Sources for Research on Childhood and Childhood History in Poland in the 19th and Early 20th Century – Selected Problems

Abstract

The aim of the present article is to draw attention to the informative value of selected types of source materials which may provide a basis for research on childhood and childhood in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the same time, an attempt will be made to indicate the sorts of research problems which can be analyzed using these sources. Some types of sources will be discussed in more depth, with emphasis on those that are particularly rich and valuable in terms of information about children and childhood, but have not yet been fully exploited by researchers in historical and pedagogical analyses, have been used only occasionally, or have even been ignored altogether. The informative potential of the source materials for the study of history of children and childhood will be presented using the examples of such written sources as women’s, family and children’s press, diaries and memoirs, children’s literature, guidebooks, as well as iconographic sources. Comparing and combining sources, as well as considering them in a complementary manner may contribute to reconstructing the as yet incomplete picture of childhood and children in the Polish historiography of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.