For several years, James Coleman has been working out the notion of “social capital,” employing it provisionally in various settings as a possible key link in his theoretical effort to “import the economists' principle of rational action for use in the analysis of social systems proper…without discarding social organization in the process” (Coleman, 1988, p. S97; Coleman, 1990). Coleman asks us to think of structured sentiment and behavior as resources, the availability of which facilitates and, by facilitating, guides the choices of individuals conceived of as rational actors.

In his chapter in this volume, Coleman brings this theoretical perspective to bear on the emergence of many poorly schooled youth into a too-demanding labor market. In keeping with Coleman's focus, I pass over structural aspects of the school-work tie, directing my attention instead to students in school, in order to “unpack” the schematic notion of “social capital” (Coleman, 1988, p. S101) as it applies to school learning. In this chapter I nibble around the edges of “social capital,” leaving the concept possibly better trimmed to its particular application, although (a conclusion I leave to the reader) also possibly drained of some of its analytic crispness.

Overall, my argument suggests that little evidence exists of a straightforward trend in the reduction of social capital employed by U.S. parents on behalf of their children's school learning. More broadly, the account I offer argues that any meaningful notion of social capital must be situated in a larger set of social and cultural relations that surround the way children grow up in any given society.

The strategy of my chapter in this volume is announced by its title, which asks, “When May Social Capital Influence Children's School Performance?” The implication of my question is that the chapter by James S. Coleman (to which mine is a response) employs the intriguing notion of “social capital” in such a sketchily developed historical context that it neither “works” nor “doesn't work.” In my account, family social capital does not operate directly upon children's school-based cognitive achievements, but rather through children's motivations to learn school subjects that are themselves culturally organized and subject to socially sanctioned competing concerns. I argue that Coleman overlooks historical changes that as well explain U.S. children's mediocre (and arguably declining) success in school as does the decline in family social capital that he has imputed.

Coleman's rejoinder suggests another problem that deserves some thought if social capital theory is to be developed—this time essentially a measurement problem. In his chapter, Coleman describes social capital as consisting of “social relationships within the family and community that generate the attention and time spent by parents and community members in the development of children and youth.” In his rejoinder, however, Coleman maintains that social capital “is not measured by the amount of talk about school between parents and children … [or] the frequency of helping their child with homework,” indicators to which I have referred.

The studies in this volume up to this point represent the end point of a collaborative process that began in the 1980s. In this chapter we will take you back on our journey through this process, from the initial planning session to a series of workshops and a good many research meetings. The authors of the preceding chapters are not a perfect match for the authors of papers at the workshops. Consistent with the nature of workshops, some new working arrangements developed out of the discussion sessions.

The nature of cross-disciplinary study is best experienced by taking on the roles of the historians and the developmentalists in their struggle to work out a common ground. We hope that the lessons of this collaborative process will inform and strengthen cross-disciplinary ventures in the years to come.

The proposal

Responding to the rapidly expanding interest in aging across the life span, a group of social scientists led by Matilda Riley of the National Institute on Aging formed a committee (circa 1977) at the Social Science Research Council to pursue a deeper, multidisciplinary understanding of human development over the life course, with particular emphasis on the middle and later years (Elder, 1985; Sorensen, Weinert, & Sherrod, 1986).

This volume is a testimonial to cross-disciplinary dialogue as a potentially useful and rewarding intellectual exercise. In this epilogue, we briefly explore the implicit models of collaboration in this initial joint enterprise between social history and developmental psychology. Through omission and demonstration, the models suggest other possible forms of collaborative effort that could prove fruitful in the future.

These final remarks assume that cross-disciplinary dialogue is bi-directional in nature and that successful and sustained collaboration will become a reality only to the extent that the disciplines involved recognize its mutual benefits. If this cross-disciplinary enterprise is to succeed, a deeper understanding of the potential contributions of both disciplines needs to be achieved. Clearly, developmentalists should heed Zuckerman's observation that “the call for context meant merely an appeal for the provision of a prologue” and accept a richer definition of the meaning of historical context.

Redefinition of contextual variation would alter the framing of our questions and our expectations of answers – to paraphrase Zuckerman's astute call. As the positivistic legacy of the social sciences, including developmental psychology, begins to crumble (Sameroff, 1989), the door is open to a redefinition of contextual variation, although we are not sure whether the exploration will or can go as far as Zuckerman might hope. Similarly, receptivity to a wider range of theoretical frameworks beyond psychoanalysis is beginning to gain ground among historians. This development should enlarge the potential role that contemporary human-development models can play in interpreting historical data.

Across the twentieth century each generation of American children has come of age in a different world of realities. The differences are typically expressed through the experiences of families and the lives of parents, as when migration from farm to city placed children in social worlds unimagined by their parents. The Great Depression made families and children materially insecure; then, mass mobilization in World War II removed fathers from countless households over a period of years. Prosperity in postwar America meant that children of the depression had moved in one lifetime “from scarcity to abundance, from sacrifice to the freedoms made possible by prosperity” (Elder, 1974, p. 296). Such changes add proper caution to generalizations from one historical era to another and underscore the need to bring historical insights to the developmental study of children. The developmental significance of this link stems from a widely recognized connection between children's lives and their ever-changing world.

The question of how to achieve studies that are informed by both historical and developmental insights prompted this volume and its research project during the 1980s. We gave this matter a good deal of thought at the time.

