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Historical interest in the Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, founded in the late nineteenth century, has seldom extended beyond the excitement of their early crusading years.This article, based on an analysis of the records of the one surviving Australian branch of the Society, focuses instead on the inter-war era, showing how it found a role as the disciplinary wing of a broad-based, conservative, philanthropic alliance which identified child welfare as central to the nation-building process.Its definition of good parenting was, however, a gendered one, privileging husbands at the expense of their wives and ignoring economic failure as a cause of children's distress.The historiography of the Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (SPCC) tends to focus on their early 'heroic' period, the last quarter of the nineteenth century when campaigners used the three-pronged approach of 'legislative action, wrenching propaganda and organisational growth', to define and enforce a new standard of acceptable/idealised childhood.[1]By this process both the New York SPCC, founded in 1875, and the more famous National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), which consolidated the work of 31 English committees under one umbrella in 1889, had distinguished themselves from earlier child-saving movements, successfully arguing for a definition of child cruelty which was independent of morality and social class.In the first half of the twentieth century, when surviving societies around the world settled into what was essentially a disciplinary role, historians tend to lose interest, returning only briefly to seek to explain why the SPCCs were caught short by the 'rediscovery' of child abuse in the post-World War Two years.In the intervening period, historians agree, the focus of SPCC investigations shifted from cruelty to

Alliance · Criminology · Cruelty · Discipline · Distress · Duty · Political science · Sociology · Welfare · Australian History and Society · Canadian Identity and History · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Psychology

• Returning to our roots

  Sandra Bern, Sandra Berns•Australian Feminist Law Journal•2002

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• Yesterday's Men

  Gary Clapton•The British Journal of Social Work•2009

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• The Disenchantment of the Home

  Kerreen Reiger•The Disenchantment of the Home•1986

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• Childbearers as rights-bearers

  Marilyn Lake•Women s History Review•1999

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• The Social History of Social Policy

  Open Access•Jane Lewis•Journal of Social Policy•1980

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