Raising Citizens in the 'Century of the Child'

Dirk Schumann is a Professor of Modern History at Georg-August-University Göttingen. He was Deputy Director of the German Historical Institute Washington, D.C., from 2002 to 2007 and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Bielefeld. From 1999 to 2002 he taught as Visiting Professor at Emory University. He is the author of Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933: Fight for the Streets and Fear of Civil War (English edition, Berghahn Books, 2009) and has co-edited Life After Death (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Violence and Society after the First World War (fi rst issue of Journal of Modern European History, 2003), and Between Mass Death and Individual Loss: Th e Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany (Berghahn Books, 2008).

• Introduction: Child-Rearing and Citizenship in the Twentieth CenturyPART I: FOUNDATIONSChapter 1. Children and the National InterestSonya Michel (with Eszter Varsa)PART II: NEW BEGINNINGSChapter 2. Children’s Future, Nation’s Future: Race, Citizenship, and the U.S. Children’s BureauKatherine BullardChapter 3. From Reform Pedagogy to War Pedagogy: Education Reform before 1914 and the Mobilization for War in GermanyAndrew DonsonChapter 4. ‘Linked with the welfare of all peoples’: The American Kindergarten, Americanization, and Internationalism in World War IEllen BergPART III: REDEFINING PARENTS' ROLESChapter 5. How Should We Raise Our Son Benjamin? Advice Literature for Mothers in Early Twentieth-Century GermanyCarolyn KayChapter 6. Debunking Mother Love: American Mothers and the Momism Critique in the Mid-Twentieth CenturyRebecca Jo PlantChapter 7. Paternity, Rechristianization, and the Quest for Democracy in Postwar West GermanyTill van RahdenPART IV: PARENTAL RIGHTS AND STATE DEMANDSChapter 8. Who Owns Children? Parents, Children, and the State in the United States SouthCharles A. IsraelChapter 9. ‘Children Betray their Father and Mother’: Collective Education, Nationalism, and Democracy in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1948Tara ZahraChapter 10. Asserting Their ‘Natural Right’: Parents and Public Schooling in Post-1945 GermanyDirk SchumannChapter 11. ‘Special Relationships’: The State, Social Workers, and Abused Children in the United States, 1950-1990Lynne CurryNotes on ContributorsBibliographyIndex

“This is an interesting and ambitious book that seeks to present a comparative perspective on raising children in Germany and in the United States in the twentieth century… [It] brings together a wide and interesting variety of topics on both America and Germany… [and] will be of great use to students and scholars in the fields of both American and European twentieth-century childhood studies and history.”  ·  German Studies Review“This is an inspiring book for any social scientist analyzing childhood…the range of topics that are presented in this way allows insight into many constellations of ‘raising citizens,’ so that we can consider the linkage of child-rearing and education to the development of political systems in many variations. The various chapters taken together convey evidence for the main idea of the book: twentieth-century childhood is a political, and especially, national affair.”  ·  H-Childhood“The strength of this impressive collection is that it brings the family and childhood back in and emphasizes the significance of these subjects for understanding debates over citizenship, the relationship of the public to the private, religion, science, and secularization in the twentieth century. The comparative focus on Germany and the United States works well, and several of the articles are in (at least indirect) conversation with each other in ways that illuminate the comparison.”  ·  Robert G. Moeller, University of California, Irvine