| The
establishment of juvenile courts in cities across the United States
was one of the earliest social welfare reforms of the Progressive
Era. The first juvenile court law was passed in Illinois in 1899.
Within a decade twenty-two other states had passed similar laws, based
on the Illinois example. Mothers of All Children examines this
movement, focusing especially on the role of women reformers and the
importance of gender consciousness in influencing the shape of reform.
Until recently historians have assumed that male reformers dominated
many of the Progressive Era social reforms. Mothers of All Children goes beyond simply writing women back into the history of the juvenile
court movement to reveal the complexity of their involvement. Some
women operated within nineteenth-century ideals of motherhood and
domesticity while others, trained in the social sciences and living
in the poor neighborhoods of America's cities, took a more pragmatic
approach.
Despite these differences, Clapp finds a common maternalist approach
that distinguished women reformers from their male counterparts.
Women were more willing to use the state to deal with wayward children,
whereas men were more commonly involved as supporters of women reformers'
initiatives rather than being themselves the initiators of reform.
Firmly located in the context of recent scholarship on American
women's history, Mothers of All Children has broad implications
for American women's political history and the history of the welfare
state. |
