Home
Lost Kids

Lost Kids

Vulnerable Children and Youth in Twentieth-Century Canada and the United States

Edited by Mona Gleason, Tamara Myers, Leslie Paris and Veronica Strong-Boag

Published by: University of British Columbia Press

Imprint: UBC Press

272 Pages, 165.00 × 229.00 mm, 8 b&w photos

Hardcover
9780774816861
Published: November 2009

£31.00

Buy

Description
Contents
Authors

Children and youth occupy important social and political roles, even as they sleep in cribs or hang out on street corners. Conceptualized as either harbingers or saboteurs of a bright, secure tomorrow, young people have motivated many adult-driven plans to improve their communities' future. But have all children benefited from these programs and initiatives?

Lost Kids explores the under-representation, demonization, and inadequate care of vulnerable children and connects them to three key determining factors: the role of the state, the shifting context of the family, and the evolution of child protection and juvenile justice. By illuminating the diversity of disadvantaged childhoods, this multifaceted collection rejects the essentialism of the so-called priceless child or hopeless youth.

Lost Kids sheds new light on the experiences of vulnerable children in Canada and the United States.

Introduction / Mona Gleason, Tamara Myers, Leslie Paris, and Veronica Strong-Boag

Part 1: Wanted Kids? Institutions, Fostering, and Adoption

1 A Haven From Racism? Canadians Imagine Interracial Adoption / Karen Dubinsky

2 "Forgotten People of All the Forgotten": Children with Disabilities in English Canada from the Nineteenth Century to the New Millennium / Veronica Strong-Boag

Part 2: The Trouble with Adolescents -- Law, Experts, and Institutions Target Youth

3 Lost in Modernity: "Maladjustment" and the "Modern Youth Problem," English Canada, 1920-50 / Cynthia Comacchio
4 James Dean and Jim Crow: Boys in the Texas Juvenile Justice System in the 1950s / William Bush
5 Nocturnal Disorder and the Curfew Solution: A History of Juvenile Sundown Regulations in Canada / Tamara Myers

Part 3: In Aid of Small Bodies -- Health, Hospitals, and Age in Historical Perspective

6 Learning and Leisure on the Inside: Programs for Sick Children at Sainte-Justine Hospital, 1925-70 / Denyse Baillargeon

7 "Lost Voices, Lost Bodies"? Doctors and the Embodiment of Children and Youth in English Canada from 1900 to the 1940s / Mona Gleason

Part 4: Colliding Visions -- The Politics of Families and Youth

8 What Child Left Behind? US Social Policy and the Hopeless Child / Molly Ladd-Taylor

9 "The Strange Way We Lived": Divorce and American Childhood in the 1970s / Leslie Paris

10 Losing the Child in Child-Centred Legal Processes / Cindy L. Baldassi, Susan B. Boyd, and Fiona Kelly

Part 5: Access and Opportunity at the Beginning of theTwenty-First Century -- Equality Delayed

11 Play Is Not a Frill: Poor Youth Facing the Past, Present, and Future of Public Recreation in Canada / Wendy Frisby, Ted Alexander, and Janna Taylor

12 Deregulating Child Labour in British Columbia / Stephen McBride and John Irwin

Postscript / Neil Sutherland

List of Contributors

Index

The volume editors all teach at the University of British Columbia. Mona Gleason is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Studies, Tamara Myers and Leslie Paris are associate professors in the Department of History, and Veronica Strong-Boag is a professor in the Women's Studies and Educational Studies departments.

Contributors: Ted Alexander, Denyse Baillargeon, Cindy L. Baldassi, Susan B. Boyd, William Bush, Karen Dubinsky, Wendy Frisby, John Irwin, Fiona Kelly, Molly Ladd-Taylor, Stephen McBride, Janna Taylor, Neil Sutherland