Qual Sociol (2009) 32:337353

DOI 10.1007/s11133-009-9136-2

Childrens Autonomy and Responsibility: An Analysis

of Childrearing Advice

Markella B. Rutherford

Published online: 30 July 2009

# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009

Abstract Employing qualitative content analysis of 300 childrearing advice articles from
Parents magazine, this paper maps historical changes in the depiction of parental authority
and childrens autonomy. This popular text reveals increased autonomy for children in their
private self-expression, especially in regard to activities of daily living, personal
appearance, and defiance of parents. However, the magazine also portrays childrens
diminished public autonomy as revealed through increasingly restricted freedom of
movement and substantially delayed acceptance of meaningful responsibilities. An
appreciation of popular childrearing advice as a measure of individualistic cultural values
thus requires an understanding of larger social changes that shift attention from public
participation toward private self-expression.

Keywords Individualism . Personal autonomy . Parenting advice . Children and youth

Introduction

Individualism has long been recognized as a core American value, and in recent decades
scholars have pointed toward an intensification of individualism and the expansion of its
manifestations (Bellah et al. 1996; Eliasoph 2002; Kateb 1992; Lewis 2001; Putnam 2000;
Stevens 2001; Wolfe 2001). During the twentieth century, the popular conception of
individualism shifted from an ideal of public interactionespecially regarding economics and
politicsto an ideal affecting private life and encompassing matters of lifestyle and self-
expression (Friedman 1990). Our conception of individuality today is closely linked with
ideas of personal autonomythe ability to freely choose who we will be and what we will do
as individualsand a therapeutic ethos that values self-expression and emotional authenticity
(Hochschild 2003).
The current importance of individualism as an ideal of self-expression can be seen quite
starkly in the therapeutic arena of psychological and interpersonal advice: in general, a

M. B. Rutherford (*)
Department of Sociology, Wellesley College, 106 Central St., Wellesley, MA 02481, USA
e-mail: mrutherf@wellesley.edu
338 Qual Sociol (2009) 32:337353

contemporary therapeutic worldview alleges that individuals are healthiest when they are able
to make their own life choices free from all external demands (Bellah et al. 1996; Nolan 1998;
Rice 2002). This therapeutic outlook is apparent in many expert advice manuals for
childrearing. Widely popular in the modern era (Hardyment 2007; Hulbert 2003), these guides
have increasingly emphasized the desirability of offering children options. Dr. Spock, one of
the first great childrearing experts advised against giving small children choices: Dont say,
Do you want to?; just do whats necessary. Its too easy to fall into the habit of saying to a
small child, Do you want to sit down and have your lunch?It is better not to give him a
choice (Spock 1945). However, as the prevailing disciplinary preferences became more
permissive during the twentieth century, it came to be seen as crucial that parents not damage
childrens vulnerable psyches by forcing them to do anything against their will (Stearns 2003).
Instead, experts began encouraging parents to offer children options and to reason with them,
allowing them to choose for themselves how to behave. The necessity that children be taught
to make good choices reflects the reality of what Giddens calls a post-traditional context, in
which we have no choice but to choose how to be and how to act (Giddens 1994).
Indeed, faced as they are with the demands of contemporary consumerism, one can see why
children must be trained in choosing (Schor 2003). Individual autonomy of choice is not
merely a free-floating ideology of how we ought to live our lives, it is built into social
institutions and structures in such a way that quite often we must choose, whether we want to
or not. Today, only the most extreme Luddite can avoid being constantly bombarded with
advertisements sellingwell, choice. From burgers to jeans, wireless service to car insurance,
the primary feature advertisers are pushing is the sheer range of options available. Barry
Schwartz, a psychologist, argues that consumers are overwhelmed by choices to the extreme
that it actually becomes detrimental to their mental health (Schwartz 2004). Yet, it seems that
consumers are constantly demanding more choice, claiming that it is un-American and a
violation of basic rights to disallow any potential consumer option. Children are increasingly
a target market for much of this consumer choice (Schor 2004; Seiter 1993)
Given the weight of cultural ideologies of autonomy and choice, parents today must weigh
questions of personal autonomy and supra-individual authority on two distinct fronts: they must
navigate both questions of how much autonomy they themselves have as parents in making
childrearing decisions as well as questions regarding how to balance parental authority with
childrens autonomy. In other words, parents grapple with issues of authority and autonomy
both in trying to be the right kind of parents and in trying to form the right kind of child. There
are many sources of information and social support that parents turn to in these endeavors,
including family members, friends, neighbors, doctors, teachers, and other parents, as well as
broadcast media, online communities, childrearing advice books, and parenting magazines.
In this analysis, I examine the advice given to parents by both experts and other parents
in Parents magazine. I draw on several previous studies of expert parenting advice (Apple
2006; Bigner and Yang 1996; Hardyment 2007; Hulbert 2003; Rankin 2005; Sanson and
Wise 2001; Stearns 2003), but given an underlying interest in the balance between expert
authority and individual autonomy, I am also seeking to interrogate the intersection of lay
advice with expert opinion in the popular medium of a parenting magazine. First published
in 1926, Parents is the longest-running continuously published1 popular magazine targeted
to American parents and is currently the best-selling magazine in its category, with a

