Review by Choice Review
Grant offers a comprehensive history of American ideas about mothering and child care. The focus, as the title indicates, is on an increasing tendency to rely on professionals and experts for advice on how to raise children. Mothering and child rearing became problematic and the subject of widespread discussion even in the early 19th century. As modernization increasingly isolated the nuclear family from community and family ties and traditions, the issue became more prominent. In the 1920s, and especially in the 1950s, professional advice on proper mothering, culminating with Dr. Spock's "baby book," became ubiquitous. Raising Baby illuminates many large and important trends in American society--the emergence of professionalism, especially the "helping professions," the displacement of folk wisdom and tradition by "scientific" expertise, and the growth of a "therapeutic" culture. Grant's range and use of secondary sources is impressive. She has also unearthed extensive primary sources that reveal how individual mothers responded to the conflicting advice promulgated by various authorities and experts. On the negative side, Raising Baby is loosely structured, repetitious, does not come to any dramatic or unexpected conclusions, and is a generally slow read. Best suited to those who already have a substantial interest in this area of history Upper-division undergraduates and above. K. Blaser; Wayne State College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
