Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885-1920

by Mary E. Odem

Book Overview

Delinquent Daughters explores the gender, class, and racial tensions that fueled campaigns to control female sexuality in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. Mary Odem looks at these... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807845280
• ISBN13: 9780807845288
• Release Date: December 1995
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Very Good

This is a great history lesson on the treatment of young women. It is also very readable. I finished it over the course of one day.

Delinquent Girls and their Minders

A pathbreaking work in women's history and the history of deviancy, this book argues (if not entirely convincingly) for a new interpretation of the history and relationship of girl delinquents and women reformers. Odem traces the history of middle class women reformers towards sexual delinquency by young girls through the particularly rich case history of Los Angeles County. Noting the diverse cultures in L.A. (white, working class, Hispanic, African-American) Odem argues that many girls who became labeled "wayward" were acting out against oppressive and repressive families who held old-fashioned and patriarchal views of girls' sexuality. Odem also explores the eventually oppressive route that reformers took in "retraining" wayward girls.