1
Although the magazine has been continuously published since 1926, it has been published under 7 different
titles: Children: The Magazine for Parents (19261929), Children: The Parents Magazine (1929), The Parents
Magazine (19291965), Parents Magazine and Better Homemaking (19661969), Parents Magazine and
Better Family Living (19691977), Parents Magazine (19771978), and Parents (1979present).
Qual Sociol (2009) 32:337353 339

circulation of 2.2 million copies (Parents Media Kit 2006). Although a popular magazine
cannot tell us what parents actually believe or do in their everyday childrearing practices, it
does reflect general trends over time in widely-recognized cultural ideals of family life and
parenting and may even help to shape cultural changes from one generation to the next
(Hays 1996; Quirke 2006). I am specifically asking how these products of popular culture
reflect and/or shape deeper cultural ideals of individualism and personal autonomy, as
revealed in how they present children as autonomous choosers or as requiring socialization
to become autonomous individuals. Before describing the method and findings of the
present study, I will briefly summarize the twentieth-century history of childrearing
ideologies and methods that have helped to shape the content of parenting magazines.

A brief history of childrearing ideologies and methods

As the twentieth century dawned, childrearing, like many other social concerns in the
Western world, was swept up in an enthusiasm for science and a confidence that scientific
approaches could provide answers to social problems. In this progressive era there were
organized campaigns for scientific everything, including medicine, management, public
administration, housekeeping, childrearing, and social work (Ehrenreich and English 2005;
Wrigley 1989). Middle-class mothers, in particular, joined their new social role as domestic
guardians with the enthusiasm for scientifically-guided practices, seeking evidence of the
best childrearing patterns in order to perfect themselves and their children (Dorey 1999;
Hardyment 2007). Faced with the transformations brought on by industrialization,
urbanization, rapid technological change, and cultural shifts in the maternal role, modern
mothers felt that the information handed down by more traditional female networks was
insufficient to cope with the realities of modern life (Apple 2006). They turned instead to
science to provide answers to their questions. During the first two decades of the twentieth
century, mothers banded together to form mothers movements that advocated for scientific
study of children and childrearing methods and organized lectures by new childrearing
experts (Ehrenreich and English 2005).
Much of the science of childrearing during the earliest years of the twentieth century was
dominated by behaviorism. This approach, expounded by such medical experts as
Dr. Winfield Hall, Dr. Luther Emmett Holt, and Dr. John B. Watson, viewed children as
needing training and strict routines to socialize them into full humanity (Apple 2006;
Hardyment 2007; Hays 1996; Hulbert 2003). Ehrenreich and English (2005) connect the
dominance of the behaviorist childrearing method in the early twentieth century with the
necessity of regularity for industrial workers. Even though child development psychology
emerged alongside a social movement for the liberation of children from industrial life, the
behaviorist science of childrearing also produced a sense that a childs development could
be controlled so as to shape him early into a member of industrial society. The goal was
industrial mandisciplined, efficient, precisewhether it was his lot to be an industrial
laborer, a corporate leader, or another expert himself. The key to producing such a man was
regularity (Ehrenreich and English 2005).
As the economic importance of disciplined industrial producers gave way mid-century to
the centrality of consumers, the science of childrearing shifted as well toward more
permissive recommendations. Influenced by Piagets theory of cognitive development,
popular experts such as T. Berry Brazelton and Penelope Leach discarded the previous
image of children as unformed creatures in need of training, substituting one of children as
intuitive and exploratory beings whose impulses and wants were indicative of their
340 Qual Sociol (2009) 32:337353

developmental needs and critical to the fulfillment of their future potential (Hardyment
2007). The strict routines and imposing discipline of earlier decades were discarded, and
parents were advised instead to recognize the individuality of each child and to follow the
childs lead, responding to her developmental readiness. As Gary Cross points out, this
general shift toward a more permissive philosophy was not only encouraged by doctors and
developmental experts, but by advertisers as well, who cleverly nudged parents to trust
childrens natural inclinations as authoritative (Cross 2004a; Cross 2004b).
An additional trend influencing parenting practices in the twentieth-century was the
general intensification of parenting work. As children became idealized as sacred cultural
icons, the work of parentingmost especially motheringbecame increasingly demanding
in terms of time, expense, and emotional involvement. (Hays 1996; Marshall 1991; Sayer et
al. 2004; Zelizer 1985). Several observers in the US, UK, and Canada note the twentieth-
century shift in concern from childrens bodies to their minds: even as greater security
about childrens physical well-being eased some of the demands of sanitation and strict
physical control, a growing preoccupation with cognitive development required ever-
greater investments of parents time and energies to stimulate children to their full potential
(Hardyment 2007; Quirke 2006; Urwin and Sharland 1992; Wrigley 1989). Middle-class
familiesthe primary audience for Parentsare especially likely to feel the demands to
stimulate their childrens intellectual and educational achievements in order to pass on their
economic and cultural status to their offspring. Annette Lareaus (2003) work describes the
intensification of parenting in middle-class families through the practice of what she calls
concerted cultivation that keeps children busy participating in sports, music, and play
groups and parents busy organizing and getting children to and from their many activities.
However, Sharon Hays (1996) describes the twentieth-century ideology of intensive
motherhoodchild-centered, labor-intensive, time-consuming, emotionally absorbing,
expert-guided, and expensive parentingas one shared by working-class, middle-class,
and professional-class mothers.

