Babysitter: An American History

Notes

221 Notes Introduction 1. H. Smith, “Good Babysitter.” 2. Tsao, “Pied Piper.” 3. Dow, “Finding—and Keeping,” 28–30. 4. Abigail Van Buren, Dear Abby, “What’s That about Underpaid Sitters,” 24 December 1969, San Francisco Chronicle, 27, C3939, box 42, The Peter Tamony Collection, Western Historical Manuscripts Collection, Columbia, MO. 5. Kourany, Gwinn, and Martin, “Adolescent Babysitting,” 939–45. 6. Literary Digest, “Juvenile Jazz,” 31–34; and Groves and Groves, Wholesome Childhood, 9. 7. Business Week, “New Field for Insurance,” 88. Right after the war, “An important women’s air race was almost ruined because four of the pilots were stood up by their sitters,” carped The Saturday Evening Post. Ellison, “Baby Sitting’s Big Business,” 37. Grace Deschamps, “Ex-Marine Lieutenant ‘Boss of Baby Sitters’: Tending Junior Becomes Big Business,” 16 October 1947, San Francisco News, 19, C3939, box 42, The Peter Tamony Collection, Western Historical Manuscripts Collection, Columbia, MO. 8. Fitzpatrick, “Choose a Good Sitter.” 9. Palladino, Teenagers, 50. For a more nuanced view see Mintz, Huck’s Raft, 237, 240. 10. For further discussion, see DeLuzio, Female Adolescence, 1–8. 11. See Nash, American Sweethearts. 12. LeFavre, Mother’s Help, 166. 13. Adams, Nursery-Maids. 14. Tooker, All about the Baby, 53. 15. Barrie, Peter Pan, 19. 16. M. West, Infant Care, 26. 17. For further discussion, see Peiss, Cheap Amusements; Odem, Delinquent Daughters; and Alexander, “Girl Problem.” 18. On motherhood see Douglas and Michaels, Mommy Myth; and Warner, Perfect Madness. 19. Devlin, “Female Juvenile Delinquency,” 83–106. 20. On postwar family life see May, Homeward Bound; and Coontz, Way We Never Were. 21. Mead, “Family Life Is Changing,” 679. 22. “It may be the era will produce, instead, a generation so thoroughly grounded in family-life experience and ideals that the American family will be strengthened.” N. Thompson, “Baby-Sitting Is Growing Up,” 565. 23. Inness, Delinquents and Debutantes, 5. 24. Schrum, Some Wore Bobby Socks. 25. Breines, Young, White, and Miserable, chaps. 3, 4. 26. J. Gilbert, Cycle of Outrage, 15. 27. Kenny, Daughters of Suburbia, 8; and Helford, Fantasy Girls, 8. 28. Casper, “Who’s Minding Our Preschoolers?” 1–89. 29. As one African American mother explained, “I never intended for my children to have to work for any body in the capacity that I worked. Never. And I never allowed my children to do any babysitting or anything of the sort.” Thorton -Dill, “’Put My Children Through,’” 192. 30. Boston Globe, “42 Girls, 3 Boys”; and Sheldon, “Trap and Train,” 42–43, 68. 31. Moore, Baby Sitter’s Guide, 135. 32. Steve Grant, director, Operation Babysitter, 1985. 33. Seymour Kneitel, director, Little LuLu: The Baby Sitter, Famous Studios, 1947. 34. Holt, Good Housekeeping Book, 70. 35. Douglas and Michaels, Mommy Myth. 36. Lavitt, Knopf Collector’s Guide, 278. 37. Hudson, “Femininity and Adolescence,” 40. On girl culture and popular culture, see Driscoll, Girls. 38. McRobbie and Garber, “Girls and Subcultures,” 16; and Palladino, Teenagers , 50. 39. Ellison, “Baby Sitting’s Big Business,” 36. 40. Frank, “Baby Sitter’s Job,” 32. 41. Barclay, “Community Interest in Baby Sitters,” 34. 42. Block, “Code for Sitters,” 38. 43. Kourany, Gwinn, and Martin, “Adolescent Babysitting,” 939. 44. Leslie Margolin has published extensively on child abuse and babysitters. See “Child Abuse by Baby-Sitters”; “Abuse by Adolescent Caregivers.” 45. In his study of slightly more than two thousand high school students in the Puget Sound region of Washington State, sociologist John Robert Warren recently found that not even girls “typically count babysitting as a job.” Warren, “Labor Market Stratification,” 9, 15. 46. On girls’ history and culture see Hunter, Young Ladies Became Girls; Nash, American Sweethearts; Inness, Delinquents and Debutantes, 5; Scheiner, Signifying Female Adolescence; Devlin, Relative Intimacy; Kearney, Girls Make Media; 222 Notes to the Introduction McRobbie, Feminism and Youth Culture; Brumberg, Body Project; Douglas, Where the Girls Are; Breines, Young, White, and Miserable; Alexander, “Girl Problem”; Odem, Delinquent Daughters; Schrum, Some Wore Bobby Socks; Mazzarella and Pecora, Growing Up Girls; and Harris, All about the Girl. Chapter 1 1. Groves and Groves, Wholesome Childhood, 9. 2. On the shift from Victorian to modern notions of child rearing, see Stearns, Anxious Parents, 1–16. 3. On the rise of youth culture in the 1920s, see Schrum, Some Wore Bobby Sox; Fass, Damned and the Beautiful; B. Bailey, Front Porch; and Odem, Delinquent Daughters. 4. Quoted in Weiner, Working Girl, 104. 5. See D. Brown...