Buy essay on Child-saving movement in the United States

The movements for the general rights of all people appeared long before the nineteenth century, when the issues of children rights were raised; as the result the so-called child – saving movement appeared in America. Further we are going to discuss the historical facts about the child-saving movement in the United States, the main spheres, it was related to, the types of the reforms, which were suggested by the supporters of this movement and the actual outcomes.
The New York Children’s Aid Society was among the first organizations, taking care of children welfare. Generally the years between 1890 and 1920 are considered to be the zenith of this movement. The key directions, which the child- savers worked in, were: children labor, children abuse, foundation of playgrounds, kindergartens and other places for children, creation of the separate juvenile court, programs of social support for mothers and medical programs aimed at reduction of mortality rates of infant children. Initially, the movement was supported by volunteers from women clubs and philanthropists, later, however, the support from educated professionals was achieved. The reforms in America, related to children care, coincided with the period of mass immigration and industrialization. In that situation, one of the major concerns of the reformers was related to the children of immigrants. The only way not to produce poverty was to take care of the young and small immigrants. However, among researchers there is no agreement, whether the primary concern of the reformers was the prosperity of the nation or better control of the immigrants. The fact, which caused such clash of opinions, was that Catholic immigrants were supposed to accept Protestant views, dominant in America during those times.
As it was already mentioned above – one of the strategies of child saving was the fight against brutal attitude towards children, i.e. child abuse and neglect. In the year 1853 Charles Loring Brace founded the organization – the New York Children’s Aid Society (Michel 1999). Activities of the members of this organization included taking care of children from towns, who were abused, lost their parents or were simply neglected. Such children were sent to special surrogate families in the western part of the country. This scheme was worked out, because the founder of the organization believed, that villages were much better for children, than cities. The life mode of farming families was considered to be the best for young children and teens. This program, although seemed to have positive aims, received a lot of critics first from the side of the people, living in the West – they complaint, that hundreds of children were arriving constantly and overloaded their territories. On the other hand, other reformers accused the CAS in providing free of charge labor to farmers and never controlled the ways, these children were treated there.
In 1874 astonishing revelation was made by the president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals – Eldbridge Gerry, who concluded, that in case a child is abused, his abuser can be persecuted only according to the law, protecting the rights of animals (Ladd-Taylor 1994). Such situation seemed certainly unacceptable for most social workers. In reality, all the children – saving organizations, created before, were private, mostly on the basis of some feminist organizations. The state of affairs changed immensely between the years 1910 and 1930, when numerous professionals of social issues started to regulate the children care problems. In reality there turned out to be quite a lot of versatile and many-sided problems. For example the question whether to take the child away from his real family or not is not so easy to answer in case, if the family is normal but very poor. On the one hand a child is suffering because his parents are not able to provide all the necessary things for him, because they lack money. On the other hand poverty alone can not be considered to be a sufficient reason for taking a child from his biological parents. The most logical way out in such situations would seem provision of state support for such families.