Ideal	000
	Luise van Keuren
6. The Journey to School: Illustrations from Popular American Magazines 1900-1962	000
	Barbara Martinson
Part IV: Play
7. The Ritual of Doll Play: Implications of Understanding Children's Conceptualization of Race
	000
	Sabrina Thomas
8. Playing the Game: Rituals in Children's Games
	Sally Sugarman
Part V:	Marriage and Mourning
9. Petals and Patriarchy: The Flower Girl in American Weddings	000
	Kathy Merlock Jackson
10. Newsboy Funerals: Tales of Sorrow and Solidarity in Urban America	000
	Vincent DiGirolamo
Part VI:	Literature
11. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Great Brain: Liminality, Ritual, and Race in the 
Construction of the "Real American Boy"	000
	Leona W. Fisher
12. The Many Faces of Childhood: Costume as Ritualized Behavior	000
	Jamie McMinn and H. Alan Pickrell
Part VII: Electronic Media
13. Growing Up With Westerns	000
	Ray Merlock
14. From Gigapets to Internet: Computer Technology Rituals of Childhood	000
	Jo Ann Oravec
Contributors	000
Index	000