Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)

Green, Fiona Joy

Book Review3 
Family Secrets: 
Gay Sons-A Mother's Story 
Jean M. Baker 
New York, London: The Harrington Park Press. 
Reviewed by Fiona Joy Green 
Jean M. Baker, licensed psychologist, widow and mother of two closeted gay 
sons takes on an ambitious task of attempting to "illustrate how societal 
- - 
attitudes about homosexualitly encourage secrecy, preventing gay children 
from confiding in their parents and preventing parents from understanding or 
accepting homosexuality in their childrenV(ix). Drawing on her own experience 
of parenting her two children, who both kept their homosexuality secret from 
everyone, including each other, Baker sets out to dispel various myths and 
stereotypes about homosexuality that destroy the social and psychological 
development of gay youth and their families. 
Family Secrets, divided into seventeen short chapters over 225 pages, leads 
us through the young lives of Andy and Gary, Baker's two sons. Gary, the 
younger of the two boys by four years, is the main focus of the narrative, as he 
is the first to disclose his sexuality and dies at the age of 27 due to an AIDS- 
related illness in 1989. Little attention is paid to Andy's sexualitywhich Baker 
discovers while accidently reading Gary's personal mail after his death. The 
main focus of the book, then, is on Gary's life, with numerous chapters 
addressing his childhood, adolescence, "coming out," becoming a writer, and 
falling in love. Here Baker successfully uses recollections, often in the form of 
letters from friends, teachers, and other significant people in Gary's life, to 
provide insight into who Gary was. A substantial portion of the text also deals 
with Baker's experience of watching Gary live with the "verdict" and reality of 
AIDS, as well as her own grief at the loss of a healthy and living son. The final 
two chapters, where Baker relies heavily on research and scientific findings, as 
well as her own experience, present arguments for the right to die and strategies 
to dispel fallacies and negative stereotypes regarding homosexuality 
Baker is successful in revealing why some gay men may feel they do not 
meet the expectations of parents, teachers, friends, and others. She provides 
excerpts from Gary's personal letters, and published works to illuminate the 
influence of societal pressures and family expectations on his feelings of shame 
and inadequacy as a gay youth. Baker also successfully delivers an honest 
description of how the body, mind, and spirit of people, living with AIDS are 
ravaged and demolished as they succumb to the destruction of AIDS related 
illnesses. One is left with an understanding of the horror of AIDS, the 
helplessness of those living and dying of the disease and those loved ones who 
hopelessly watch as they die. 
198 1 Volume 2, Number 1 
Book Reviews 
Unfortunately, Family Secrets falls short of meeting the formidable task of 
providing an in-depth understanding of why Baker's sons, or other gay men, 
keep their identities as gay males secret from family, friends, and others. What 
is obviously missing, and most frustrating, is the Baker's analysis ofher own role 
as a mother in contributing to, and perpetuating, the need of both her sons to 
keep their sexuality a secret. Throughout the narrative Baker provides glimpses 
of her own homophobia, appearing tolerant and as a therapist, yet feeling 
devastated as a parentwhen she discovers that Gary is gay. The continued hope 
that Gary is somehow not gay is central to the first half of the book and lingers 
throughout the text. I found her need to attribute Gary's idiosyncracies, and 
many of his personal choices, to his sexuality alone, a testimony to her 
homophobia. Human development is much more complex and complicated. 
Although I recognize that Baker is strongly influenced by both the 
psychological theories of homosexuality of the 1970s and 1980s, and the 
general hatred for and ignorance about homosexuality and homosexuals during 
the reign of Regan and Bush in the U.S., where Baker lives and practices, I am 
frustrated. Surely, as a psychologist, Baker can see the necessity for an analysis 
of her contribution as a mother to the pain and suffering that both her sons 
experience due to homophobia and the secrecy about their sexuality. The fact 
that Andy never disclosed his homosexualitly to Baker, even after witnessing 
her love and support for his brother through his suffering and death, attests to 
the continued lack of comfort, if not homophobia, I suspect he experiences in 
the motherlson relationship. I t  is not until the latter part of book, after the 
death of Gary, that Baker accepts the tragedy of Gary's life is his death and "the 
fact ofhis gaynessn(181). This suggests homophobia and attests to the need for 
self-analysis by Baker. Had Baker done her homework by addressing her 
personal role in the "family secret" of her gay sons, I think her bookwould have 
been much more insightful. 
Mother of My Mother: 
The Intricate Bond Between Generations 
Hope Edelman 
New York: The Dial Press, 1999 
Reviewed by Fiona Joy Green 
Mother ofMy Mother: The Intricate BondBeween Generations, part memoir and 
part reportage, comes on the heels of Hope Edelman's international bestseller 
Motherless Daughters.. The Legacy ofLoss (1995). In the introduction to this 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 199 


