From Father's Property to Children's Rights

Mary Ann Mason is Associate Professor of Law and Social Welfare at the School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The Equality Trap, coauthor of Why Kids Lie, and coeditor of Debating Children's Lives: Current Controversies on Children and Adolescents.

Introduction 1. Fathers/Masters: Children/Servants: Child Custody in the Colonial Era 2. From Fathers' Rights to Mothers' Love: The Transformation of Child Custody Law in the First Century of the New Republic, 1790-1890 3. The State as Superparent: The Progressive Era, 1890-1920 4. In the Best Interest of the Child? 1960-1990 5. The Ascendancy of the Social Sciences