Data and methods

Parents magazine is full of both expert and lay advice about what children need and want
and about how parents can be effective in meeting these needs. The aim of my analysis is to
decipher how the increasing importance of the American cultural ideals of individualism
and personal autonomy may appear in childrearing advice as part of those assumed needs.
Are children increasingly depicted in Parents as having and exercising autonomy in various
aspects of their lives? Is a parents responsibility increasingly assumed to include
socialization of children to become autonomous individuals? Do articles in Parents show
a growing emphasis that children need opportunities to exercise their own autonomy, are
moral agents capable of making their own choices, or should be actively involved in
making decisions about their lives?
Although popular magazines are a kind of measure of how general cultural ideals change
over time, they are neither a proxy for parents or childrens actual behaviors nor
representative of childrearing ideals across all social classes and ethnic groups. However, if
we accept this popular medium as one expression of dominant middle-class ideals, then it is
a useful measure of the larger cultural images of childhood and parenting. Furthermore,
there is evidence that exposure to popular printed childcare advicesuch as that in Parentsis
not limited to the middle class (Clarke-Stewart 1978). In fact, the reported median household
income of readers in 2007 ($54,500) was only slightly higher than the national median
Qual Sociol (2009) 32:337353 341

household income ($50,233) and essentially identical to the median household income of
non-Hispanic white households ($54,920) (Parents Media Kit 2006; US Census Bureau
2008). To be sure, a magazine is no exact measure for the childrearing ideas or behaviors of
real American parents of any class, and Parents may intentionally seek to cultivate its appeal
primarily for a target audience of middle-class families; nonetheless, Parents is an available
and familiar cultural product to many parents of varying economic backgrounds and presents
them with recognizable cultural ideals of childhood and parenting.
My analysis of Parents is based on a systematic random sample of 34 issues covering the
years 1929 to 2006. I sampled two issues per year at five-year intervals beginning in 1931
(the months of March and September were chosen using a random numbers table). Due to
limited availability of the earliest issues of the magazine, the March and September issues
from 1929the first year available in the Boston Public Library collectionwere used in
place of 1926. From this sample of issues, all advice columns were analyzed. Advice
columns have varied some over time, but there have consistently been between three and six
monthly advice columns in the magazinesome of these are Q & A columns in which
reader-submitted questions are answered by experts (such as physicians, psychologists, or
etiquette guides); some are lay advice columns in which readers offer practical suggestions,
answers to published questions, or examples of how they solved their own problems
(examples include Everyday Problems, Pointers for Parents, and It Worked for Me). In
addition to advice columns, all editorial items were read and those that included advice on
child development, discipline, parenting methods, and family relationships were purposively
selected for analysis. For example, although columns with recipes were not selected, articles
about teaching table manners or the role of meals in family life, such as The Many
Meanings of Food (Galdston 1976) and Dont Make Your Child a Fussy Eater (Russoto
1956) were selected for analysis. While features on back-to-school fashion that simply
described clothing styles were not selected, articles such as Clashing over Clothes: Youre
Going to Wear That?! (Elkind 1991) were included for analysis. This yielded a data set of
300 texts, in which I treat each column or article as a single text. Analysis of texts was
assisted by the use of MAXqda, a qualitative analysis software package.
My working hypothesis in approaching this analysis was that Parents magazine would
include increasingly frequent references to childrens autonomy and choices in the second half
of the twentieth century. In order test this hypothesis, I coded articles for a variety of
references to childrens autonomy, using a set of categories that emerged from the data
through the process of coding, following procedures based in part on the grounded theory
method (Strauss and Corbin 1997). By beginning with open coding of the texts, looking for
instances in which children were described as having or needing opportunities to make
choices and exert their own will, I identified a number of topics in which discussions of
childrens autonomy and parental authority appeared. As I continued coding additional texts,
these topics coalesced into seven categories that tended to reappear across time (see Table 1).
In coding texts, these categories were not treated as mutually exclusive. For example, an
advice column included a readers question about her toddlers difficult eating habits; the
experts answer discussed both childrens choices about what to eat and childrens testing of
limits set by parents, summing up: Two-year-olds are hardwired to test limits, especially rules
concerning what and when to eat (Behavior Q & A 2001).2 This advice scenario was coded
as pertaining both to activities of daily living and to challenging parental authority. In another

2
Due to the digital conversion to plain text required by qualitative analysis software, page numbers for direct
quotations from the magazine texts are unavailable. However, inclusive page numbers for all magazine
articles are included in the full bibliographic references at the end of the paper.
342 Qual Sociol (2009) 32:337353

Table 1 Codes for Childrens Autonomy

Form of Autonomy Description

Activities of Daily Living
Leisure Activities and Peer
Relationships
Freedom of Movement
Responsibilities and Aspirations
Emotional Expression and
Challenging Parental Authority
Consumption and Entertainment
Media
Sexuality
choosing what/when/how to eat; taking care of toileting and hygiene
on own; choosing what to wear and dressing self; matters of
grooming and personal appearance
choosing which kinds of activities to be involved in, organizing
activities with other children; managing peer and sibling
relationships
going places without parents; being in public spaces w/out adult
supervision
chores or tasks under childrens control that they are responsible for;
being in charge of own homework; having spaces under their
control (e.g., bedrooms, playgrounds, etc.); making choices about
education, career path, future goals, etc.
childrens ideas and thoughts are allowed to be distinct from and may
differ from adults; children encouraged to express feelings;
refusing, arguing, negotiating, testing boundaries, disobedience,
rebellion, etc.
having spending money or allowances; making consumer decisions;
choosing TV and movie viewing, internet usage, video games
making own decisions about sexual expression and practice

example, a reader submitted her problem and solution: When our son reached the age of
twelve he began to find fault with the clothing we selected for him, so we decided to let him
go shopping alone.We introduced him to the clerk in the boys department and asked her to
O.K. his charges.He usually makes a good choice, and has become quite a bargain hunter
(Childhood and teenage problems 1941). This was coded as pertaining to the sons autonomy
in matters of how to dress (activities of daily living), what to buy (consumption), and going
shopping alone (freedom of movement). The objective of coding was not to simply count the
number of times each category appeared; rather, through coding I sought to identify texts that
could be qualitatively compared in order to understand both the different forms of childrens
autonomy and how representations of childrens autonomy have changed over time.

