Children And Youth In America 1933 1973

The concluding volumes present forty years of tumultuous history. Now completed, they constitute an indispensable reference and absorbing chronicle of American social history.

Public provision for the rights of children has, at last, a complete documentary history. In three volumes, covering United States history from 1600 to the present, this is a monumental contribution in an area central to American domestic policy. All aspects of the welfare of children are considered. The documents, as comprehensive as they are diverse, are woven into an enlightening narrative of the fundamental issues involved in the place of youth in America. The concluding volumes present forty years of tumultuous history. They begin with the problems and protests of youth in the 1930s; their response to depression, war, and the draft; their organizations and participation in struggles for equality; and their changing legal status. With the advent of the New Deal and continuing into the Nixon administration, the sources show a growing popular emphasis on the rights and welfare of children as well as a dramatic shift in the position and commitment of the federal government. Policies and programs are many and vigorous, but gaps, protests, and inequalities persist. Upon the appearance of the first volume, Children and Youth in America was hailed as "an important event in the history of child welfare in the United States." Now completed, these volumes constitute an indispensable reference and absorbing chronicle of American social history.

The concluding volumes present forty years of tumultuous history. Now completed, they constitute an indispensable reference and absorbing chronicle of American social history.

In the 1930s, buoyed by the potential of the New Deal, child welfare reformers hoped to formalize and modernize their methods, partly through professional casework but more importantly through the loving care of temporary, substitute families. Today, however, the foster care system is widely criticized for failing the children and families it is intended to help. How did a vision of dignified services become virtually synonymous with the breakup of poor families and a disparaged form of "welfare" that stigmatizes the women who provide it, the children who receive it, and their families? Tracing the evolution of the modern American foster care system from its inception in the 1930s through the 1970s, Catherine Rymph argues that deeply gendered, domestic ideals, implicit assumptions about the relative value of poor children, and the complex public/private nature of American welfare provision fueled the cultural resistance to funding maternal and parental care. What emerged was a system of public social provision that was actually subsidized by foster families themselves, most of whom were concentrated toward the socioeconomic lower half, much like the children they served. Analyzing the ideas, debates, and policies surrounding foster care and foster parents' relationship to public welfare, Rymph reveals the framework for the building of the foster care system and draws out its implications for today's child support networks.