The Conference Circuit

The history of children and youth is alive and well represented on the conference and symposium circuit. This section of the "Newsletter" offers a sample of recent events. The editors hope to make these reports a permanent feature of the "Newsletter." We encourage all SHCY members to send us accounts, observations, critiques, or enthusiastic praise of the meetings you attend from September to January, the publication date for the next issue.

Berkeley Symposium

Paula S. Fass, Margaret Byrne Professor of History at the University of California - Berkeley and Vice President and President-Elect of the Society for the History of Children and Youth, describes a special symposium on childhood that was held at Berkeley in May 9-11, 2005. The Center for Child and Youth Policy sponsored the symposium between graduate students at Berkeley and graduate students at the University of Linkoping in Sweden.

"Bengt Sandin and I took the initiative to bring our students together to learn from each other across cultural lines. We matched students according to their interests. Students who were matched up were asked to exchange papers in advance, then the contingent from Sweden came to Berkeley and the students spent time together exchanging their views, their perspectives and their understanding of how we do children's history and sociology. We all met together over dinner, with extra invited Berkeley faculty. The last day, everyone met together and the groups (six in all), reported about what they had learned from each other about different cultural contexts of childhood, different methodologies employed in the two university cultures, and how a comparative perspective helped them better to understand their own work. It was wonderful. One of the most exciting and stimulating events I have ever attended."

Laura Mihailoff, one of the Berkeley participants provides a student's perspective on the Berkeley Symposium:

"The international format of the symposium raised questions about just how much of children's studies is affected by national exceptionalism versus fundamentally universal commonalities and experiences regarding childhood and adolescence. The panel debated just how much of a role the United States' unique historical formation had on American children's experiences. We discovered that, in most cases, Sweden and the United States had more in common than first appeared and that, indeed, we could speak of universal experiences in childhood that traversed national borders."

"Moreover, we found that, both in Sweden and the United States, one of the most important topics of discussion in Childhood Studies had to do with the child in relationship with the state. Both American and Swedish scholars are wrestling with the impact of the state on children's rights and the private lives of children and their parents. We concluded that, allthough American and Swedish scholars try to maintain objectivity in our studies, we come to our topics from very specific cultural and political points of views, affecting our approach and methodology. Influenced by the current political debates about the welfare state in our own countries and by the professional requirements of our given disciplines, we found that we differed in our approach to government interference/assistance in children's lives and in our use of broader theoretical debates and philosophical constructions in framing our projects."

Laura Mihailoff will be awarded her Ph.D. from UC-Berkeley in the Fall of 2005, with a dissertation titled "Protecting Our Children: A History of the California Youth Authority and Juvenile Justice, 1938-1968."

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Childhood at American Association of the History of Medicine

Compiled by Kathleen W. Jones, co-editor of the "Newsletter" and Associate Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies at Virginia Tech.

The programs for annual meetings of the American Association of the History of Medicine (AAHM) often contain full sessions devoted to the history of children's health, childhood diseases, and pediatric medical practice. Not so at this year's meeting held in Birmingham, AL, April 7-10, 2005. This year, papers about children and youth were integrated into sessions that focused on areas of general interest to the field. This shift, although undoubtedly not a permanent one, nonetheless marks a new developmental stage in the history of childhood. The stories of children and youth have much to contribute to our overall understanding of the history of medicine.

"History of medicine" is, perhaps, a misnomer for an organization that routinely hosts presentations on the experience and meaning of disease, the definition of health, the expression of public health concerns, and the role of scientific research, along with studies of the practice and the intellectual foundations of clinical medicine. The papers presented at this year's conference reflect this broad construction of the field.

Richard A. Meckel's essay, "Politics, Policy, and the Measuring of Child Health," focused on the family health survey conducted by the Public Health Service and the Milbank Memorial Fund in 1933 at the height of the economic depression. The survey represented the result of a debate over the impact of the depression on children's health. When statistics seemed to indicate that infant and child mortality was declining even in the face of economic disaster, the Children's Bureau claimed that poverty produced malnourished children, a better index of "child health" than mortality rates. The Hoover administration blamed malnutrition on ill-informed parents, and the Journal of the American Medical Association suggested that the simpler lifestyle necessitated by economic need actually contributed to the overall health of children. The Milbank survey confirmed the arguments of the Children's Bureau, but the findings did not lead to support for national health insurance or a focus on the effects of long-term poverty. Rather the Roosevelt administration used these findings to direct attention to the immediate results of unemployment and led supporters to represent the federal unemployment insurance program as a child health measure. Meckel's paper was presented as part of a panel on "medical polity."

Measuring children was the subject of a second paper, this time as part of "The Body Ethic," a panel on human experimentation. Paul Lombardo, a lawyer and historian of eugenics, described " 'Measuring the Negroes': Eugenic Anthropometry at the Tuskegee Institute, 1932-1944." Those measured were more than 800 children, aged seven to nineteen. Through annual measurements of these children, American eugenists hoped to identify the anatomical traits peculiar to African Americans. The findings lent support to those who thought interracial mixing was biologically dangerous.

Finally Robin Rohrer, of Seton Hill University, presented "The Development of Supportive Care in the Treatment of Children with Cancer, 1930 to the Present," in a panel on "Refining the Medical Gaze," that also included papers on public health and the Love Canal Disaster, and obstetrical education in the early twentieth century. Rohrer traced the changing relationship between treatment and palliative care and concluded that the very positive chance of survival of child cancer patients is related to the medical and psychosocial supportive care they receive. Her paper drew on oral histories of clinicians and support teams from the National Cancer Institute.

SHCY members interested in any aspect of child health should consider submitting an abstract to this organization; the 2006 conference will be in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Individual paper submissions are welcome, as are full panels. The AAHM website is: http://www.histmed.org

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Child Psychology and Child Development -- Two Conferences

Historians of childhood take note! Papers presented at two recent conferences should interest you. In April the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) met in Atlanta. Emily Cahan chaired an invited symposium on "Science Serves the Child? Historical and Policy Perspectives." Roblyn Rawlins spoke on historically changing views of early intellectual development in children, Julia Grant discussed the "boy" problem and special education, and Stephen Woolworth addressed the professional turf wards in child study and special education in the early 20th century. Posters included a portrait of Florence Goodenough, a pioneer in child development research and a picture of recent trends in child development research. The SRCD has a standing committee on History and welcomes contributions from historians related to children, child psychology, public policy, or child welfare, to name just a few topics of interest. The next meeting will be in April, 2007 in Boston.

Cheiron, the international association for the history of the social and behavioral sciences met in June at Berkeley. Matthew Millikan presented a paper on W.I. Thomas and the "problem of the individual," Rachel Cabasaan portrayed the life and work of Millicent Shinn, and Emily Cahan discussed science, practice, and gender roles in early child psychology. Historians of childhood should feel free to submit their work to Cheiron as well. The next meeting will be in June, 2006 at Sarah Lawrence College.