English

Family Secrets: Gay Sons - A Mother’s Story

O’Reilly, Andrea

A Mom and Her Son: Thoughts on Feminist Mothering

Hammond, Merryl

Book Reviews 
The Joys of Motherhood 
Buchi Emecheta 
Oxford: Heinemann (African Writers Series), 1979 
Reviewed by Merryl Hammond 
This book, somewhat ironically titled The Joys ofMotberbood, tells the difficult 
life-story of a strong-minded but very traditional Nigerian woman, Nnu Ego. 
Born in a rural village, Nnu Ego is married off to a man she has never met, who 
lives in Lagos, a rapidly changing urban centre. 
We follow her story through frequent pregnancies, the deaths of two 
children and grinding poverty. She copes alone, while her husband is a soldier 
in World War 11, adjusts to being the "senior wife," when her husband takes 
other wives, and manages the stresses of living under colonialism, where new 
values clash with the old. 
The story describes as arranged marriages, bride prices, polygamy, naming 
ceremonies, tribal prejudices, family violence, medicine men, racism, and 
sexism. A girl is, quite literally, the property first of her father and then her 
husband. ("Nnaife is the head of our family. He owns me, just like God in the 
sky owns us.") Initially, schooling for girls is unheard of. A wife is expected 
merely to "bearchildren, keep his [husband's] room clean andwash his clothes." 
(If she were "beautifid and quiet he calculated [that] as an added bonus.") 
Giving birth to agirl-child is considered a waste oftime and energy. Agirl's only 
use is to help her mother and bring a good bride price in an arranged marriage. 
Only by birthing a son does woman become "a real woman." Motherhood is the 
only legitimate aspiration for women. A woman who works outside the home 
for a meagre income (hawking firewood, for example) is often judged to be 
neglecting her children. 
The author uses aptlypoeticlanguage: "His tongue was biting like the edge 
ofa circumcision blade", "those breasts, two beautiful firm mounds on her chest 
looking like calabashes turned upside-down", "her love and duty for her 
children were like her chain of slavery." 
234 1 Volume 2, Number 2 
Book Reviews 
Many mothers will identify with Nnu Ego's wry observations: 'When the 
children were good they belonged to the father; when they were bad, they 
belonged to the mother", "If you don't have children the longing for them will 
kill you, and ifyou do, the worrying over them will kill you", "Some fathers ... 
can reject a bad son, a master can reject his evil servant, a wife can even leave 
a bad husband, but a mother can never, never reject her son. If he is damned, 
she is damned with him", and about a woman staying in a loveless marriage, 
'We tolerate each other for the children, just for the children." 
Woven throughout the story are the author's own reflections on traditional 
- 
African society's view ofwomen as second-class citizens. Her feminism is clear 
in the thoughts she ascribes to Nnu Ego: "I failed to live up to the standard 
expected of me by the males in my life, my father and my husband-and now 
I have to include my sons. But who made the law that we should not hope in 
our daughters? We  women subscribe to that law more than anyone. Until we 
change all this, it is still a man's world, which women will always help to build." 
"When We Chose Canada": A Mother and Daughter 
Share Stories That Shaped Their Lives In Their New 
Homeland. 
Sherry Ramrattan Smith and Rose Bickram Ramrattan 
Waterloo: Pandora Press 1999. 
Reviewed by Laura Thomas 
In 1969 the Ramrattan family - mother, father, daughter, and son - left 
politically unstable Trinidad to find a better home in Canada. In this self- 
published excerpt from her Master's thesis, Sherry Ramrattan Smith shares her 
story and her mother Rose's story about adjusting to life in Canada as 
immigrant women ofcolour. In the tradition offeminist collaborative research, 
Ramrattan Smith analyzes how daughter and mother adapted to and con- 
structed meaning in a hegemonic, white society by juxtaposing and including 
simultaneously a "daughter's take" and a "mother's snapshot" of their experi- 
ences. Through this exploratory, qualitative, approach she is able to tease out 
of these personal narratives issues such as perceptions of freedom, acceptance 
and identity, emotional trauma, "Canadian-ness," and skin hue in relation to 
citizenship. 
Along with the personal desire to live and express agency, voice and 
empowerment, a major purpose ofthis workis to help educators understand the 
special needs, particularly self-esteem issues, of immigrant students of colour 
and their parents. The author does this by including a thought-provoking 
Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 1 235 