In Part II, we begin our exploration of how developmentalists and historians together can increase our appreciation of changes across the life span. The essays in this section take either of two approaches. On one hand, a macroanalytic, long-term view of human development across the century guides the study of how individuals have changed over time. On the other hand, a microanalytic view is provided by examining the impact on development of specific historical events in this century – namely, the Great Depression and World War II. Both approaches share a commitment to life-course analysis but choose different time frames for their work. Although they use different strategies to achieve their goals, each essay provides a model of how collaborative effort can advance the common goal of understanding children and their development across time. For example, history provides dramatic natural experiments that permit evaluation of the impact of important psychological processes; events such as the Great Depression and World War II offer opportunities to evaluate our theories of social and personality development.

In his thoughtful essay (chapter 2) on home front children during World War II, historian William M. Turtle, Jr., reminds us that contexts of development must take into account events children are denied as well as those they experience over the developmental course. Reduced familial contact resulting from paternal absence, as well as from maternal absence because of employment outside the home, provides just as dramatic an impact on children's development as the formative role played by increased contact with relatives or possibly with other children (a consequence of the use of day-care during this period).

Liberal capitalist theory in the nineteenth century raised individual achievement to a uniquely exalted position. An individual's achievement was understood as both the measure of his or her worth as a person and the measuring rod by which rewards might most efficiently be meted out (Halévy, 1928; Polanyi, 1957). The focus on the individual in this accounting contrasted sharply with the group or communal focus of precapitalist systems. Paralleling the spread of this ideology has been the development of increasingly clear-cut expectations for individual achievement at particular ages (Ariès, 1962; Gillis, 1974; Katz, 1975; Kett, 1977). Increasingly explicit lifetime schedules have been established for how much of what kind of work ought to be accomplished by particular ages.

Providing resources so that children can achieve appropriate goals has in many ways been defined as a public responsibility in the United States. Universal schooling has played a particularly important role in this mapping between age and achievement. Over time, public education has come to provide a formal schedule for which goals should be achieved by which ages and a means for measuring and marking the extent to which these goals were achieved. The public school system has been charged with simultaneously increasing mean performance (so that individuals will be more productive workers) and decreasing interindividual variance in performance (to maintain some degree of equality within the society) (Fishkin, 1983; Jencks, 1972; Levine & Bane, 1975; O'Neill, 1985; R. H. Turner, 1960).

In Part III, we explore various life transitions that individuals undergo across development. By viewing these transitions through the dual lenses of the historian and the developmentalist, we can gain new insights into how life transitions are modified by the historical context or era in which they are embedded. In this part the first two chapters focus on adolescent transitions, and the third addresses a role transition – in this case, the transition to fatherhood.

In chapter 5, Steven Schlossman and Robert B. Cairns illustrate how our society has shifted in its treatment of girls who exhibit deviant behavior during their transition to adolescence. The authors compare contemporary and earlier eras, focusing on how our treatment of the same broad domain of social behavior either has changed or has remained constant across time. Socialization is always a product of the social norms of a culture at a particular time and of the particular institutions that have been given responsibility for enforcing these norms. This notion is nicely illustrated by Schlossman and Cairns. They show us, first, how social norms that help us to decide which behaviors are to be regulated at different points in development are products of a particular historical period. In the 1940s and 1950s, girls were brought into court mainly for “status offenses” such as disobeying parents or truancy, or for being sexually active. In the mid-twentieth century, then, the courts were vehicles for regulating sexual morality – at least among girls.

This volume represents the culmination of a long journey that began in the fall of 1983 with a working group on child development at the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). The group proposed a view of children and child development that extends across the life span and the settings of a rapidly changing world. At the time, contemporary studies of children were beginning to show more appreciation for a life-span view of child development, but little progress had been achieved in studying children in historical time. The senior editor of the current volume proposed a project that would bring developmental studies and social history together in the study of children. This book is a result of that venture.

The study of children in historical time and place identifies an important and neglected perspective in the ecology of human development. Psychologists assess the nature of the social world in terms of the child or individual. They ask, What social influences are relevant to specific developmental processes, such as children's thinking or perceiving, and to developmental outcomes, such as achievement or aggression? By comparison, historians, sociologists, and anthropologists are more likely to view the social environment as a research problem in its own right. From this perspective, they would trace the behavioral influences of a specific time and perhaps place, such as the impact of the Great Depression on a small community, to the experiences of children within particular families and neighborhoods.

Up to this point, we have presented the end products of a cross-disciplinary collaboration that began in the mid-1980s. This collaboration, we believe, offers valuable insights into the nature of cross-disciplinary work. If joint efforts of this kind are the answer to investigative needs when expertise is required from different fields, it is important to give thought to ways of building cross-disciplinary teams.

Our first step in this direction is to follow the path of our workshop enterprise (see chapter 8), beginning with the New York City meeting of historians and developmentalists and concluding with the Belmont Center Conference and its written papers. The New York meeting provided members of each discipline an opportunity to know each other. The historians presented models of social change in the twentieth century, and the developmentalists discussed various behavioral outcomes. Out of this meeting emerged a plan to team members from each discipline to work on specific research problems. The Belmont Conference critically examined manuscripts based on these collaborations, resulting eventually in the present volume. Wherever possible, we bring the exact words and reflections of the participants into the text in an effort to convey the different perspectives and interpretations.

The Belmont Conference had much to say about issues of method and approach, prompted, in part, by a thoughtful presentation, “The Elusive Historical Child: Ways of Knowing the Child of History and Psychology” (chapter 9).