Childhood, Divorce, and Emotions: Danish Custody and Visitation Rights Battles in the 1920s

Employing a history of emotions perspective, this article examines Danish custody and visitation rights cases in 1920s Copenhagen. By tracing the “emotional practices” of parents, children, and other people involved in the familial conflicts, the article shows the importance of emotions as a means of negotiation for everyone involved. Emotional practices both reflected specific childhood ideals and helped delineate the boundaries of appropriate parental behavior in highly gendered ways. In this way, emotions functioned as “operators” in a contentious social field, serving to adjust as well as to consolidate specific social identities and hierarchies.