The Joys of Motherhood

Flynn, Karen

Henwood, Cindy-Lou

Nothing to Write Home About: Carribean Canadian Daughters, Mothers and Migration

Thomas, Laura

Book Reviews 
Many mothers will identify with Nnu Ego's wry observations: 'When the 
children were good they belonged to the father; when they were bad, they 
belonged to the mother", "If you don't have children the longing for them will 
kill you, and ifyou do, the worrying over them will kill you", "Some fathers ... 
can reject a bad son, a master can reject his evil servant, a wife can even leave 
a bad husband, but a mother can never, never reject her son. If he is damned, 
she is damned with him", and about a woman staying in a loveless marriage, 
'We tolerate each other for the children, just for the children." 
Woven throughout the story are the author's own reflections on traditional - 
African society's view ofwomen as second-class citizens. Her feminism is clear 
in the thoughts she ascribes to Nnu Ego: "I failed to live up to the standard 
expected of me by the males in my life, my father and my husband-and now 
I have to include my sons. But who made the law that we should not hope in 
our daughters? We  women subscribe to that law more than anyone. Until we 
change all this, it is still a man's world, which women will always help to build." 
"When We Chose Canada": A Mother and Daughter 
Share Stories That Shaped Their Lives In Their New 
Homeland. 
Sherry Ramrattan Smith and Rose Bickram Ramrattan 
Waterloo: Pandora Press 1999. 
Reviewed by Laura Thomas 
In 1969 the Ramrattan family - mother, father, daughter, and son - left 
politically unstable Trinidad to find a better home in Canada. In this self- 
published excerpt from her Master's thesis, Sherry Ramrattan Smith shares her 
story and her mother Rose's story about adjusting to life in Canada as 
immigrant women ofcolour. In the tradition offeminist collaborative research, 
Ramrattan Smith analyzes how daughter and mother adapted to and con- 
structed meaning in a hegemonic, white society by juxtaposing and including 
simultaneously a "daughter's take" and a "mother's snapshot" of their experi- 
ences. Through this exploratory, qualitative, approach she is able to tease out 
of these personal narratives issues such as perceptions of freedom, acceptance 
and identity, emotional trauma, "Canadian-ness," and skin hue in relation to 
citizenship. 
Along with the personal desire to live and express agency, voice and 
empowerment, a major purpose ofthis workis to help educators understand the 
special needs, particularly self-esteem issues, of immigrant students of colour 
and their parents. The author does this by including a thought-provoking 
Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 1 235 
Book Reviews 
section that discusses the pedagogical implications of the personal narratives. 
She also provides her own reflection notes and auestions for further discussion. 
A l 
Like the issues she is trying to expose in this work, the entire research process 
is deliberately transparent and accessible. m e n  We Chose Canada is a concep- 
tual springboard into the following social phenomena: patriarchy and the role 
of the patriarch in immigration, racism and immigration, acceptance into 
Canadian society, roles of women in the family, and independence and 
empowerment for immigrant women. 
Indeed, to make this book an even more valuable tool for educators and 
female immigrant students, it would have been helpful to situate its discussion 
in the history of Canadian immigration, from 1969 to the present and the rise 
of "multi-race" anti-racist pedagogy, both in the academy and at the commu- 
nity level. Primary and secondary sources relating to the evolution of these 
broader themes during the last 30 years, would have helped situate Smith 
Ramrattan's excellentworkin a larger political context. The contrived timeless- 
ness ofthe personal narratives (stories andlor memories) weakens her argument 
because it brings into question the external reliability of these narratives; the 
reader is not given evidence to back up the women's stories. While the stories - 
are excellent examples of how the personal is political, "creating an inclusive 
educational system where each person is valued and accepted for their [sic] 
contributions" (70) cannot be done by the sharing of personal stories alone, 
these stories must be contextualized in time, space, and place. 
This book makes an important contribution to maternal scholarship 
because it includes both mother's and daughter's voices and the experiences of 
an immigrant mother and mother of colour in Canada. It is also a helpful 
example of co-authorship and intergenerational communication between 
mothers and daughters, and highlights the importance offamily stories as a site 
of knowledge and identity (re)production. 
Immigrant Mothers: Narratives of Race and 
Maternity 1890-1 925 
Katrina Irving 
Urbana IL: Univeristy of Illinois Press, 2000. 
Reviewed by Jennifer Harris 
The title Immigrant Mothers: Narratives $Race and Maternity 1890-1925 
might be slightly misleading: Katrina Irving's study has little to do with the lives 
of actual immigrant women. Instead, Irving takes as her subject turn-of-the- 
century cultural representations of immigrant women and men as imagined, 
236 1 Volume 2, Number 2 


