Invading the home: children, state power, and the gendered origins of modern conservatism, 1865-1933

This dissertation explores how the rise of the modern liberal state in the United States challenged male rule in the family by assuming direct responsibility for the governance of children’s lives. Between 1865 and 1933, every state in the country introduced compulsory education, child labor and mandatory vaccination laws that set minimum standards for all children. In this period, a diverse array of reformers and state-builders sought to expand the purpose and purview of the state by twinning the “rights of the child” with the “needs of the state.” The expansion of the states’ powers over children, however, also provoked a fierce resistance from a broad range of Americans who argued that the state was usurping the natural rights of fathers and “invading the home.” The dissertation traces the emergence of a gendered anti-statist politics rooted in a defense of the sovereign white family. By the 1920s, as reformers sought to extend the state’s powers over children to the federal government, paternal sovereignty became a central pillar of national anti-statist movements. “Invading the Home” reveals a network of conservative activists composed of unlikely allies, including Boston Brahmins, the Catholic and Lutheran Churches, anti-suffragists, farmers, Southern industrialists, anti-vaccinationists, laissez-faire constitutionalists, and Democrats and Republicans alike, who united in a defense of the sovereign family, which proved an effective rallying-cry across class and faith lines to galvanize opposition to the expansion of state power.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Julia Bowe