| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Taming the Troublesome Child: American Families, Child Guidance, and the Limits of Psychiatric Authority. By Kathleen W. Jones. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999. x, 310 pp. $47.50, ISBN 0-674-86811-0.)

Today it is common for juveniles charged with crimes to be given psychological examinations. Likewise, when parents today seek professional help in dealing with difficult children, they, as well as their children, are often expected to submit to psychological diagnosis and treatment. Indeed, the psychologizing of troubled children and their families is a pervasive and essentially unquestioned part of American life. Kathleen W. Jones explains that Americans have not always been so inclined to view troublesome children and their families through psychological lenses. Before the 1920s, especially during the late nineteenth century, child savers and other social reformers were more likely to employ social and environmental perspectives when they sought to explain or respond to troublesome children. How and why Americans came to accept an increasingly psychological approach to those perceived problems constitutes the primary focus of this excellent study in social and cultural history. 1

Professor Jones argues convincingly that the emergence of child guidance during the first half of the twentieth century was central to the psychologizing of American children. Jones treats child guidance as a complex phenomenon that by 1940 included a network of special mental hygiene clinics for children, 2

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