Findings

In response to the hypothesis that evidence of autonomy would increase at the end of the
twentieth century, the results are actually mixed. While Parents articles evidence greater
autonomy for children in some arenas, they also depict children as having become more
constrained in other arenas. Instead of increased autonomy, there has been a historical trade-
off in childrens autonomy; while Parents portrays children as having gained some kinds of
autonomy in the private spaces of their homes, they have lost much of their public
autonomy outside of the home.

Increased private autonomy: Developmental needs and challenging authority

In ways that are consistent with the increased permissiveness and child-centeredness that
displaced behaviorism and characterized prevailing childrearing recommendations in the
latter half of the twentieth century, articles in Parents show evidence that children were
Qual Sociol (2009) 32:337353 343

increasingly viewed as needing autonomy in certain activities of daily living in which they
are regarded as the experts about their own needs. In the 1920s and 30s, the dominant view
expressed in Parents was that children should be trained to respond obediently to parents
about matters such as diet, sleep schedules, elimination, grooming and dress, and general
comportment. By the 1930s, however, a new strain of advice appeared that began to view
the child as the expert on her own developmental needs. By the 1940s, the challenge to
behaviorist tendencies had become dominant in Parents, and throughout the rest of the
twentieth century recommendations remained consistent that parents should follow their
childrens lead in such matters as eating habits, toileting, and personal appearance.
Furthermore, parents were advised to be largely tolerant when children challenged their
authority, were contrary, or expressed disagreement about such issues.
In the 1920s and 30s, a recognizably behaviorist approach is evident in Parents:
children were often described as requiring training, routines, and strict schedules. A clear
summary of this approach appears in a 1929 article titled How to Get Obedience:
By discipline we mean the reasonable regulation and supervision of the fundamental
habits of a child throughout all stages of his development and a consistent plan for
having him obey simple rules such as regular meal-times, regular bed-times, training
in elimination, eating what is placed before him, wearing the clothes that are
provided, observing certain proprieties of conduct. (Vaughn 1929)
As a scientific practice, behaviorist childrearing was often broken down into a
rationalized series of steps: for example, a 1931 article about punishment prescribes 10
steps for training childrens behavior (Champlin 1931). Following such orderly scientific
principles, problem behaviors (such as crying, thumb-sucking, finicky eating, or messiness)
could be trained out of children: for example, one article states that the well-fed and
comfortably routinized baby will not cry regularly during his first six months unless he has
learned the habit of crying (Mellon 1936). G. H. Preston, a medical doctor and Maryland
State Commissioner of Mental Hygeine, advised that such early childhood training was
crucial to future happiness: whether a person will be successful and happy in life is
determined to a great extent by his early training (Preston 1929). Parents were advised not
only that childrens behavior problems were primarily the result of improper training in
their earliest years, but also that lifelong problems of social adjustment, including those of
chronic fighters, the chronic quitters, the chronic complainers, the nervous invalids, the
misfits of society, resulted from lack of authority of parents (usually mothers) over their
children in such matters as learning to eat and sleep in conforming ways (Preston 1929).
Already in the 1930s, a more permissive, developmental view began to appear. A 1931
article authored by a psychologist indicates that although parents were still thinking about
how best to train their children, modern psychology wanted to show a better way:
Talk to us about anything you choose, but be sure to tell us how to punish our
children. The program committee of the Mothers Club is engaging the efforts of a
child psychologist. The remark is characteristic. Parents who so hopefully approach
scientific psychology seem to feel certain typical needs and desires, and the desire for
better modes of punishment is one very frequently expressed....The modern
psychologist believes that what parents need to discover is, not a better technique
of punishment, but better means of preventing situations where punishment seems
necessary. (Champlin 1931)
The psychologists recommendations for preventing punishment situations involved
understanding childrens natural mental development, including their eagerness and
344 Qual Sociol (2009) 32:337353