"When We Chose Canada": A Mother and Daughter Share Stories That Shaped Their Lives in Their New Homeland

Harris, Jennifer

Book Reviews 
section that discusses the pedagogical implications of the personal narratives. 
She also provides her own reflection notes and auestions for further discussion. 
A l 
Like the issues she is trying to expose in this work, the entire research process 
is deliberately transparent and accessible. m e n  We Chose Canada is a concep- 
tual springboard into the following social phenomena: patriarchy and the role 
of the patriarch in immigration, racism and immigration, acceptance into 
Canadian society, roles of women in the family, and independence and 
empowerment for immigrant women. 
Indeed, to make this book an even more valuable tool for educators and 
female immigrant students, it would have been helpful to situate its discussion 
in the history of Canadian immigration, from 1969 to the present and the rise 
of "multi-race" anti-racist pedagogy, both in the academy and at the commu- 
nity level. Primary and secondary sources relating to the evolution of these 
broader themes during the last 30 years, would have helped situate Smith 
Ramrattan's excellentworkin a larger political context. The contrived timeless- 
ness ofthe personal narratives (stories andlor memories) weakens her argument 
because it brings into question the external reliability of these narratives; the 
reader is not given evidence to back up the women's stories. While the stories 
- 
are excellent examples of how the personal is political, "creating an inclusive 
educational system where each person is valued and accepted for their [sic] 
contributions" (70) cannot be done by the sharing of personal stories alone, 
these stories must be contextualized in time, space, and place. 
This book makes an important contribution to maternal scholarship 
because it includes both mother's and daughter's voices and the experiences of 
an immigrant mother and mother of colour in Canada. It is also a helpful 
example of co-authorship and intergenerational communication between 
mothers and daughters, and highlights the importance offamily stories as a site 
of knowledge and identity (re)production. 
Immigrant Mothers: Narratives of Race and 
Maternity 1890-1 925 
Katrina Irving 
Urbana IL: Univeristy of Illinois Press, 2000. 
Reviewed by Jennifer Harris 
The title Immigrant Mothers: Narratives $Race and Maternity 1890-1925 
might be slightly misleading: Katrina Irving's study has little to do with the lives 
of actual immigrant women. Instead, Irving takes as her subject turn-of-the- 
century cultural representations of immigrant women and men as imagined, 
236 1 Volume 2, Number 2 
Book Reviews 
represented, or deployed by social scientists, in their representation and 
discussion of contemporary America. Exploring the various popular discursive 
positions as manifested in six key literary texts, Irving demonstrates how 
general cultural anxieties about consumerism, urbanization, industrialism, 
increased immigration, and the future of America are played out through the 
image of the racialized immigrant woman. 
This deployment of the figure of the immigrant woman, according to 
Irving, is central to understanding the construction of various discourses 
around race, ethnicity, and nationalism in the late nineteenth and early 
twentieth centuries. 
Irving draws particularly on the novels of Wills Cather, Stephen Crane, 
Harold Frederic, and Frank Norris, as well as the documentary photographs 
and accompanying text by activist Jacob Riis, to demonstrate the degree to 
which culturally current discourses and anxieties about immigration insinuated 
themselves into popular culture forms. Her analysis of Frederic's The Damna- 
tion ofTheron Ware illustrates that despite Frederic's sympathy towards Irish 
immigrants and the "civilizing" influence their rich cultural heritage might have 
on American culture, in his work he nevertheless reproduces the nativist 
argument that a declining Anglo-Saxon American population is endangered by 
the "feminizing" and "weakening" influence of immigrants. Likewise, Frank 
Norris's classic McTeague and Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl ofthe Streets 
suggest that the American-born daughters of non-Anglo immigrants are only 
