The history of childhood and adolescence has been a field of tremendous growth over the past fifty years, and a new generation of historians continues to develop innovative methods to enrich our understanding of the subject. Edited by Tali Berner and Lucy Underwood, Childhood, Youth and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe is a valuable contribution to the existing literature by providing a close look at childhood and children outside of the mainstream cultures.

The essays in this collection explore the ideas and practices of childhood among several religious minorities of Western Europe, namely Puritans, Catholics, Quakers, Calvinists, Huguenots, and Jews. The extended period of 1420 to ca. 1800 chosen by Berner and Underwood enables a broad perspective on continuity and change in perceptions of childhood and in children's behavior and experiences. This desire to be as inclusive as possible is supported by the authors’ use of a wide range of source materials, including documents of church conferences and lectures, collections of stories about suffering, autobiographical writing, letters, family stories, hagiographies, chronicles, judicial records, consistory acts, rabbinic responsa literature, and visual sources. Beyond their focus on distinct periods of childhood and youth, the essays shed light on additional topics including communal boundaries, religious difference, persecution, identity formation, conversion/apostasy, migration, familial disputes, and interreligious conflicts. Emotions receive some attention in several of the chapters, particularly in Susan Broomhall's instructive essay about growing up in minority Calvinist communities across the channel. Moreover, gender sensitivity characterizes most of the essays in this collection, although none of them discuss gender as a main topic.

In their introductory essay, Berner and Underwood situate the articles within their political, social, and religious contexts, and discuss both the sources available for studying the history of childhood and the methodological challenges related to the topic. At the end of the volume, Berner and Underwood summarize the discussion and point to future research possibilities. The essays themselves are organized into three sections: “Childhood, Religious Practice and Minority Status,” “Family and Responses to Persecution,” and “Religious Division and the Family: Co-operation and Conflict.” One wonders why the titles of the last two sections mention neither childhood, children, nor youth, especially as Berner and Underwood recognize that “while the study of the family and the study of children are interconnected, they are still two distinct fields of historical inquiry” (6). Drawing the lines between these two closely related fields is not easy, but is nevertheless an important undertaking when seeking insights into the experiences of children and youth.

One of the major differences between the study of childhood and of family, as articulated by Berner and Underwood, is that historians of childhood try to uncover the perspectives of children, while historians of the family aim to understand the manifold structures and functions of this sociological unit. Understandably, due to the nature of the available documents, the authors of these essays concentrate more on cultural perceptions and adult reconstructions of childhood than on the experiences of the children themselves. This is a challenge faced by all historians interested in premodern childhood, particularly when early childhood (from birth to the age of approximately seven) is under consideration. Berner and Underwood explain that one of the best ways to overcome this challenge is by studying visual sources, though Berner's essay on Jewish children and domestic devotion is the sole article in the volume that analyzes images of children. The collection would have benefited from a parallel study of images related to childhood in any Christian minority group.

As a medievalist who studies the Jewish minority of northwestern Europe addressed in two of the essays, I was especially pleased to find the Jews in a volume that included other minorities. Berner's article on children and domestic devotion and Ahuva Liberles's essay on religious conversion and puberty in Ashkenaz during the fifteenth century both help situate the medieval and early modern Jewish communities in their wider cultural contexts and demonstrate that Jewish reactions to being marginalized and sometimes persecuted have parallels with other minority groups. For example, the communal prioritization of the education of children was also prominent in various Christian minority groups. Medieval and early modern Jews and seventeenth-century Quakers (discussed in Naomi Pullin's essay) similarly struggled to prevent adolescents from following the fashions of mainstream culture and engaging in, according to some, “vain” pastimes. Yet another example can be traced in sixteenth-century letters, examined by Broomhall, which highlight how Calvinist fathers who had crossed the Channel ahead of their families were expected to maintain their rights and responsibilities to direct the education of their children, ensure their placement with relatives, and guarantee their marriage arrangements. Similarly, Jewish fathers who traveled away from their families in pursuit of business opportunities or advanced Jewish education were expected to maintain these same responsibilities toward their children.

In conclusion, Childhood, Youth and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe should be of interest not only to those who study childhood, youth, and the family, but to anyone interested in minorities in medieval and early modern Europe. Readers interested in the history of emotions, identity formation, and migration—indeed, anyone who seeks a better understanding of interreligious conflicts and persecutions in premodern Europe—will also benefit from this collection.