Childhood and family in America, Australia and Europe, c.1780-1990
Barbara Caine and Esther Faye
8 points
* Two lectures and one tutorial per week
* First semester
* Clayton
Objectives Students successfully undertaking this subject should have gained an understanding of concepts such as `the family', `motherhood', `childhood', `adolescent', `sexuality', `masculinity', `femininity' and of their changing meaning over this period. Students should also have gained an understanding of comparative history, and a knowledge of the significant recent historical and theoretical literature on the history of the family.
Synopsis This subject will explore the growing concern that childhood and the family have become an issue for governments, social reformers and the professions over the past two centuries. It will look at changing definitions of childhood and family as new ideas about `mothering' and `fathering' came to the fore, as `childhood' became the central concern of psychology and psychoanalysis and as the concept of `adolescence' as a special stage of life emerged. It will also explore the different kinds of families that have emerged in different social and ethnic groups and at the attempts to regulate family life evident in legislation and social policy. The development of psychology and social work and their concern with the family will be discussed. Specific topics will include population questions; maternity and family life in the twentieth century, especially in Nazi Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union; the ways in which the `black family' in America and Aboriginal family life in Australia came to be seen as `problems'; changing ideas about sexuality and their implications for ideas about family life; representations of childhood and the family in art and literature.
Assessment second year Seminar discussion (10 minutes): 10%
*
Tutorial paper (1500 words): 25%
* Essay selected from essay list (3000
words): 35%
* Examination (1.5 hours): 30%
Assessment third year Seminar discussion (10 minutes): 10%
*
Literature review (1500 words): 25%
* Research essay (3000 words: 35%
*
Examination (1.5 hours): 30%
Preliminary reading
Grimshaw P, McConville C and McEwen E (eds) Families in colonial Australia 1985
Gutman H The black family in slavery and freedom 1976
Jones J Labor of love, labor of sorrow: Black women, work, and the family from slavery to the present 1985
Mintz S and Kellogg S Domestic revolutions: A social history of American life 1988
Reiger K M The disenchantment of the home: Modernizing the Australian family, 1880-1940 OUP, 1985
Roberts E Women and families: An oral history 1940-1970 Oxford, 1995
Sommerville C J The rise and fall of childhood 1990
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