superficially "civilized" andlor "Americanized," and, in fact, pose a lurking 
danger to the racial purity of the nation, given their inevitable regression to type. 
That in each instance, it is the immigrantwoman, not the immigrant man, who 
serves as an agent of racial degeneration, emphasizes her very gendered 
construction as the principle threat to American civilization. Nowhere is this 
more evident, Irving postulates, than in the construction of the overly fecund 
immigrant mother and her concomitant potential for mongrelization, misce- 
genation, and race suicide. 
Whiie the image of the immigrant mother is not as central to Irving's 
project as the title of the book suggests, she nevertheless explores it as an 
important contested site in the arguments of nativists, Americanizers, and 
cultural pluralists alike. Furthermore, just as the discourses of these different 
groups impacted literary imaginings of immigrant women, so too did these 
rhetorical constructions affect the actual physical realm, in the enacting of 
particular kinds of social reform directed towards immigrant women and 
mothers. 
Immigrant Mothers resonates with both historical insight and contempo- 
rary relevance. Irving's discussion of the role of sociologists and policy makers 
in normalizing and nationalizing discourses of racialized motherhood, as well 
as public debates about the supposed national threat posed by "foreign" 
immigration exactly a century ago, echoes contemporary American fears of 
displacement in the face of new waves of immigration from non-white, non- 
Journal oftbe Association for Research on Mothering ( 237 
Book Reviews 
Anglo countries. And though an imaginary and highly racialized "welfare 
queen" continues to be paraded in front of conservative American constituents, 
the affirmation that the image is neither new nor original in its construction, 
use, or purposeful deployment, provides little consolation. Lack ofconsolation 
aside, Irving's bookis a theoretically and historically astute investigation of the 
gendered and racialized fears of immigrant women, at one particularly charged 
moment in American history. 
Mothering Teens: 
Understanding the Adolescent Years 
Miriam Kaufman, ed. 
Charlottetown, PEI: gynergy, 1997 
Reviewed by Ruthe Thompson 
Anyone familiar with children aged 10 to 21 will appreciate this collection 
created "not to tell you how to parent, but to help you understand the process 
of adolescence" (Kaufman 7). Editor Miriam Kaufman, a pediatrician at the 
Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and associate professor of pediatrics at 
the University of Toronto, gathers a diverse group of women to provide a 
comprehensive look at shepherding children through the transition to adult- 
hood. As these 21 essays demonstrate, it is no easy task. President of the 
Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, Debra 
Haffner comments in an excellent essay on sexuality that teens can feel 
"omniscient, omnipotent, and invincible" (82). Kaufman underscores this 
point in the overview of adolescent development that opens the volume, 
reminding readers like me, mother to children aged 16 and 13, that "When 
you're parenting a teen, every time you think you've got it right, you realize you 
are an asshole!"' (15). 
Constant reassessment of household attitudes, rules, and expectations 
emerge as key themes in essays like, Cheryl Littleton's piece on adolescent drug 
and alcoholuse, Jacqueline Haessly's discussion ofteens andviolence, Kathleen 
McDonnell's article on rites of passage, and Merry1 Bear and Kaca Henley's 
cautionary tale about body image. We remember that adolescents double their 
body weight while surrounded by media prescriptions of unrealistic physiques. 
We read that teens need privacy, independence, and freedom to develop 
decision-making skills. We read about the strictures of gender roles and learn, 
perhaps contrary to parental fantasy, that "more than 80 percent of North 
Americans first have intercourse as teenagers," making quality health education 
vital (Haffner 88). In provocative essays by Gail Winter and Pat Watson we are 
schooled in the challenges of raising aboriginal teens and on attitudes about 
238 1 Volume 2, Number 2 


