In 1896 a Georgia couple suing for damages in the
accidental death of their two year old was told that since
the child had made no real economic contribution to the
family, there was no liability for damages. In contrast,
(5) less than a century later, in 1979, the parents of a three
year old sued in New York for accidental-death damages
and won an award of $750,000.
The transformation in social values implicit in juxta-
posing these two incidents is the subject of Viviana
(10) Zelizer’s excellent book, Pricing the Priceless Child.
During the nineteenth century, she argues, the concept
of the “useful” child who contributed to the family
economy gave way gradually to the present-day notion
of the “useless” child who, though producing no income
(15) for, and indeed extremely costly to, its parents, is yet
considered emotionally “priceless.” Well established
among segments of the middle and upper classes by the
mid-1800’s, this new view of childhood spread through-
out society in the iate-nineteenth and early-twentieth
(20) centuries as reformers introduced child-labor regulations
and compulsory education laws predicated in part on the
assumption that a child’s emotional value made child
labor taboo.
For Zelizer the origins of this transformation were
(25) many and complex. The gradual erosion of children’s
productive value in a maturing industrial economy,
the decline in birth and death rates, especially in child
mortality, and the development of the companionate
family (a family in which members were united by
(30) explicit bonds of love rather than duty) were all factors
critical in changing the assessment of children’s worth.
Yet “expulsion of children from the ‘cash nexus,’...
although clearly shaped by profound changes in the
economic, occupational, and family structures,” Zelizer
(35) maintains. “was also part of a cultural process ‘of sacral-
ization’ of children’s lives. ” Protecting children from the
crass business world became enormously important for
late-nineteenth-century middle-class Americans, she
suggests; this sacralization was a way of resisting what
(40) they perceived as the relentless corruption of human
values by the marketplace.
In stressing the cultural determinants of a child’s
worth. Zelizer takes issue with practitioners of the new
“sociological economics,” who have analyzed such tradi-
(45) tionally sociological topics as crime, marriage, educa-
tion, and health solely in terms of their economic deter-
minants. Allowing only a small role for cultural forces
in the form of individual “preferences,” these sociologists
tend to view all human behavior as directed primarily by
(50) the principle of maximizing economic gain. Zelizer is
highly critical of this approach, and emphasizes instead
the opposite phenomenon: the power of social values to
transform price. As children became more valuable in
emotional terms, she argues, their “exchange” or “ sur-
(55) render” value on the market, that is, the conversion of
their intangible worth into cash terms, became much
greater.
1. It can be inferred from the passage that accidental-death
damage awards in America during the nineteenth
century tended to be based principally on the
(A) earnings of the person at time of death
(B) wealth of the party causing the death
(C) degree of culpability of the party causing the death
(D) amount of money that had been spent on the person
killed
(E) amount of suffering endured by the family of the
person killed
2. It can be inferred from the passage that in the early
1800’s children were generally regarded by their
families as individuals who
(A) needed enormous amounts of security and affection
(B) required constant supervision while working
(C) were important to the economic well-being of a
family
(D) were unsuited to spending long hours in school
(E) were financial burdens assumed for the good of
society
3. which of the following alternative explanations of the
change in the cash value of children would be most
likely to be put forward by sociological economists as
they are described in the passage?
(A) The cash value of children rose during the
nineteenth century because parents began to increase
their emotional investment in the upbringing of
their children.
(B) The cash value of children rose during the
nineteenth century because their expected earnings
over the course of a lifetime increased greatly.
(C) The cash value of children rose during the
nineteenth century because the spread of
humanitarian ideals resulted in a wholesale
reappraisal of the worth of an individual
(D) The cash value of children rose during the
nineteenth century because compulsory education
laws reduced the supply, and thus raised the costs,
of available child labor.
(E) The cash value of children rose during the
nineteenth century because of changes in the way
negligence law assessed damages in accidental-
death cases.
4. The primary purpose of the passage is to
(A) review the literature in a new academic subfield
(B) present the central thesis of a recent book
(C) contrast two approaches to analyzing historical
change
(D) refute a traditional explanation of a social
phenomenon
(E) encourage further work on a neglected historical
topic
5. It can be inferred from the passage that which of the
following statements was true of American families over
the course of the nineteenth century?
(A) The average size of families grew considerably
(B) The percentage of families involved in industrial
work declined dramatically.
(C) Family members became more emotionally bonded
to one another.
(D) Family members spent an increasing amount of time
working with each other.
(E) Family members became more economically
dependent on each other.
6. Zelizer refers to all of the following as important
influences in changing the assessment of children’s
worth EXCEPT changes in
(A) the mortality rate
(B) the nature of industry
(C) the nature of the family
(D) attitudes toward reform movements
(E) attitudes toward the marketplace
7.Which of the following would be most consistent with
the practices of sociological economics as these
practices are described in the passage?
(A) Arguing that most health-care professionals enter
the field because they believe it to be the most
socially useful of any occupation
(B) Arguing that most college students choose majors
that they believe will lead to the most highly paid
jobs available to them
(C) Arguing that most decisions about marriage and
divorce are based on rational assessments of the
likelihood that each partner will remain committed
to the relationship
(D) Analyzing changes in the number of people enrolled
in colleges and universities as a function of changes
in the economic health of these institutions
(E) Analyzing changes in the ages at which people get
married as a function of a change in the average
number of years that young people have lived away
from their parents