Child Protection in America

A History

John E.B. Myers

• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9798891553569
• Edition: 0
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

Child abuse and neglect are tragically common. Each year, more than 1, 000 American children die due to maltreatment. Thousands more suffer physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect. Across the country, every community has a system of government-operated and funded child protective services (CPS). But given that social workers of CPS have the authority to remove children from unsafe parents, it is no surprise that CPS is controversial. Does CPS protect children? Does CPS do more good than harm? Is CPS fundamentally racist, as some critics argue? Should CPS be abolished? To answer these questions, it is essential to understand the origins of child protection in America. How did we arrive at the child protection system in place today? This book traces the history of child protection from colonial times to the present and provides the most in-depth analysis ever published of the origins of child protection.

Table of contents

• Child Protection in America
• About the Author
• Dedication
• Copyright Information ©
• Acknowledgment
• Chapter 1 Introduction and Approach to the Subject
• Chapter 2 The Colonial Period from 1600 to 1700: The Era Before Institutional Care
• Chapter 3 The Rise of Institutional Care: 1700 to 1853
• Chapter 4 Charles Loring Brace and the New York Children’s Aid Society
• Chapter 5 The Children’s Progressive Era
• Chapter 6 Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
• Chapter 7 1900 to 1962—The Gradual Transformation from Nongovernmental to Government Child Protection
• Chapter 8 Child Protection from 1962 to 2000
• Chapter 9 Child Sexual Abuse
• Chapter 10 A Twenty-First Century Call to Abolish CPS Concluding Thoughts