Stubborn Children

This study traces the response of the American legal society to the control of misbehaving children. It focuses on a number of key reforms, from colonial Puritan strategies of child control, to 19th-century reform movements, to the modern juvenile court.

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John Sutton provides a fascinating account of the changing patterns of reform aimed at the control of children in the United States. He focuses on a series of watershed reforms—from colonial Puritan strategies of child control to the nineteenth-century refuge and reformatory movements, to the juvenile court and the recent movement for deinstitutionalization.