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From Feebleminded to Mentally Retarded: Child Protection and the Changing Place of Disabled Children in the Mid-Twentieth Century United States
| In the late 1920s novelist Pearl Buck acceded to the advice of doctors and placed her mentally retarded daughter in an institution; a little over twenty years later recording artists and movie actors Roy Rogers and Dale Evans did the same thing. However, American attitudes and policies toward children with disabilities had changed significantly between these two seemingly similar acts. Indeed, where Buck dealt with her situation as a private matter until the 1950s, Evans published what would become a best selling book immediately after her daughter’s untimely death in 1952 and began to champion the rights of parents of mentally retarded children. My paper will examine the policy changes that are suggested by these two events. It is drawn from a larger study of the history of child protection in the United States. In this paper, I will argue a redefinition of disabled children occurred in this era. Most importantly, earlier fears that feebleminded children posed a menace to American society gave way to new anxieties that mentally retarded children placed undue strains on individual families. Both concerns encouraged the segregation and often the institutionalization of such children, but within very different class, family, medical, and policy contexts and with very different results. I will contend that these developments are best understood by connecting together the emerging histories of childhood and disability.
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