inquisitiveness; in his estimation, the mother who punished her child for displaying these
natural qualities was blameworthy, rude, destructive[and] paving a veritable path of
punishments for her child (Champlin 1931).
By the 1940s, the more psychologically-driven view of childrens development had
become predominant and Parents began to include increasing references to childrens
autonomy over daily activities that were previously constrained by behaviorist routines. A
good early example of this kind of advice is an article directed at mothers on the topic of
infant and toddler feeding, toilet training, and discipline, which rejects the older view of
prescribed routines and training based on behaviorism:
Perhaps the most important as well as the most helpful advice that can be given to the
parents of small children is: Dont push too hard; dont rush the child into accepting
something new before he himself shows readiness. This principle should be followed
as soon as the baby is born. Never mind if the book or the doctor says eight ounces
and the baby takes only five at a feeding, or if solids are rejected in favor of milk and
milk only, or if the child wants his vegetables pureed instead of chopped.Parents
should help the child to take the next step forward, but should be able also to accept
the childs own indications of readiness. Offer him a new food or a new way of doing
something. Be ready to abandon it if his behavior bespeaks a clear no, and try again
in a few weeks. A contented infant, unharried by rigid schedules, is nine-tenths of the
battle for mental health. (Wolf 1941)
For the most part, parents were also advised for most of the twentieth century to allow
children autonomy not only in matters of diet but also in toilet training as well as clothing
and personal appearance. The advice to follow childrens lead regarding their develop-
mental needs continues for the rest of the twentieth century, involving not just parents but
also teachers and other care providers: In most cases, children know better than anyone
else how much and what kind of muscle practice they need and good teachers let them
follow their own inclinations in such matters (Elkind 1971).
Furthermore, there is an increasing developmental and permissive emphasis in articles
that discuss childrens and adolescents rebellion and challenges to parental authority.
Parents are increasingly advised that childrens and teenagers defiance and rebelliousness
represent normal developmental milestones and should be constructively tolerated.
Although parents are frequently counseled to provide clear limits for children, they are
also prompted to interpret rebellion and defiance as cues that children are ready for
increased independence and autonomy. Such advice is especially prevalent in addressing
toddlers behavior problems: It is to be expected that a healthy baby of this age would
begin to exert his will-power by letting his mother know what he likes and dislikes. Babies
come in their own toward the end of the first year of life. They begin to realize that they
are human beings with the ability to say yes and no, if not in words, in actions (Wessel
1976). The usual advice is to allow for some greater measure of autonomy, within clear
limits:

According to Matthew Schiff, M.D., a child and adolescent psychiatrist in private

practice in Long Branch, New Jersey, your sons behavior is probably just a sign of
healthy emotional development.The fact that he freely expresses his anger and
rebelliousness shows he has a positive relationship with you and is secure enough to
know that you wont reject him. Since your son has been good-natured until now, he
has most likely reached a new stage in which he is discovering his will and autonomy,
explains Schiff. To assert his new-found independence and his desire to be more
Qual Sociol (2009) 32:337353 345

separate from you, he becomes contraryeven fresh and defiantwhen he doesnt

get his way or is being disciplined. Schiff suggests that, instead of trying to stop your
sons outbursts, you help him shape his new independence in ways that are more
acceptable.Teach him the language to use to express his dislikes and disagreements
instead of his current emotional eruptions.Youll also need to set limits on his
behavior, such as not allowing him to hit, kick, or curse. (Q & A 1991)
While children are by no means given completely free rein to behave however they wish
at home, the advice given to parents has increasingly recommended allowing children to
express themselves freely, even when this means defying and arguing with parents.3 Parents
are advised not only to tolerate such autonomous expressions, but to respond to them by
offering more choices and independence: Provide choices. First, let your child know you
understand why shes angrythen, give her some control by letting her make a decision
for example, playing in the tub for five more minutes or getting out and hearing a story
(Eberlein 2006). Parents are reassured that allowing children to negotiate some rules does
not mean that parents are simple pushovers; instead, these negotiations can teach children
valuable lessons: Relaxing rules about finishing all the food on a dinner plate or taking a
bath every night, for example, doesnt mean that youre backing down or spoiling your
children. It teaches them that there are alternative ways of solving problems and that you
can learn from your mistakes (Brooks 2001).
The advice to recognize growing independence and allow greater choice, within certain
limits, is also prevalent in addressing attitude and behavioral problems of older children and
teenagers:
Tell anyone what hes not allowed to do, and hes going to want to do it, says
Alan E. Kazdin, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Yale University. Thats just
human nature. This is particularly true of preteens, who are trying to assert their
independence. At this age, its better to explain why you think a particular
behavior is unwise and to ask your child if she agrees or disagrees.When you
tell kids what to do and why to do it, youre not preparing them to deal with the
world on their own, Dr. Shure explains. Its better to encourage them to find
their own solutions for problems. (Levine 2001)
One specific arena of struggle between parents and older children is matters of clothing,
grooming, and personal appearance. The typical advice is to respond to disagreements by
allowing children greater latitude in making their own choices:
During late adolescence, teenagers are struggling to form a sense of identity, a sense
of who they are that is consistent with what they have achieved in the past and with
what they hope to be in the future. Experimentation with clothing is often part of this
search for identity.Just as they need to be free to experiment with other facets of
their identities, young people need to be free to experiment with clothing. (Elkind
1991)
The prevailing theme of advice about everyday discipline for children of all ages, then,
is to set a few clear and non-negotiable boundaries around matters of safety, but to
recognize childrens natural insights into their own growing needs for independence and to
allow children a great deal of autonomy in negotiating rules and expressing disagreement

3
Lareau (2003) notes that middle-class families are more likely than their working-class peers to tolerate and
even encourage childrens verbal challenges to parents directions or opinions.
346 Qual Sociol (2009) 32:337353

with their parents. This message remains consistent throughout the second half of the
twentieth century and into the twenty-first.

