This collection of twelve essays represents an important contribution to the understanding of child welfare and social action in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They challenge many assumptions about the history of childhood and child welfare policy and cover a variety of themes including the physical and sexual abuse of children, forced child migration and role of the welfare state.
Recent historical work has done much to focus attention on changing conceptions of children's rights during the 19th and 20th centuries. These essays address a variety of themes including the abuse of children, and the role of the welfare state.
Stimulated by the development of childhood studies and the social history of medicine, this book lays out the historical circumstances that led to the medicalization of childhood in Greece from the end of the nineteenth century until World War Two. For this span of fifty years, the authors explore how the national question was bound up with concerns raised about the health of children. They also investigate the various connotations of child health and maternity care in the context of liberal and authoritarian governments, as well as the wider social and cultural changes that took place in this period. Drawing on a wide array of primary and secondary sources, the authors look into the role of doctors, social thinkers and civil servants in the shaping of health policy; the impact of the medical paradigm from Western Europe; and the gradual professionalization of health care in Greece. Theodorou and Karakatsani describe an increasing intervention of the state in the medical supervision of childhood, the relationship between the philanthropic organizations and the state, as well as the impact of the national rivalries and wars on efforts to improve child health.
Elizabeth A. Kaye specializes in communications as part of her coaching and consulting practice. She has edited Requirements for Certification since the 2000-01 edition.
This innovative collection draws on original research to explore the dynamic interactions between parents, governments and their representatives across a range of European contexts; from democratic Britain and Finland, to Stalinist Russia and Fascist Italy. The authors pay close attention to the various relationships and dynamics between parents and the state, showing that the different parties were defined not solely by coercion or manipulation, but also by collaboration and negotiation. Parents were not passive recipients of government direction: rituals and cultures of parenting could both affirm and undermine state politics. Readers will find this collection crucial to understanding family life and the role of the state during a period when both underwent significant change.
A pioneering study of children's social care in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, A Home From Home? presents new information and develops conceptual thinking about the history of children's care by investigating the centrality of key ideas about home, family, and nurture that shaped welfare provision. Departing from narratives of reform and discipline which have dominated scholarship, and drawing on material culture and social history approaches, as well as the extensive archives of the Waifs and Strays Society, Claudia Soares provides a new type of study of social care by offering a 'bottom-up' study of children's welfare, and studying the significance of specific types of care practices that held particular cultural and ideological meaning. At its core, the book uses unique first-hand accounts, individual case records, and personal correspondence of children in care in Britain to locate the voices and subjectivities of institutionalised children and their families within the voluntary welfare system between 1870 and 1920. In doing so, it uncovers the real lives, experiences, and attitudes of the children and their families, and offers a timely new approach to understanding the history of children's social care.
Taking Care of the Future examines the moral dimensions and transformative capacities of education and humanitarianism through an intimate portrayal of learners, volunteers, donors, and educators at a special needs school in South Africa and a partnering UK-based charity. Drawing on his professional experience of “inclusive education” in London, Oliver Pattenden investigates how systems of schooling regularly exclude and mishandle marginalized populations, particularly exploring how “street kids” and poverty-afflicted young South Africans experience these dynamics as they attempt to fashion their futures. By unpacking the ethical terrains of fundraising, voluntourism, Christian benevolence, human rights, colonial legacies, and the post-apartheid transition, Pattenden analyzes how political, economic and social aspects of intervention materialize to transform the lives of all those involved.
This book investigates the relationship between ideas about childhood and the actual experience of being a child, and assesses how it has changed over the span of five hundred years. Hugh Cunningham tells an engaging story of the development of ideas about childhood from the Renaissance to the present, taking in Locke, Rosseau, Wordsworth and Freud, revealing considerable differences in the way western societites have understood and valued childhood over time. His survey of parent/child relationships uncovers evidence of parental love, care and, in the frequent cases of child death, grief throughout the period, concluding that there was as much continuity as change in the actual relations of children and adults across these five centuries. For undergraduate courses in History of the Family, European Social History, History of Children and Gender History.
The Invention of Childhood will paint a vivid picture of the lives of children in Britain from pagan Anglo-Saxon times to the present day. Drawing heavily on primary sources, such as diaries, autobiographies, paintings, photographs and letters, the book will present a complete chronological history of the experience of children in Britain during the past 1500 years. We will learn the key elements that have shaped their lives down the ages and how this has differed as a result of gender, geography and ethnicity. The book will also relate children's lives to larger events in national and international history. Written by Hugh Cunningham the Professor of History at the Universtity of Kent at Canterbury, and an expert on childhood history - the book will accompany the Radio 4 series presented by the highly respected children's author Michael Morpurgo. Michael is contributing a lengthy foreword to the book. 'The Invention of Childhood' will expand on a number of key themes from the radio series, including the idea of childhood as a distinct stage of life. Opinions on when childhood should start and end, and how it differs from adulthood have changed considerably down the centuries. And these inventions and reinventions of childhood (hence the title) have had a profound effect on children's lives. The prolonged childhood we enjoy in Britain today was a luxury few could afford in the past. This fascinating study will draw attention to the ways in which we may find childhood and children in the past quite similar to the present and to ways in which childrens lives from the past seem to differ sharply from the lives children lead today.
Focusing on the interaction between teachers and scholars, this book provides an intimate account of "ragged schools" that challenges existing scholarship on evangelical child-saving movements and Victorian philanthropy. With Lord Shaftesbury as their figurehead, these institutions provided a free education to impoverished children. The primary purpose of the schools, however, was the salvation of children’s souls. Using promotional literature and local school documents, this book contrasts the public portrayal of children and teachers with that found in practice. It draws upon evidence from schools in Scotland and England, giving insight into the achievements and challenges of individual institutions. An intimate account is constructed using the journals maintained by Martin Ware, the superintendent of a North London school, alongside a cache of letters that children sent him. This combination of personal and national perspectives adds nuance to the narratives often imposed upon historic philanthropic movements. Investigating how children responded to the evangelistic messages and educational opportunities ragged schools offered, this book will be of keen interest to historians of education, emigration, religion, as well as of the nineteenth century more broadly.
