Family Dynamic Shifts

Mintz and Kellogg (1989) categorize types of families over this 100 year period into three stages: the democratic family, the companionate family, and the golden age family. The democratic family (1850-1900) represents a slight shift away from strictly patriarchal power from the father and allowed more autonomy to the wife and children. During this time wealthy and middle class families began having fewer children due to a rise in income and industrialized jobs (Mintz and Kellog, 1989). However, it is important to note that not all families had access to increased income or industrialized jobs. Black families and families of color were actively excluded from opportunities of economic success. There were clear class divides between families that limited access to both space and income (Marsh, 1989).

The second stage of family (1900-1930) was the companionate family that represented more equalizing power between parents and a greater interest in protecting children as they were seen as vulnerable. During this time there was an increase in the child saving movement through the implementation of institutions and child welfare (Mintz, 2004). Impoverished, immigrant and orphaned children were sent from urban cities across the country to live with farm families in the country. This emphasized the ideal family as away from the city. Children were seen as needing family as a form of protection, but more specifically as needing a financially stable, white and two parent family (Mintz, 2004).

As industrialization accelerated in the late 19th and early 20th century, the separation between home and work increased, allowing the home to be more a family oriented space (Valentine, 2001, 65). Suburban homes were a sign of family life, particularly driven by middle-class ideals (Marsh, 1989). Family time became sacred and could be seen through the newly regimented value of shared meal times. House designs represented the new found value of shared family space, such a communal dining room (Cinotto, 2006). With increasing child labor laws and suburbs set outside of the city, children had more time in the home. White children had space to play and the house quickly became child oriented with child specific play rooms and private space (Onion, 2016).  Black families were excluded and lacked access to white suburban neighborhoods and were often restricted to urban spaces (Marsh, 1989; Abbott, 1936). For many Black families living in poverty decreased both time and space for families as they lived in cramped living spaces. Abbott (1936) describes tenement housing in Chicago that limited mobility and space to Black families. Black children also lacked play spaces in comparison to white children as they were often excluded from playgrounds in urban settings during this era (Valentine, 2014).

Mintz and Kellogg (1989) described post WWII America as the “Golden Age”  of families. WWII proved to Americans that families could be resilient in times of unrest. After the war there was economic stability and a rise in middle class families that could afford bigger homes and domestic appliances as well as give their children more material toys and activities. Public media emphasized heteronormative gender roles and a culture of family togetherness. The dynamics of American families were shifting away from formal patriarchal power and economic gain, and rather towards a more economically stable base that could afford to focus on the wants and needs of children.

Threats to Families

One of the many “threats” to social ideals regarding the “proper” American childhood were children who didn’t grow up in a nuclear family setting. Children who had lost one or both parents, were unwanted from the start, or whose families simply lacked the resources to care for them, posed a problem in the public eye – who would care for these children, and in what capacity? Furthermore, could children who didn’t have access to the “proper” family setting still experience a proper childhood?

The consideration of child abuse is vital in relation to this project. Costin (1992) ponders why, after the establishment of the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1874, children continued to face abuse both from their families and from  institutions set up to protect them until the 1960’s. One key reason was the concern over who should perform this protective work for the child and to what extent. Costin states that the decades following World War I were predicted to be the start of “the century of the child” (Costin, 1992), yet the conditions that the war left the nation in made this dream unattainable. A possible reason for the lack of public awareness of child abuse that can be drawn from Costin is that institutions and families consciously disregarded children’s rights in order to reap optimum benefits from them during a testing time economically, socially, and politically roughly from the years of 1880-1960. 

Family finances also presented challenges to families and children were essential workers in many communities. As of the 1930’s, the main source of employment for children in America was in the field of agriculture either on their own family farms or rented out to neighbors farms (United States Department of Labor Children’s Bureau*, 1933). Children’s work was portrayed as necessary to the family finances while teaching the child valuable skills; however, as the demand for consumer products increased so did the need for workers. Children were being hired by the thousands for their small frames and cheap labor over long hours, often sacrificing their education, recreation, and health (United States Department of Labor Children’s Bureau, 1933). At this point in time, children beyond toddlerhood were seen as an economic asset for most families. This was a family dilemma that shifted through the years as policies protecting children’s rights expanded and the discourse viewing children as integral to the family unit shifted. 

* This source is valuable as a representation of the public discourse regarding children’s livelihoods in the United States in the early 1900’s. It also provided several data sets and figures depicting this.

Institutionalization provided one solution to orphaned and indigent children that worked to varying degrees. Birgitte Søland’s (2015) article about orphanages in the United States explores the actual experiences of orphans growing up in American institutions from the 1920s to the 1970s, many of which were distinctly positive, as well as cultural perceptions of those institutions, which were almost universally negative. Regardless of the lived experiences of the children who grew up in those institutions, American social ideals tended to dictate that a family setting was the best place for a child to grow up, no matter what.

The perceived importance of growing up in a family setting with a mother and father figure was so highly valued that sometimes children were ultimately placed in dangerous situations in an attempt to give them a better childhood experience. A report from the Illinois Department of Visitation of Children Placed in Family Homes (1910) revealed horrendous cases of abuse of children who had been placed in family homes with individuals who had not been properly screened. Some children were treated as slaves and whipped, as well as being subjected to numerous other forms of abuse.

Interestingly, and perhaps not surprisingly, popular notions of what constituted a “proper childhood” differed considerably when it came to asking questions about children who weren’t white. Julia Bates (2016) explores the abject hypocrisy between popular condemnation of institutionalization as a method of caring for orphaned white children while popular opinion at the time broadly supported institutionalization as a method of raising Native American children. The goal of institutionalizing Native American children was to strip them of their native identities and “civilize” them by forcibly removing them from their families and making them cut their hair, change their clothes, and speak English all of the time, among other restrictive and violent practices (see also Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center).

Parenthood

Parenthood was a difficult and evolving process, and one constant difficulty for parents was the issue of childcare. In her article, Anna Dunst (2005) explores the rise of day nurseries from the late 1800s to early 1900s as a viable option for working mothers who were unable to bring young children with them to factories, laundries, and other harsh working environments. The study includes personal narratives from women who were left widowed by their husbands and were forced to enter the workforce, as well as women whose husband’s wages did not provide adequate support for the family. Day nurseries were run on small scales, often in homes, and most of their workers were young single women who needed a job as well as a place to live despite the low wages provided by the nurseries, indicating the lack of available jobs for women at this time. On a larger scale, nurseries were supported by wealthy Progressive women and some men, while they were decried by others as giving help to the poor (especially in the case of women whose husbands worked but did not make enough money to let the wife stay home with the children). Dunst highlights the strict processes for children to be admitted to the nurseries, as well as the way that matrons at the nurseries emphasized standards of “cleanliness” that the parents were expected to adhere to in order to have their children be taken care of. The article relates to our exploration of threats to family life in its focus on women who were not able to spend as much time with their children as they might have preferred (or as much as conservative family proponents would have preferred), and by showing the ways that families were stressed by the death of the primary breadwinner and loss of one eligible working parent. It also shows the dominant perspectives on how parents should clean, teach, and care about their children, and the ways that differing political groups attempted to enforce their perspectives on families in order to create an ideal social order and especially an ideal child ready to enter a progressive society.