Decreased public autonomy: Loss of freedom of movement and responsibility

In contrast to the increased autonomy that child-centered parenting has afforded children in
terms of dictating their own developmental needs, expressing their personal styles, and
challenging their parents, in other ways the twentieth century saw childrens autonomy
considerably curtailed. In its early decades, Parents showed evidence of a strong emphasis
on childrens need to develop independence and competence apart from their parents.
However, Parents provides evidence that in recent decades childrens freedom of
movement and opportunities for independence outside their homes have been considerably
reduced. In short, children have fewer opportunities to conduct themselves in public spaces
free from adult supervision than they did in the early and mid-twentieth century. In the
1930s, 40s, and 50s, even young children were more independent from their parents in
ways that have become proscribed by contemporary standards of safety. Articles and
parents letters from the 1940s and 50s describe children who enjoyed a great deal of
freedom and independence in their movements. Five-year-old children walked alone to
school:
LET me go to school by myself, please, pleaded five-year-old Mike. You said I
could, and Im old enough. Five is old enough to go alone, specially since I know
the way. It was the first day of the fall session. The previous Thursday had been
registration day and Mike and I had gone together for that. Now, on this long-awaited
Monday morning, Mike was asserting his independence. As I looked at his
determined little upturned face, I knew he was right. His babyhood was irrevocably
over now. He was asking for the right to be a real boy and for a responsibility for
which he had been prepared. (Foster 1956)
School-age children roamed and played in neighborhoods without adults accompanying
them. Teens and pre-teens were described riding bicycles, buses, and subways all over
towns and cities. Hitching rides was written about as a common practice. Mothers even
expected toddlers to be capable of going into the yard and playing without direct
supervision:
Our DAUGHTER, not yet two years old, enjoyed playing out in the yard as long as I
was with her. As soon as I went into the house to do my many household tasks, she lost
interest in her play. She would come and pound on the door, screaming continually, but
still refusing to come in when given the opportunity. Finally, her father and I decided
that her cries were not caused by anger at being left alone; rather, she was afraid of
being shut out where she could not come in to see me. So we put a second handle on
the door within her reach. When she discovered this new addition she was so thrilled
with it that she was in and out all day long. The novelty soon wore off, and her trips
were less frequent. Now after only a week, she plays happily in the yard for hours, on
good days. (Childhood and teenage problems 1946, emphasis added)
This freedom of movement continued at least into the 1960s. A 1961 article titled
Danger from Strangers focused on teaching children to be aware of the potential dangers
that strangers could pose in public places, but did not advise against allowing children to
leave home alone or to move through public spaces unaccompanied. One scenario
recounted in the article describes: Typical, perhaps, is the twelve-year-old boy who came
Qual Sociol (2009) 32:337353 347

into a large city for a youth conference. His mother was to pick him up for the return home.
But he had an hour to kill and wandered into a drug store. While he was drinking a soda, a
man sidled up, engaged him in lengthy conversation, lured him with enticements, and
suggested they meet after the conference (Orcate 1961). As the advice regarding the
scenario ensues, the focus is on ensuring that children are not attention-starved and building
their instincts for recognizing people who would take advantage of them; in stark contrast
to current sensibilities, there is no indication that a 12-year-old is thought to be too young to
be in a strange city unaccompanied by a parent.
By contrast, children and adolescents in the 1980s and on were much more constrained
in terms of what they were allowed to do by themselves and where they were allowed to go
on their own. Occasionally the need for adult supervision is stated: Its important for kids
to have activities and be in supervised situations after school so that they dont experiment
simply because theyre bored (Behavior Q & A 2006). In most texts after about 1980,
however, nearly constant supervision of children is simply assumed. Instead of sending
children off to school and activities on their own, parents now spend a considerable amount
of time driving children around. Clearly, this creates the potential for conflict between
parents who feel obligated to escort their children and children who feel they are old
enough to be free from their parents watchful eyes. An article titled, Keeping Tabs
Without Being a Nag advises:
Respect your preteens wishes.Make plans that address her need for independence
without compromising her safety. Drop her off a block from the soccer field so that
her teammates wont see her with you. If youre driving a group of her friends to a
middle-school dance, make sure another parent picks them up so that your child isnt
the only one under parental supervision. (Lerner & Olson 1996)
While they are driving the carpool, hanging around during scout meetings and soccer
practices, and supervising play dates at the park, parents are not simply present, they are
also monitoring the behavior of their children. In fact, the latest generation of parents is
frequently advised to seize upon teachable moments in the time that they spend present with
children, such as when children are watching television, playing with friends, and riding in
carpools:
If youre driving in a car pool and kids in the backseat are gossiping about someone,
pull over the car and say, Im sorry, but I cant continue to drive while listening to
this. How do you think this kind of talk would make that person feel? You should
never ignore kids when they mistreat others. If you do, youre silently condoning
their conduct. (Thompson 2001)
Even though expert advice sometimes recommends allowing children to exercise
autonomy in their peer relationships, especially when it comes to working out disagree-
ments between themselves, there are many instances of advice on how parents ought to
intervene in situations in which they are supervising children who might have been
unsupervised a generation or two before. For example: You take your 5-year-old to the
park. When another little girl wont get off the swing to give your daughter a turn, your
child calls her stupid. Keep your comments short and simple. Point out with a tone of
voice thats not overly angry that those words hurt peoples feelings, Dr. Scarlett
recommends (Christiano 2001). In fact, it seems that advice to let children work out their
own peer relationships seems to be so necessary and prevalent because children are never
away from adult surveillance. This leaves parents uncertain about how and when to
intervene and results in a lot of conflicting advice on the matter. Nonetheless, the need for
348 Qual Sociol (2009) 32:337353

constant supervision is never questioned: an article about middle-school-aged children

