Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-213) and index.
Contents:
Introduction: mapping the urban child -- Boys, movies, and city streets, or the dead end kids as modernists -- Shirley Temple as streetwalker: girls, streets, and encounters with men -- Neglect at home: rejecting mothers and middle class kids -- "The odds are against him": archives of unhappiness among black urban boys -- Helicopters and catastrophes: the failure to neglect and neglect as failure.
Summary:
From Harriet the Spy to Hugo Cabret, American popular culture is filled with fictional children who journey through cities, unsupervised by adults. Fantasies of Neglect explains how this trope of the self-sufficient urban child originated and considers why it persists, even in the era of stranger danger and helicopter parenting. Drawing from a wide range of films, novels, and sociological texts, Pamela Robertson Wojcik investigates how cities have been central to how Americans imagine the freedom and neglect of children.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.