Cultures Of Child Health In Britain And The Netherlands In The Twentieth Century

This volume is the first book to explore child health in the twentieth century in a comparative perspective, focussing on such issues as the link between child health and citizenship, the impact of ideas concerning degeneracy, socialisation, consumerism and children’s rights, and the role of the family, state and experts in mediating child health.

Lost Freedom addresses the widespread feeling that there has been a fundamental change in the social life of children in recent decades: the loss of childhood freedom, and in particular, the loss of freedom to roam beyond the safety of home. Mathew Thomson explores this phenomenon, concentrating on the period from the Second World War until the 1970s, and considering the roles of psychological theory, traffic, safety consciousness, anxiety about sexual danger, and television in the erosion of freedom. Thomson argues that the Second World War has an important place in this story, with war-borne anxieties encouraging an emphasis on the central importance of a landscape of home. War also encouraged the development of specially designed spaces for the cultivation of the child, including the adventure playground, and the virtual landscape of children's television. However, before the 1970s, British children still had much more physical freedom than they do today. Lost Freedom explores why this situation has changed. The volume pays particular attention to the 1970s as a period of transition, and one which saw radical visions of child liberation, but with anxieties about child protection also escalating in response. This is strikingly demonstrated in the story of how the paedophile emerged as a figure of major public concern. Thomson argues that this crisis of concern over child freedom is indicative of some of the broader problems of the social settlements that had been forged out of the Second World War.

Stewart presents a history of child guidance in Britain from its origins in the years after the First World War until the consolidation of the welfare state. This is the first study of child guidance in this period and makes a significant contribution to the historiography.

This book examines how children and the concept of childhood are presented in media through the unique lens of childhood studies. This collection, authored by a cadre of international scholars, explores how children are represented, and how they represent themselves, in print, television, film, advertising, and emerging web technologies.

This book explores the treatment, administration, and experience of children and young people certified as insane in England during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It uses a range of sources from Victorian institutions to explore regional differences, rural and urban comparisons, and categories of mental illness and mental disability. The discussion of diverse pathways in and out of the asylum offers an opportunity to reassess nineteenth-century child mental impairment in a broad social-cultural context, and its conclusions widen the parameters of a ‘mixed economy of care’ by introducing multiple sites of treatment and confinement. Through its expansive scope the analysis intersects with topics such as the history of childhood, institutional culture, urbanisation, regional economic development, welfare history, and philanthropy.

The comparative global history of mental health care in the twentieth century remains relatively uncharted territory. Psychiatric Cultures Compared offers an overview of various national psychiatric cultures, comparing, for example, advances in Dutch psychiatry with developments abroad. Wide-ranging essays cover analyses of the field of psychiatric nursing, the changing use of psychotropic medicine, the emergence of in- and outpatient mental health sectors, the rise of the anti-psychiatry movement, and a critical look at modern day deinstitutionalization.

This first major study of girls' health in modern Britain explores how debates and advice on healthy girlhood shaped ideas about the lives of young women from the 1870s to the 1920s, as theories concerning the biological limitations of female adolescence were challenged and girls moved into new arenas in the workplace, sport and recreation.

A key volume on a central aspect of the history of medicine and its social relations, The History of Healthcare in Public and Private examines how the modernisation of healthcare resulted in a wide variety of changing social arrangements in both public and private spheres. This book considers a comprehensive range of topics ranging from children's health, mental disorders and the influence of pharmaceutical companies to the systems of twentieth century healthcare in Britain, Eastern Europe and South Africa. Covering a broad chronological, thematic and global scope, chapters discuss key themes such as how changing economies have influenced configurations of healthcare, how access has varied according to lifecycle, ethnicity and wealth, and how definitions of public and private have shifted over time. Containing illustrations and a general introduction that outlines the key themes discussed in the volume, The History of Healthcare in Public and Private is essential reading for any student interested in the history of medicine.