advises, Read the signalswhen your children want you and when they dont. Dont take
over a group situation that is primarily theirs. But just as important, dont withdraw
completely and neglect to supervise them adequately. They need and want your guidance
just not front and center (Comer 1981).
Not only are childrens movements in public and opportunities to be without adult
supervision much more restricted than they used to be, but children also have fewer
opportunities to experience meaningful independence and responsibilities. Despite the fact
that Parents has always included requests for advice on how to get children to pick up after
themselves, do the dishes, and be responsible about their chores, the amount and kind of
work and responsibilities expected of children decreased substantially in the course of the
twentieth century. In the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, the household work described in Parents
being performed by adolescent and pre-adolescent children includes routine household
cleaning; menu planning, shopping, and regular meal preparation for the family; maintaining
furnaces; budgeting, balancing checkbooks, and keeping household accounts; household
decorating and furniture rearranging; carpentry and household maintenance; automobile
maintenance; and nursing sick family members. Even very young children were assumed to be
capable of contributing to necessary tasks. One mothers letter describes how she taught her
four-year-old to lay kindling and wood and strike a match to start a fire. After that, if she was at
hand when it was time to light the fire, I permitted her to do so. She soon came so accustomed to
doing it that she could be trusted to start the fire while I prepared vegetables and other things
about the kitchen (Parental problems and ways to meet them 1931).
In the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, descriptions of childrens household chores all but
disappear; instead the dominant responsibility mentioned for children and adolescents
during this time period is schoolwork. This shift coincides with the general increase in
advice about childrens intellectual development and academic achievement noted by
Quirke (2006) and Wrigley (1989). Although chores reappear in the 1990s, the articles
from the last 20 years discuss chores mostly in regard to very young children and tend to
refer to relatively trivial tasks when compared with chores from earlier eras. Even though
contemporary authors show concern that children learn responsibility, the chores they
recommend involve either having children pick up after themselves or such simple tasks as
taking care of a pet, clearing the table after dinner, or assisting with laundry by sorting
clothes. There are several reminders that young children benefit from feeling useful at
homethe admonishment that children as young as 2 or 3 can be asked to pitch in
(Leonard 1996) is typical of contemporary discussions of teaching children to be
responsible. However, the bulk of the evidence is that children are no longer expected to
contribute to their households independently or in the same routine ways that their
grandparents were. Beyond recommending that very young children be allowed to help
with simple tasks, older childrens and adolescents chores are rarely discussed as
constituting part of the ongoing work necessary to family life, and when they are, rewards
are usually suggested to motivate kids to comply. The focus on external rewardssuch as
points that can be cashed in for toys, games, or outingsis in contrast to earlier advice
that focused on pride in a job well done (Stein 1956).
In earlier generations, children and adolescents were given meaningful opportunities to
be responsible by contributing not only to their households but also to their larger
communities. This was seen as especially important for adolescents:

[An] imperative aim for the adolescent is the development of social interests, right
social attitudes and interests in great social movements, such as the interest in
Qual Sociol (2009) 32:337353 349

organized philanthropy, positive effort for public welfare, and the like.The
individual adolescent desires to do something really significant in the social groups
of which he is a member. If he acquires the ability to render some service, this brings
a reward to which no other is comparable. Every youth desires such opportunity, and
nothing is more tragic, nothing perhaps more menacing to the mental health, than
lack of opportunity and lack of ability to achieve social success. Every boy and girl
may well be trained to such superiority in something that each will be able to render a
distinct service in some social group and thus to receive the stimulus that comes from
success. (Burnham 1931)
Greater autonomy and responsibility were emphasized as antidotes to both teenage
listlessness and teenage rebellion. The adolescent autonomy advised was not typically
participation in youth culture unsupervised by parents; instead, it was greater autonomy in
the adult spheres of productive work and household management and it frequently placed
adolescent children in mentoring relationships with parents or other adults. One fathers
letter about the destruction of a neighborhood playground and his subsequent mentoring of
the offending gang of boys illustrates the attitude that adolescent misbehavior could be
effectively countered through meaningful work and mentoring:
I inquired among the children and learned the identity of the boys who committed the
destruction. In the spring of 1944 I took these boys into my basement shop, explained
the use of various tools and asked if they would like to use them. The response was
overwhelmingly affirmative. We labored in the shop and on the play-ground
evenings, Saturday afternoons, and Sundays. The other parents were dismayed at
the sight of a gang of boys, some of them pretty big, over-running the playground in
perfect freedom.The boys kept at work until we had rebuilt and re-painted all the
equipment in the play-ground.The playground is more attractive than before and
not one bit of malicious damage has been done during the past year. (Childhood and
teenage problems 1946)
Evidence of youth autonomy in community involvement is present through the 1960s. A
1961 article, You Can Trust Your Towns Teens, describes the importance of handing over
some types of community planning and decision-making to organized and responsible teens:
For several years now, teen-age problems in Battle Creek, Michigan, have been
effectively handled, in large part, by the teen-agers themselves. It started when a
mayors committee was set up in response to a general fear that juvenile delinquency
was increasing. Two teen-agers with obvious leadership talents were invited to join
the group. The two guests voiced such sharp insights into what was wrong with their
towns facilities for teen-agers, offered such intelligent suggestions for revitalizing the
citys recreation program, and thereafter rounded up reinforcements with such
contagious enthusiasm, that the mayors committee soon disbanded and turned over
its problems to a Youth Board elected by the teenagers. (Brecher 1961)

