Little strangers : portrayals of adoption and foster care in America, 1850-1929
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Little strangers : portrayals of adoption and foster care in America, 1850-1929
Indiana University Press, c2003
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [193]-203) and index
Contents of Works
- The 1850s and their echoes : two case studies
- Money talks : the displaced child, 1860-1885
- Melodrama and the displaced child, 1886-1906
- Metaphor and the displaced child, 1886-1906
- Adoption and women, 1907-1918
- Adoption up to date : the rhetoric of mass individuality, 1919-1929
Description and Table of Contents
Description
When Massachusetts passed America's first comprehensive adoption law in 1851, the usual motive for taking in an unrelated child was presumed to be the need for cheap labor. But by 1929-the first year that every state had an adoption law-the adoptee's main function was seen as emotional. Little Strangers examines the representations of adoption and foster care produced over the intervening years. Claudia Nelson argues that adoption texts reflect changing attitudes toward many important social issues, including immigration and poverty, heredity and environment, individuality and citizenship, gender, and the family. She examines orphan fiction for children, magazine stories and articles, legal writings, social work conference proceedings, and discussions of heredity and child psychology. Nelson's ambitious scope provides for an analysis of the extent to which specialist and mainstream adoption discourse overlapped, as well as the ways in which adoption and foster care had captivated the public imagination.
Table of Contents
Preliminary Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
ONE The 1850s and Their Echoes: Two Case Studies
TWO Money Talks: The Displaced Child, 1860-1885
THREE Melodrama and the Displaced Child, 1886-1906
FOUR Metaphor and the Displaced Child, 1886-1906
FIVE Adoption and Women, 1907-1918
SIX The Orphan and Mass Individuality, 1919-1929
Notes
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
