Raising Citizens in the 'Century of the Child': The United States and German Central Europe in Comparative Perspective

Published by Berghahn Books 2010

Raising Citizens in the 'Century of the Child'

The United States and German Central Europe in Comparative Perspective

Edited by: Dirk Schumann

Volume 12 in the series Studies in German History

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781845459994

Overview
Contents

About this book

The 20th century, declared at its start to be the “Century of the Child” by Swedish author Ellen Key, saw an unprecedented expansion of state activity in and expert knowledge on child-rearing on both sides of the Atlantic. Children were seen as a crucial national resource whose care could not be left to families alone. However, the exact scope and degree of state intervention and expert influence as well as the rights and roles of mothers and fathers remained subjects of heated debates throughout the century. While there is a growing scholarly interest in the history of childhood, research in the field remains focused on national narratives. This volume compares the impact of state intervention and expert influence on theories and practices of raising children in the U.S. and German Central Europe. In particular, the contributors focus on institutions such as kindergartens and schools where the private and the public spheres intersected, on notions of “race” and “ethnicity,” “normality” and “deviance,” and on the impact of wars and changes in political regimes.

Author / Editor information

Dirk Schumann is a Professor of Modern History at Georg-August-University Göttingen. He was Deputy Director of the German Historical Institute Washington, D.C., from 2002 to 2007 and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Bielefeld. From 1999 to 2002 he taught as Visiting Professor at Emory University. He is the author of Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933: Fight for the Streets and Fear of Civil War (English edition, Berghahn Books, 2009) and has co-edited Life After Death (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Violence and Society after the First World War (fi rst issue of Journal of Modern European History, 2003), and Between Mass Death and Individual Loss: Th e Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany (Berghahn Books, 2008).

Reviews

“This is an interesting and ambitious book that seeks to present a comparative perspective on raising children in Germany and in the United States in the twentieth century… [It] brings together a wide and interesting variety of topics on both America and Germany… [and] will be of great use to students and scholars in the fields of both American and European twentieth-century childhood studies and history.” · German Studies Review

“This is an inspiring book for any social scientist analyzing childhood…the range of topics that are presented in this way allows insight into many constellations of ‘raising citizens,’ so that we can consider the linkage of child-rearing and education to the development of political systems in many variations. The various chapters taken together convey evidence for the main idea of the book: twentieth-century childhood is a political, and especially, national affair.” · H-Childhood

“The strength of this impressive collection is that it brings the family and childhood back in and emphasizes the significance of these subjects for understanding debates over citizenship, the relationship of the public to the private, religion, science, and secularization in the twentieth century. The comparative focus on Germany and the United States works well, and several of the articles are in (at least indirect) conversation with each other in ways that illuminate the comparison.” · Robert G. Moeller, University of California, Irvine

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction CHILD-REARING AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Dirk Schumann Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I FOUNDATIONS
Chapter 1 CHILDREN AND THE NATIONAL INTEREST Sonya Michel and Eszter Varsa Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	27
Part II NEW BEGINNINGS
Chapter 2 CHILDREN’S FUTURE, NATION’S FUTURE Race, Citizenship, and the United States Children’s Bureau Katharine S. Bullard Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
Chapter 3 FROM REFORM PEDAGOGY TO WAR PEDAGOGY Education Reform before 1914 and the Mobilization for War in Germany Andrew Donson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	68
Chapter 4 “LINKED WITH THE WELFARE OF ALL PEOPLES” The American Kindergarten, Americanization, and Internationalism in the First World War Ellen L. Berg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
Part III PARENTAL RIGHTS AND STATE DEMANDS
Chapter 5 HOW SHOULD WE RAISE OUR SON BENJAMIN? Advice Literature for Mothers in Early Twentieth-Century Germany Carolyn Kay Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
Chapter 6 DEBUNKING MOTHER LOVE American Mothers and the Momism Critique in the Mid Twentieth Century Rebecca Jo Plant Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	122
Chapter 7 FATHERHOOD, RECHRISTIANIZATION, AND THE QUEST FOR DEMOCRACY IN POSTWAR WEST GERMANY Till van Rahden Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
Part IV PARENTAL RIGHTS AND STATE DEMANDS
Chapter 8 WHO OWNS CHILDREN? Parents, Children, and the State in the United States South Charles A. Israel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
Chapter 9 “CHILDREN BETRAY THEIR FATHER AND MOTHER” Collective Education, Nationalism, and Democracy in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 Tara Zahra Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	186
Chapter 10 ASSERTING THEIR “NATURAL RIGHT” Parents and Public Schooling in Post-1945 Germany Dirk Schumann Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	206
Chapter 11 “SPECIAL RELATIONSHIPS” The State, Social Workers, and Abused Children in the United States, 1950–1990 Lynne Curry Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	226
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	244
CONTRIBUTORS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	252

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 280
Keywords: History: 20th Century to Present; Educational Studies

eBook

Published: September 1, 2010
ISBN: 9781845459994