The research project CHILD-Children and everyday life in the Italian post-war aims at focusing on the everyday life of children and adolescents during the first years of the World War I aftermath (1918-1922), a period that, even in a context of recovered peace, represents a prosecution of the war without the armed conflict. It also depicts a laboratory where the “totalitarian seduction” shaped during the war spreads on society. The research is strictly connected with the historiographical perspectives that have gone further the military and geopolitical figures and events, focusing their attention on “minor subjects” (children and adolescents), considered for a long-time marginal for the social life and, often, erased in the collective memory. Over the last decades, studying these subjects has started to be considered a relevant historical topic. Analysing their emotions, experiences, points of view and reactions to the events of which they have been part has become fundamental to convey the complexity of society of the past. Therefore, it has been necessary to identify adequate sources and documentary repositories to support this innovative research approach. On these premises, the project, especially regarding the extension of the documentation, the sources and the archives, focuses on how, during the transition phase between the end of the war and the rise of fascism, children and adolescents became:
- Passive subjects of strategies and activities aimed to ease their integration, involvement, and education in society. Those practices were implemented primarily through the school but also by different kinds of publications, by the production of toys or by the organization of peculiar associations. On the other hand, children and adolescents were always part of public ceremonies and commemorations dedicated to World War and were primarily involved in the initiatives directed to the orphans.
- Active subjects capable of elaborating and putting into writing their concept and perception of the events that they have observed or have been part of. Their writing was elaborated both in a collective and organized way (in school notebooks and diaries like those collected in the «Archivio Ligure della Scrittura Popolare» of Genoa) or in an individual/personal way (i.e., private diaries and memories stored in the «Archivio Diaristico Nazionale of Pieve S. Stefano»).
- A remarkable presence in the everyday life of the cities, with their engagement in the news items that the study of the photographic documentation (i.e. the photographic fund of the « Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione» of Parma) can also infer.