Youth, the Family and Society

Steven L. Schlossman. Love and the American Delinquent: The Theory and Practice of "Progressive" Juvenile Justice 1825-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977. 303 pp. Beatrice Gross and Ronald Gross, eds. The Children's Rights Movement: Overcoming the Oppression of Young People. Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1977. 390 pp. Paula S. Fass. The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920's. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. 497 pp. In the spring of 1978 many North American newspaper readers probably noticed a brief report emanating from Boulder, Colorado, that a young man, Tom Hansen, aged twenty-five, had just filed suit against his parents for $350,000 damages for what one lawyer called "malpractice in parenting." Although the details were scanty, it seemed that Hansen blamed his continu- ing psychiatric problems on the fact that his parents "reared him improper- ly," "neglecting his needs for clothes, food, shelter and psychiatric support at critical periods in his life."1 The brief item probably gave pause to many of those who read it, not so much because they anticipated similar suits from their own children, but because the very existence of such a case raises some of the questions fundamental to human social organization. What is the mutual responsibility of children and parents within a family? What is the relationship between child, the family and society as represented by the state's legal system? What are the functions of the family? To what extent is the state empowered or obligated to step in when the family is not perform- ing its duties properly? These are by no means easy questions, and different societies have answered them in their own fashions at different times. Indeed, as Steven Schlossman points out in one of the works here being reviewed, a systematic study of the responses of any group to these issues in fact con- stitutes a partial intellectual history of that group, for they are keys not only to the fundamental assumptions of a society, but also to the actual lives of all of its members

Clothing · Criminology · Damages · Economic Justice · Newspaper · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Child Welfare and Adoption · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse · Law · Psychology

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