Fantasies of Neglect: Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction

From Harriet the Spy to Hugo Cabret, American popular culture is filled with fictional children who journey through cities, unsupervised by adults. Fantasies of Neglect explains how this trope of the self-sufficient urban child originated and considers why it persists, even in the era of stranger danger and helicopter parenting. Drawing from a wide range of films, novels, and sociological texts, Pamela Robertson Wojcik investigates how cities have been central to how Americans imagine the freedom and neglect of children.