Publication

1997 - Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, Massachusetts

Language

English

Word Count

74,250 words, Guess

Page Count

297 pages

Identifiers

  • Open LibraryOL671096M
  • ISBN-100674796446
  • OCLC Control Number36857821
  • Library of Congress Control Number97017063
  • Goodreads4078124

Classifications

  • DDC362.73/2/0973
  • LCCHV983 .H33 1997

Description

As Timothy Hacsi shows, most children in nineteenth-century orphan asylums were "half-orphans," children with one living parent who was unable to provide for them. The asylums spread widely and endured because different groups - churches, ethnic communities, charitable organizations, fraternal societies, and local and state governments - could adapt them to their own purposes. In the 1890s, critics began to argue that asylums were overcrowded and impersonal. By 1909, advocates called for aid to destitute mothers, and argued that asylums should be a last resort, for short-term care only. Yet orphanages continued to care for most dependent children until the Depression strained asylum budgets and federally funded home care became more widely available. Yet some, Catholic asylums in particular, cared for poor children into the 1950s and 1960s.

Subjects

Topics

OrphansHistoryOrphanagesPoor familiesFamily, united statesOrphanages -- United States -- HistoryPoor families -- United States -- History

Places

Other Editions

  • Second home: orphan asylums and poor families in AmericaHarvard University Press1997-01-01

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