Child Savers

Geoff Ward

Social movements during the 19th and 20th centuries led to the establishment and development of autonomous juvenile justice systems and other child welfare reform in the United States and elsewhere. These movements, led by civic actors who would come to be called “child savers,” resulted in numerous reforms and institutions that collectively extended greater state authority over families and youth, on the premise of rescuing or protecting young people from “deviant” socialization and thus, by extension, regulating societal development. These were especially pressing concerns in 19th- and early-20th-century United States, where industrialization, rapid urbanization, emancipation and reconstruction, mass immigration, and internal migrations, among other developments, were reconfiguring the face of the nation. To a significant extent, “child saving” was conceived and carried out as a nation-building movement, focused on the tributaries of child welfare, socialization into adulthood, and ultimately civil society. The child saving movement actually involved numerous civic actors, ...

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