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Child Savers Sociology

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The Child-Savers felt that it was not only their responsibility to ensure the proper care and education of their own children, but also of the children who were poor, orphaned or delinquent (McGowan, 2014; Platt, 1969). The women of the child-saving movement felt it was a woman’s responsibility to ensure the education and socialization of children, and they were further spurred to action by sociologists who were reporting that children living in the city slums were “being born into crime” and that due to their biological and environmental factors, they would become adult criminals if there was not an adequate intervention to change the course of their lives (McGowan, 2014; Platt, 1969; Cooley, 1897). A free foster care system started, with the goal of letting children who lived in the slums of big cities be able to experience a more wholesome way of life by visiting farms, and sometimes going to live on farms if their families were indigent or they were orphaned (Platt, 1969). …show more content…

All of this made the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s, the right atmosphere to implement social reforms for the benefit of children. The child-saving movement and the sociological research done at the University of Chicago, ultimately led to the creation of the first Juvenile Court System, in 1899, in Cook County, Illinois (Platt, 1969; Scott & Steinberg, 2010; Mack, 1909; Caldwell, 1961). This era was the starting point for ending child slavery and child labor (Platt, 1969). It was also at this time that the new field of study, social work, was starting to emerge as an area of research and new occupations (Fox,

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