Adult Supervision Required

MARKELLA B. RUTHERFORD is an associate professor of sociology at Wellesley College.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1          Take It with a Grain of Salt: How Parents Encounter Experts and Advice2          Seen and Heard: Children’s Growing Freedom at Home3          Keeping Tabs on Kids: Children’s Shrinking Public Autonomy4          Mixed Messages about Responsibility: Children’s Duties and the Work of Parenting5          Psychology’s Child: Emotional Autonomy and the Privatization of the Self6          ConclusionAppendix AAppendix BNotesBibliographyIndex

"Markella Rutherford provides a skillful sociological analysis of the changing dynamics of parenting in the U.S. context, demonstrating how the study of parenting can inform key social questions and problems in novel ways." - Daniel Thomas Cook (Department of Childhood Studies, Rutgers University-Camden) "Rutherford surveys changes in the culture of parenting in the U.S. over the course of the 20th century by analyzing the concerns of parents together with advice available to them in popular magazines between 1910 and 2009. She further supplements this analysis with intensive, open-ended interviews of 30 contemporary parents. Her focus is on supervision, freedom, and constraint. Drawing on relevant sociological theory, the author provides an interesting analysis of changing U.S. cultural norms in an important area of life. Recommended." (Choice) "Markella Rutherford provides a skillful sociological analysis of the changing dynamics of parenting in the U.S. context, demonstrating how the study of parenting can inform key social questions and problems in novel ways." - Daniel Thomas Cook (Department of Childhood Studies, Rutgers University-Camden) "Rutherford surveys changes in the culture of parenting in the U.S. over the course of the 20th century by analyzing the concerns of parents together with advice available to them in popular magazines between 1910 and 2009. She further supplements this analysis with intensive, open-ended interviews of 30 contemporary parents. Her focus is on supervision, freedom, and constraint. Drawing on relevant sociological theory, the author provides an interesting analysis of changing U.S. cultural norms in an important area of life. Recommended." (Choice)