Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence: Boston, 1880-1960

Rating:
Summary: Feminist look at family violence
Review: "Child abuse is not usually a product of unilateral brutality but of familial power struggles, shaped by extrafamilial social factors and historical change," argues Linda Gordon in "Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence." Those social and historical factors, the author contends, changed over time. So too did those activities that constituted abuse. One could substitute "wife beating," "child neglect," and "incest" in the place of child abuse in this sentence. Through a variety of sources--legal documents, social workers' case histories, and relief agency registers--Gordon examines how conceptions of family violence changed in Boston between 1880 and 1960, and why they changed. Her subjects are not upperclass families and individuals, but the lowest strata of Boston society. They are the Irish and Italian immigrants, the unemployed or underemployed, and the transient. To understand Gordon's analysis of family violence, it is important to understand feminism, male domination of the family, and gender roles.

The author argues that the one thing that changed slowly during the period was how society and social workers viewed the family, a view too often adopted by writers on the subject. Historians, she argues, tend to think of the family as a seamless unit headed by the breadwinning father. The mother and children each have their own roles to fulfill within the unit, but all activity and decision flows from the male head of the family. Gordon scoffs at this generalization, claiming that the family is not a seamless unit but an agglomeration of individuals with aspirations that often conflict. The failure of social workers in Boston to alleviate child abuse, child neglect, wife beating, and incest stemmed from their overemphasis on "stresses" and failure to acknowledge this underlying power structure of the family. These stresses--extreme poverty, alcoholism, and unemployment--contributed to outlandish behavior. But the inability of women to take independent action to combat the problems facing their families allowed bad behavior to flourish. Social workers, reflecting the beliefs of society, attempted to rebuild patriarchal families at the expense of female independence.

The pressure put on single mothers to reconstruct the patriarchal family through remarriage or reconciliation with abusive husbands, along with a similar pressures placed on married women to maintain a household even in the face of extreme abuse, exacerbated family violence. A vicious cycle emerged concerning women caught up in abusive families. For single mothers, they had to work for a living if they wished to care for their children and maintain a home. But in doing so, they left their children unattended or in the care of others. Social workers saw female employment as a potential form of child neglect and as a violation of patriarchy that required a variety of responses, from court actions to removing the children from the household. Women could survive through only two methods: quit working or get their man back in the house. Gordon argues that only during times when a strong feminist movement emerged did society begin to view family violence in its proper context, as a problem of power and gender relationships and not a series of social problems flowing from poverty, alcohol, and unemployment.

Gordon's ability to tease out information from scanty sources is amazing, and is probably the best aspect of the book. She found her greatest challenges in the nineteenth century records, a time predating the emergence of professional social work and its attendant requirement of extensive written case histories recording all aspects of the clients' lives. The author relates in several places that the only evidence she could rely upon consisted of a few lines scrawled in a musty ledger. But by putting together enough of these incomplete records, Gordon managed to reconstruct a better picture of what went on in the early days of Boston's relief efforts. Pictures showing neglected children add an additional poignancy to many of the heartrending stories of personal tragedy in the book.

A significant problem with Gordon's book is limiting her research to Boston, Massachusetts. Gordon's arguments that Boston's experiences with immigrants represented similar problems in other states is not completely accurate. Although she notes that the city's high immigrant population made it exceptional, she does not go far enough in explaining how much of an exception it was. Massachusetts was home to a huge number of immigrants, far more than any other area in the United States in the nineteenth century. The immigrants strained the state's resources to the breaking point, which might account in some part for many of the faults she finds with the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC) and other agencies. The city and the state simply did not have the funds to deal effectively with the problem of family violence. The importance of the MSPCC to other social agencies in the country probably stemmed from the recognition that Massachusetts had more immigrants to deal with than anyone else.

A related dilemma concerns the sorts of institutions the author studied. While she made excellent use of the sources she consulted, there is a tendency to not look further. Family violence, from all indications, was at times a charged political issue. Gordon explains that the MSPCC was a political organization, supporting legislation at various times in its early history, and also possessing police powers to enter homes and remove children. The term "politics" in the title of the book refers to personal politics between family members, but examining the more common meaning of the word might have helped. Why not consult legislative records at the city and state level? Moreover, other institutions existed to assist the poor, especially poor immigrants. Political machines, although far from altruistic organizations, helped immigrant men find employment, and agencies run by ethnic groups also lent a hand. Immigrants to the United States did not have as many options to better their conditions as did native-born citizens, but they had more options than Gordon claims.



Rating:
Summary: Heroes
Review: Linda Gordon did a wonderful job at showing the growth of social services over time, however the book lacked a sense of committment.