These fifteen short essays define critical adoption studies from multiple disciplinary perspectiv... more These fifteen short essays define critical adoption studies from multiple disciplinary perspectives and in varying relation to scholarly and activist goals. Taken together, they debate the social and cultural construction and consequences of adoption and survey the new knowledges produced by studying domestic and transnational adoption through various critical lenses.
Historical Studies in Education / Revue d'histoire de l'éducation, 2018
are the ideal editors for this important new teaching anthology. The two are leading scholars are... more are the ideal editors for this important new teaching anthology. The two are leading scholars are leading scholars in the history of children and youth with stellar international reputations. In addition, they co-founded the History and Children and Youth Group of the Canadian Historical Association. Their collection reviewed here is already becoming the standard text for undergraduate courses in Canada, and it will work very well in similar courses with a transnational focus. The sophistication of the included pieces, combined with the editors' careful framing, means that this book will also find a place in graduate courses where students probe more deeply the theory, the method, and the ethical choices underlying the research articles. The collection begins with a timeline that will be very useful for students and research scholars less familiar with core narratives in Canadian history or in the history of childhood. The timeline includes elements that are discussed in the articles or that provide crucial background about, for example, emerging child welfare systems and the regulatory state more broadly. But there are also tantalizing hints of other developments that students or scholars may wish to pick up in their own research and reading. (I, for example, want to know more about an Ottawa convent school that expelled eight students for attending an Elvis Presley concert in 1957.) The challenge for the editors of any anthology, but especially for a wide-ranging teaching anthology, is to find a through-line that unites the book. Gleason and Myers use their well thought-out introduction to orient students to the field of the history of childhood and youth, and also to identify their core message. The essays in The Difference Kids Make, they argue, "help to define how the youngest, [who are] often assumed to be the most vulnerable and dependent, of our society have in turn contributed to the making of Canadian history" (9). In thematic chapters that cover the period from the late nineteenth century through the 1970s, we learn from the editors and from the contributing authors that the history of childhood is inseparable from labour history, political history, the development of the welfare state and the police/ regulatory state, war and peace, medicine, immigration, popular culture, Canada's action and reputation on the world stage, and finally from Canada's difficult, tragic history of colonialism and the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples. To quote the editors, "Young people lie at the heart of the nation-state's development" (2). To underscore this point about the significance of the history of children and youth, the editors also point to the centrality of children and young people in our most contentious contemporary debates. The history of children is also the history of the present. Gleason and Myers have selected twenty-two research articles that they have organized into eleven chapters. Their selections range from classics, such as John Bullen's 1986 essay on the many contributions of children to working class family economies, to important recently published research, such as Sarah Glassford's 2014 article on
A SCANDAL WAS BREWING in the small seaside village of East Chester, Nova Scotia in the mid-1940s.... more A SCANDAL WAS BREWING in the small seaside village of East Chester, Nova Scotia in the mid-1940s. At the heart of the controversy were William and Lila Young, proprietors of the recently expanded Ideal Maternity Home (IMH). Since 1928, William (a chiropractor) and Lila (an "obstetrical specialist") had provided maternity care and adoption services to unwed mothers looking for a haven where they could give birth to their children and hide from the harsh condemnation society directed toward unmarried pregnant women. 1 The IMH prospered in the 1930s, and grew still more as the dislocations of wartime Nova Scotia brought increasing numbers of women "in trouble" to the Youngs' doorstep. 2 By the mid 1940s, the IMH was the largest maternity home in Eastern Canada, with between 80 and 125 babies in the nursery. Estimates of the total number of children born at the Home between 1928 and 1946 range from 800 to 1,500. 3
... was the French-Canadian and Catholic child transformed to fit this new family? And what happe... more ... was the French-Canadian and Catholic child transformed to fit this new family? And what happened, in this process, to the birth mother? Narratives of child rescue are implicitly narratives that authorize adoptive parents and displace women who give birth. As Rickie Solinger has ...