Immigrant Mothers: Narratives of Race and Maternity 1890-1925

Valentich, Mary

Mothers and Sons in Croatian Songs

... About the Front Cover 
Judy Martin, "S+-Portrait," Detail. Painted cotton, reyled maternity clothing, 
hand-pieced and quilted, 4 6 " x  50': 1986. 
"This piece was done short+ ayer the birth of my thirdchild, Grace. The image 
is of a mother doing two things at once, breasffeeding her baby anddrawing her 
own image. The working hand is cut offby the image oftbe next baby. Our two 
girls and a boy are represented by the clour of their sleepers. One side of the guilt 
has no border to show that we are notfinisbed our fami+ yet, and we are 
planning our fourth child.'" 
-Judy Martin 
46 1 Volume 2, Number l 


About the Front Cover

Tolston, Nancy D.

1st Day

Young, Sarah V.

Book Reviews 
In M0therNature:AHisto y oJMothers, Infants, andNatural Selection, Sarah 
Blaffer Hrdy sets out an expansive account of the current state of research in 
anthropology, psychology, and sociobiology, about why mothers do what they 
do. Studies in the behaviour and biochemistry ofboth humans and animals, as 
well as historical assessments of mothering behaviour in distinctive social and 
cultural situations, point to a fresh understanding of the state of motherhood. 
Blaffer Hrdygoes one step further and examines new evidence surrounding the 
behaviour of infants that suggests that the child actually plays a significant role 
in molding the mother's actions to suit its needs. In effect, "Babies are geared 
to making sure that maternal care is forthcoming and ongoing" (536). Impor- 
tantly, babies appear, in the long run, to be more interested in the quality of the 
care they receive than they are in who provides it. Blaffer Hrdy writes 
extensively about the crucial role of "alloparents," individuals other than the 
child's who provide care. In modern human society we call these 
individuals daycare workers, babysitters, grandparents, and so forth. I t  is 
refreshing to see, however, that alloparenting is not an exclusively human 
phenomenon. She cites primate studies in which data from groups, who 
practiced infant sharing, are compared with groups who did not. 'Babies born 
to infant-sharers grow at a faster rate, and ... their mothers give birth again after 
much shorter intervals without compromising their own health or infant 
survival. Crudely put, mothers with good daycare had the highest fertility rates" 
(448). 
Mother Nature is a dense, academic work which covers a vast array of 
research in careful, footnoted prose. At the same time, however, Blaffer Hrdy 
succeeds in presenting a readable text that is comfortably accessible to the 
layperson, and often highly entertaining. BlafYer Hrdy models capably the 
feminist academic paradigm of placing the person of the researcher visibly in 
the workwithout compromising the scientific validity of the work. Sometimes 
reading a book will make me want to teach a course in which I could use it as 
a textbook. Other times reading a bookwill make me want to rush out and buy 
more copies so I can give them to friends for their reading enjoyment. Mother 
Nature is the first book that has ever made me want to do both. 
Childhood in America 
Paula S. Fass and Mary Ann Mason, editors 
New York New York University Press, 2000 
Reviewed by Sarah V. Young 
The editors of the text, Childhood in America, have made a superb contribution 
to the area of children's history, a field of research which generally has been 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 243 
Book Reviews 
neglected. Paula S. Fass and Mary Ann Mason draw upon widely diverse 
historical, philosophical, legal, and literary sources for this catholic anthology 
(of 724 pages), and they are to be commended for their ambitious effort. The 
book is divided into eleven parts: childbirth and infancy, boys and girls; 
adolescence and youth; discipline; working children; learning, children without 
parents; the vulnerable child; the child and the state; sexuality, and the child's 
world. 
The authors have chosen to simplify their perspectives rather than dazzle 
us withjargon and lengthyanalyses. Consequently, the text is fun to explore and 
full of surprises. From one page to the next, we encounter fictional children, 
narratives by children about their lives, childrearing advice from European and 
American sages, salient legal and social documents, and excerpts from classic 
treatises on children and the family. Because of its readability and clarity, the 
book will be of interest to laypersons as well as to those who teach and study 
child welfare, family issues, social policy, human growth and development, and 
social history. 
People who yearn for the "good ole days" probably will find many of the 
excerpts in this text to be unsettling. The authors show that historically children 
were valued largely for their economic contributions, ofien subjected to 
conditions of work and servitude that were appalling. By the end of the 
nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, children had become 
emotional assets to their families. More recently, the authors contend, children 
provide primary long-term emotional ties for many adults. As noted in the 
introduction to this text, asking where we have been can help us to know more 
about where we are going in terms of the scope, meaning, and value of 
childhood. 
As a social work educator, I found the sections on working children; 
children without parents; the vulnerable child; and the child and the state to be 
particularly compelling. I would use the selected documents and personal 
accounts in these sections as source material for further research and also as 
timely topics for generating class discussions. Finally, the historical perspec- 
tives of this text should be required reading for those involved in the develop- 
ment offamily and child services. As Mary Ann Mason notes, with the growth 
of the State's involvement in protecting children, we might even see more 
progress toward the notion of legal rights for children apart from those of their 
parents-a move that, for many children, could contribute to a more secure 
childhood in America. 
244 ( Volume 2, Namber 2 
