Search results for ""Author Joseph M Hawes""

Few people living in 1900 could have imagined what life would be like for children and families by the start of the 21st century. The 20th century brought improved nutrition, widespread immunization, lower mortality rates, greater access to schooling, more opportunities for communication and learning, and better legal protection for children. However, these achievements should be balanced by a recognition of the failure to protect and promote “the best interests of the child” and the family over this period. Wars, economic depression, exploitation, commodification, abuse, and discrimination – on the basis of ethnicity, race, gender, and class – all damaged children and families in the 20th century. A Cultural History of Childhood and Family in the Modern Age presents essays on family relationships, community, economy, geography and the environment, education, life cycle, the state, faith and religion, health and science, and world contexts.

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The internal dynamics of families have altered dramatically as the family has gradually shifted from a unit of economic production to a collection of individuals in pursuit of different goals. Taking examples from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, this eclectic reader illuminates changes in the American family and presents some of the methods and approaches used to study families. Linking family patterns with changing social circumstances, Family and Society in American History considers husband-wife and parent-child relationships in light of language usage, gender roles, legal structures, and other contexts. For example, new legal attitudes toward divorce emerged as marriage came to be seen as a site for individual satisfaction. Marital fertility declined as American society modernized and pregnancy and childbirth came to be seen as medical rather than family issues. Schools and other institutions of the state absorbed functions formerly performed by the family, and women's economic contributions to the family disappeared from view as the social values of the early republic divided the male (work) from the female (home) sphere. In the twentieth century, a new domestic role for men--Mr. Do-It-Yourself--developed in the wake of suburbanization. In addition to identifying trends within the dominant culture, contributors consider the experiences of ethnic and immigrant families, reassessing generational conflict in Italian Harlem, comparing the attitudes of male and female Mexican migrant workers in Kansas, and showing how Chinese immigrant women targeted for rescue by Presbyterian mission workers took advantage of the gap between Chinese and American culture to increase their leverage in family and marital relationships. A diverse compendium of family life, Family and Society in American History provides an intriguing commentary on the permeability of social structures and interpersonal behavior.

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