The author goes on to describe several other similar initiatives to involve teens,
advancing the argument that the more scope young people are given for making their own
plans, exercising their own initiative and solving their own problems the better the result
(Brecher 1961).
Through the latter decades of the study, there is continued attention given to childrens
development of a sense of responsibility through volunteer opportunities. However, several
recent articles lament the loss of opportunities for children to demonstrate their responsibility.
350 Qual Sociol (2009) 32:337353

According to clinical psychologist Elizabeth M. Ellis, Ph.D., author of Raising a

Responsible Child (Birch Lane Press), a great number of children brought to her for
counseling have never been given the opportunity to learn a sense of responsibility,
which she defines as being able to meet the goals youve set and use problem-solving
skills. Such children tend to be dependent on parents to make decisions for them and
have low self-esteem and poor coping skills when faced with everyday stress. That
can mean problems as children get older. (Leonard 1996)

Despite concerns that children are not developing responsibility, there are real
contemporary limitations on childrens and adolescents freedom of movement that
constrain their ability to organize activities that allow them to feel they are making
independent contributions to their communities. Since the 1980s, recommendations for
encouraging childrens sense of responsibility have centered instead on family volunteering:
for example, Find a volunteer activity you and your child can do together. The Kids Care
Clubs, for example, with chapters around the country, sponsor programs in which kids and
parents together help improve their neighborhoods (Taffel 2001). While this continued
advocacy of community involvement and volunteer work reflects a clear sense that children
benefit from developing empathy and contributing to the well-being of others, the idea has
largely disappeared that children can develop a meaningful sphere of competence and
autonomy from their parents through their own independent community involvement.

Conclusion

If childrens ability to assert their desires in order to select and negotiateor even refuse
their chores represents autonomy, then Parents provides ample evidence that childrens
autonomy has grown in the past few decades. One mother writes: If I told my daughter to
go outside and shovel the driveway before school, shed laugh in disbelief (Leonard
1996). This willingness to be contrary at home and resist parents requests is the kind of
autonomy that results in the stereotypical intergenerational complaint by grandparents that
their grandchildren are out of control. While it may be true that todays parents tolerate
more in-home rebellion and sullen attitudes than past generations, they are also facing
parenting demands that require near-constant surveillance of their children. Allowing
children more autonomy to express themselves and their disagreements at home may well
be a response to the loss of more substantial forms of childrens autonomy to move through
and participate in their communities on their own.
Various social changes have contributed to loss of public freedom for children
especially for middle-class children. Towns and suburbs are designed primarily for the
convenience of automobile traffic, making it more dangerous for children to play in and
near streets (Zelizer 1985). Highly-publicized instances of child abduction make parents
wary of leaving their children unattended in public spaces. Public safety concerns and
commercial interests conspire to keep adolescents from hanging out in malls, parking
lots, parks, and other previous gathering spots. A rapidly-expanding commercial and media
culture coincides with parental anxieties about risk to divert childrens unstructured play
time into adult-directed activities (Chudacoff 2007). Middle-class children, in particular,
participate in a round of near-constant enrichment activities that leave them supervised at all
times by adults and give them little control over their own leisure time (Lareau 2003).
Similarly, children have fewer opportunities to do meaningful work because of large-scale
changes in social life. The contemporary lack of meaningful work for children illustrates the
Qual Sociol (2009) 32:337353 351

delaying of adult responsibilities that comes about as adolescence is extended to later and
later ages (Coontz 1997). Furthermore, the increased emphasis in recent decades on
childrens cognitive development and educational attainment (Quirke 2006) may mean that
parents are more interested in having children do homework and participate in extra-
curricular activities than participate in routine household chores.
What does all of this reveal about the larger question I began withAre children
increasingly depicted by Parents as autonomous, moral agents capable of making their own
decisions about their lives? This depends, ultimately, upon how we define what it means to
be a moral agent. If our definition of moral agency is essentially therapeuticthat is, based
upon self-expression of ones individuality, identity, and emotions (Furedi 2004; Rieff
1987)then Parents does offer evidence that children have become increasingly regarded
as moral agents since the early twentieth century. Children today are expected to come to an
early understanding of their own emotional life and individual identity and to express that
identity in the form of their wants, wishes, and desires in their interactions with parents,
teachers, and peers. However, if our definition of a moral agent is more civic in nature
that is, based on meaningful participation in and contribution to public interactionthen,
Parents yields little evidence that childrens autonomy as moral agents has increased
(unless we consider participation in a specialized and commercialized childrens culture a
form of meaningful public interaction). Instead, the evidence of this popular medium is that
children have been increasingly excluded from the public realm as moral agents who
participate autonomously in the lives of their broader communities.
Popular images of both childhood and parenting can be seen to exist in a sphere that is
predominantly coded within popular culture as private. Thus, Parents has chronicled both
childrens growing autonomy within the private sphere and their increasing exclusion as
moral agents from the public sphere. One implication is that popular media such as Parents
magazine inadequately acknowledge the real ways in which parenting is both a private and
a public activity. Childrearing demands and expectations do not exist in a vacuum. Instead,
childrearing advice is part of a therapeutic ethos that values private self-expression in the
absence of a robust civil society offering more meaningful forms of public participation, for
children as well as adults.

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Markella B. Rutherford is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College. Her current research
focuses on culture, personal autonomy, childrearing, and childhood. She has previously studied rites of
passage and maternity advertising.