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This chapter argues that, as white Americans increasingly agitated against Chinese immigration in the 1870s and 1880s, Chinese families found themselves the object of greater scrutiny. They became important players in the overall debate over the future of the Chinese in America. By the mid-nineteenth century, the image of the two-parent family was vital to white, middle-class Americans, who envisioned the home as a haven against the corrupting influences of the outside world. Fathers, and especially mothers, played crucial roles in preserving the innocence and malleability of their children. The changes accompanying industrialization, urbanization, and immigration threatened to undermine the sanctity of the middle-class American family and the ideal of the sheltered childhood. The apparently deviant family relations of the Chinese in San Francisco stood in opposition to the ideal two-parent family model of the American middle class.

This chapter examines the attitudes displayed and the choices made by George Willard, the protagonist in Sherwood Anderson's 1919 book Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life, as a reflection of the “generation gap” between the Progressive generation and the Gilded Age generation. It first analyzes the character of George Willard and places the town of Winesburg in context before turning to Anderson's depiction of the challenges inherent in the historical progression of a family economy model to one of sheltered childhood. It also explains how George Willard's story foregrounds the significance of adaptation to an evolving idea of childhood in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

This introductory chapter presents the basic principles of the juvenile court. Foremost among these is the radical idea that the law should treat children differently from adults. The political philosopher John Locke argued that children's lack of reasoning capacity, which disqualified them from participating in government, also made them less culpable for their criminal acts. Another principle states that children's cases should be diverted from the destructive dynamics of the criminal justice system. This diversionary rationale made increasing sense in a society in which the modern ideal of a sheltered childhood became nearly universal by the middle decades of the twentieth century.