Media for children reflects societal views about appropriate childhoods in that the content has been chosen based on adults’ views of what is appropriate for children to engage with. In this article, the mathematics in puzzles and handicrafts in a selection of Danish children’s magazines from 1925 to 1930 are analysed to understand the childhoods that adults at this time considered appropriate. The classification of the puzzles and handicraft tasks according to the mathematical activities involved provides insights into the cultural practices deemed suitable for children and whether these cultural practices were differentiated according to gender. The analysis shows that there was a predominance of measuring and designing activities with children engaging in adult-equivalent tasks such as building a henhouse. These tasks had limited specific instructions, indicating that children needed to persevere in working out the details and have the resourcefulness to adapt them to their own situation. In addition, there are only a few features that aligned tasks to a particular gender. The puzzles and handicrafts indicate that appropriate childhoods were considered to be those that treated children as autonomous and valued the importance of doing things.

中文翻译：

---

1920 年代丹麦儿童杂志的拼图和手工艺品中的数学告诉我们关于童年的什么

儿童媒体反映了关于适当童年的社会观点，因为内容的选择是基于成人对适合儿童参与的内容的看法。在本文中，我们分析了 1925 年至 1930 年精选的丹麦儿童杂志中拼图和手工艺品中的数学知识，以了解当时成年人认为合适的童年。根据所涉及的数学活动对拼图和手工艺任务进行分类，可以深入了解被认为适合儿童的文化习俗以及这些文化习俗是否按性别区分。分析表明，主要是衡量和设计儿童参与成人等效任务（例如建造鸡舍）的活动。这些任务的具体说明有限，说明孩子们需要坚持不懈地制定细节，并有足够的机智使他们适应自己的情况。此外，只有少数功能可以将任务与特定性别对齐。拼图和手工艺品表明，适当的童年被认为是那些将孩子视为自主并重视做事重要性的童年。