Raising Citizens in the Century of the Child: The United States and German Central Europe in Comparative Perspective (review)

This is an interesting and ambitious book that seeks to present a comparative perspective on raising children in Germany and in the United States in the twentieth century. In the introductory chapter, Dick Schumann usefully contextualizes the subject by examining the concept of citizenship and by providing an overview of the historical developments in welfare and education in Germany and the United States in the twentieth century. However, a more explicit statement of the aims of the book would have been useful at the start: in particular, a discussion of why these two cases were selected for comparison.

School education was concerned not only with the dissemination of knowledge, but also with the means of inculcating citizenship values in pupils that would prepare them for their future as members of their respective nations. In the twentieth century—declared by the Swedish feminist writer and reformer Ellen Key to be “the century of the child”—bringing up children signified, according to Schumann, “raising citizens in a much more systematic and comprehensive way than before” (2). Reform movements effected policies on child-rearing, welfare, and education, as well as citizenship rights, which were expanded during the course of the twentieth century.

Sonja Michel and Eszter Varsa establish the historical context for the book by discussing the connections between children’s education and the national interest in America and Europe in the nineteenth century. While the scope of their essay is perhaps too ambitious, they show how state involvement in the formerly private sphere of the family had become commonplace by the beginning of the twentieth century. Katherine Bullard’s excellent essay analyzes the work of the US Children’s Bureau, which was established in 1912. Bullard shows how the concept of social citizenship in the U.S.A. was founded upon a clear distinction between whites and nonwhites, and concludes that “instituting care for children was based on the model, white, future citizen” (64). Andrew Donson’s essay treats the subject of pedagogy in Germany before and during World War I. Donson looks at “free composition” work and argues that nationalism and militarism were commonplace attitudes among teachers and pupils, though the “the push for progressive reform did not end with the introduction of war pedagogy” (80).

Ellen Berg’s essay treats the subject of kindergartens in America and the extent to which they inculcated American or international values. Her work shows how kindergartens provided an opportunity “to envisage an idealized United States,” but also “looked beyond national borders” toward “world citizenship” and not merely American citizenship (97–98). Carolyn Kay examines the proliferation of child-rearing advice in Wilhelmine Germany and its impact upon parenting. Speaking of “the predominant values of bourgeois culture” (118), she shows how doctors and pedagogues produced a variety of advice books that ultimately underlined the centrality of middle-class culture and the values of the middle-class family in imperial Germany. Furthermore, she draws attention to a conflict of opinion among those experts who advocated strict disciplining and those who called for a more liberal approach toward child-rearing.

Rebecca Plant’s essay considers concepts of motherhood in mid-twentieth-century America. In particular, she discusses a cultural climate in the 1940s and 1950s that “repudiated sentimental ideals of motherhood” (135). In his essay, Till van Rahden examines the concept of “democratic fatherhood” in West Germany in the 1950s, discussing the shift away from patriarchal authority in the family towards a greater democratization of the family. Charles Israel looks at the relationship between parents, children, and the state in the American South. He discusses conflicts surrounding moral and religious education and concludes that “the persevering rhetorical power of parenthood should never be underestimated” (181). Tahra Zahra writes about the relationship between nationalism and education in the Bohemian lands from 1900 to 1948, demonstrating...