These fifteen short essays define critical adoption studies from multiple disciplinary perspectiv... more These fifteen short essays define critical adoption studies from multiple disciplinary perspectives and in varying relation to scholarly and activist goals. Taken together, they debate the social and cultural construction and consequences of adoption and survey the new knowledges produced by studying domestic and transnational adoption through various critical lenses.
Historical Studies in Education / Revue d'histoire de l'éducation, 2018
are the ideal editors for this important new teaching anthology. The two are leading scholars are... more are the ideal editors for this important new teaching anthology. The two are leading scholars are leading scholars in the history of children and youth with stellar international reputations. In addition, they co-founded the History and Children and Youth Group of the Canadian Historical Association. Their collection reviewed here is already becoming the standard text for undergraduate courses in Canada, and it will work very well in similar courses with a transnational focus. The sophistication of the included pieces, combined with the editors' careful framing, means that this book will also find a place in graduate courses where students probe more deeply the theory, the method, and the ethical choices underlying the research articles. The collection begins with a timeline that will be very useful for students and research scholars less familiar with core narratives in Canadian history or in the history of childhood. The timeline includes elements that are discussed in the articles or that provide crucial background about, for example, emerging child welfare systems and the regulatory state more broadly. But there are also tantalizing hints of other developments that students or scholars may wish to pick up in their own research and reading. (I, for example, want to know more about an Ottawa convent school that expelled eight students for attending an Elvis Presley concert in 1957.) The challenge for the editors of any anthology, but especially for a wide-ranging teaching anthology, is to find a through-line that unites the book. Gleason and Myers use their well thought-out introduction to orient students to the field of the history of childhood and youth, and also to identify their core message. The essays in The Difference Kids Make, they argue, "help to define how the youngest, [who are] often assumed to be the most vulnerable and dependent, of our society have in turn contributed to the making of Canadian history" (9). In thematic chapters that cover the period from the late nineteenth century through the 1970s, we learn from the editors and from the contributing authors that the history of childhood is inseparable from labour history, political history, the development of the welfare state and the police/ regulatory state, war and peace, medicine, immigration, popular culture, Canada's action and reputation on the world stage, and finally from Canada's difficult, tragic history of colonialism and the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples. To quote the editors, "Young people lie at the heart of the nation-state's development" (2). To underscore this point about the significance of the history of children and youth, the editors also point to the centrality of children and young people in our most contentious contemporary debates. The history of children is also the history of the present. Gleason and Myers have selected twenty-two research articles that they have organized into eleven chapters. Their selections range from classics, such as John Bullen's 1986 essay on the many contributions of children to working class family economies, to important recently published research, such as Sarah Glassford's 2014 article on
A SCANDAL WAS BREWING in the small seaside village of East Chester, Nova Scotia in the mid-1940s.... more A SCANDAL WAS BREWING in the small seaside village of East Chester, Nova Scotia in the mid-1940s. At the heart of the controversy were William and Lila Young, proprietors of the recently expanded Ideal Maternity Home (IMH). Since 1928, William (a chiropractor) and Lila (an "obstetrical specialist") had provided maternity care and adoption services to unwed mothers looking for a haven where they could give birth to their children and hide from the harsh condemnation society directed toward unmarried pregnant women. 1 The IMH prospered in the 1930s, and grew still more as the dislocations of wartime Nova Scotia brought increasing numbers of women "in trouble" to the Youngs' doorstep. 2 By the mid 1940s, the IMH was the largest maternity home in Eastern Canada, with between 80 and 125 babies in the nursery. Estimates of the total number of children born at the Home between 1928 and 1946 range from 800 to 1,500. 3
... was the French-Canadian and Catholic child transformed to fit this new family? And what happe... more ... was the French-Canadian and Catholic child transformed to fit this new family? And what happened, in this process, to the birth mother? Narratives of child rescue are implicitly narratives that authorize adoptive parents and displace women who give birth. As Rickie Solinger has ...
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