Fostering on the farm : child placement in the rural Midwest /

Birk (Univ. of Texas Rio Grande Valley) describes the agrarian myth that gripped reformers who directed their efforts at placing dependent children on farms, believing in wholesome farmers' good influence on poor neglected city children. Her research centers on state institutions' placement of children on midwestern farms. Reformers faulted institutions for being expensive and not preparing children for life's struggles, demanding their placement in farm families as soon as they arrived at the institutions. Placing out of children was done without adequate supervision and resulted in closing institutions and declining numbers of children entering them, due to parents' opposition to placing out. From the 1870s to the 1910s, children were overworked, abused, and denied proper schooling on remote farms. The children were not part of farmers' families and were not compensated for their hard work. Farms' charms waned during the Progressive Era as reformers emphasized schooling and closer supervision, and agricultural employment shrank. Children were placed in paid foster homes in towns accessible to social workers, thus initiating the future foster care system. Birk forcefully describes the power of ideology and its tragic consequences, using institution records, newspapers, and reformers' publications. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --Nurith Zmora, Hamline University