Suchergebnisse

This essay examines print literature targeting American mothers of infants from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1950s, analyzing text excerpts from "baby books" spanning six decades and providing background illuminating those texts and their authors. Books authored by Benjamin Spock, Arnold Gesell, and John B. Watson are reviewed, along with work of less well-known but widely read authors Emmett Holt, Herman Bundesen, and others. Changes in recommended feeding and toilet-training practices, sleeping arrangements, and behavioral expectations of babies, as well as the variation in style and tone of the experts' advice are traced through the period studied. Parent advice publications grew in popularity as changing family structures removed traditional sources of information and support for mothers, and the public came to highly regard scientific information and seek expert guidance in aspects of their lives previously governed by traditional wisdom. Included are publications of the federal Children's Bureau and discussion of that agency's role in advising parents through printed literature. Findings from this review assert that despite the advice-givers' presentation of their recommendations as universal and scientific, their writings more accurately serve as a chronicle of changing patterns of beliefs and attitudes of middle-class society rather than an empirical body of knowledge about infant growth and development.

The aim of this study is to identify the core issues and challenges that divorced Saudi women are facing in Saudi Arabia. A qualitative survey was administered to explore current issues faced by divorced Saudi women living in Saudi Arabia. Findings revealed a multitude of issues currently faced by divorced Saudi women linked to social, economic, psychological, and legal challenges. The discussion of core themes derived from the analysis provides an in-depth picture of challenges faced by divorced Saudi women. This research builds on the growing body of knowledge concerning the challenges of divorced Saudi women in contemporary society.

This article explores concubinage, a widespread form of quasi-marriage in Qing China (1644–1911), and its relationship with motherhood and social mobility. By examining legal codes and court records, this research challenges the academic paradigm, mainly based on literati writings, that portrays concubines as reproductive tools for their husband-masters and their husband-masters' wives. It shows that bearing or raising sons or daughters helped concubines achieve upward social mobility recognized and protected by law and that motherhood remained the major source of power and security for concubines in the Qing. After household divisions, concubine-mothers gained lifelong custodial rights of property, which formally consolidated concubine-mothers' upward mobility from daughters or widows in lower-class families to matriarchs in well-to-do households.

By the late 1920s, the belief that US men were being exploited by the so-called gold diggers seeking advantageous divorces was widespread. Organizations like the Alimony Payers' Protective Association and the Alimony Reform League were created to combat the perceived problem of gold digging ex-wives. Several states considered legislation to restrict alimony payments. Yet, the overall instances of alimony were relatively rare. This article explains the rise of anti-alimony sentiment during the late 1920s through an examination of the gold digger trope. Anti-alimony agitation represented a response to the changes in women's roles and sexual norms in the 1920s.