Which group of children–those in New England or the Chesapeake–had the better experience growing up?

Discussion 1: Colonial Childhood 8 8 unread replies. 8 8 replies. Introduction: In his introduction to Huck’s Raft Steven Mintz explains that one of his purposes in writing is to show that childhood is not simply a biological phase of life that everyone moves through (well, everyone who survives to adulthood, which was no guarantee in early America!). Rather, he argues that the experience of childhood is shaped by the time and place a child grows up it. The first two chapters cover broadly similar periods–the seventeenth century, for the most part–in two of England’s North American colonies, New England and the Chesapeake region (Virginia and Maryland). As Mintz shows, an English child in New England would have had a different upbringing than an English child in the Chesapeake, and Indian and African children would have had different experiences still. Question: Which group of children–those in New England or the Chesapeake–had the better experience growing up? Advice: Feel free to disagree with the author. It’s your interpretation that’s most important here.