Charles Loring Brace
Charles Loring Brace
Founder, Children’s Aid Society
New York City
Beth Boersma
University of Georgia
SOWK 6011
Fall, 2010
Introduction
Charles Loring Brace is recognized as one of the founders of child welfare reform in the United States, particularly in the area of foster care and adoption. His work was conducted in the nineteenth century in New York City, in the midst of one of the most prolific eras of change in U.S. history. This paper will describe and summarize Brace’s background and the influences that led to his work, the impact of his work on the society of his time, the legacy of his work, and its influences on child welfare efforts today.
Social Background
Charles Loring Brace was born June 19, 1826 in Litchfield, Connecticut, described as
a small but prosperous village, wholly lacking in urban luxury or vice, but providing its residents with something approaching urban levels of learning and culture. It was the home of the nation’s first law school…..also the home of one of the first secondary schools for girls in the United States, the Litchfield Female Academy, graduates of which included Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sister Catherine Beecher” (O’Connor, 2001, p7).
Charles was the second of four children born to John and Lucy Brace and, in the Puritan tradition of the time, he was primarily educated by his father. John Brace was a teacher at the Litchfield Female Academy, where he displayed a progressive slant on education by reforming the curriculum typically taught to girls to include more challenging subjects “including science, higher mathematics, logic and Latin--a curriculum that at the very least equaled that of most boys’ academies” (O’Connor, p. 8). Young Charles often sat in on his father’s classes and was undoubtedly influenced by the senior Brace’s feminist philosophy that female children should be educated on an equal level as males, in order to “improve woman’s ‘rank in society, placing her
as the
Founder, Children’s Aid Society
New York City
Beth Boersma
University of Georgia
SOWK 6011
Fall, 2010
Introduction
Charles Loring Brace is recognized as one of the founders of child welfare reform in the United States, particularly in the area of foster care and adoption. His work was conducted in the nineteenth century in New York City, in the midst of one of the most prolific eras of change in U.S. history. This paper will describe and summarize Brace’s background and the influences that led to his work, the impact of his work on the society of his time, the legacy of his work, and its influences on child welfare efforts today.
Social Background
Charles Loring Brace was born June 19, 1826 in Litchfield, Connecticut, described as
a small but prosperous village, wholly lacking in urban luxury or vice, but providing its residents with something approaching urban levels of learning and culture. It was the home of the nation’s first law school…..also the home of one of the first secondary schools for girls in the United States, the Litchfield Female Academy, graduates of which included Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sister Catherine Beecher” (O’Connor, 2001, p7).
Charles was the second of four children born to John and Lucy Brace and, in the Puritan tradition of the time, he was primarily educated by his father. John Brace was a teacher at the Litchfield Female Academy, where he displayed a progressive slant on education by reforming the curriculum typically taught to girls to include more challenging subjects “including science, higher mathematics, logic and Latin--a curriculum that at the very least equaled that of most boys’ academies” (O’Connor, p. 8). Young Charles often sat in on his father’s classes and was undoubtedly influenced by the senior Brace’s feminist philosophy that female children should be educated on an equal level as males, in order to “improve woman’s ‘rank in society, placing her
as the
References: Bullard, K.S., (2005). Saving the Children: Discourses of Race, Nation and Citizenship in America (Doctoral dissertation). University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Day, P. (2009). A New History of Social Welfare (6th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc. Eviatar, D. (2001). Suffer the Children. Nation; May 28, 2001, Vol. 272, Issue 21, pp 25-28. Gish, C. (1999). Rescuing the ‘Waifs and Strays’ of the City: The Western Emigration Program of the Children’s Aid Society. Journal of Social History; Fall 99, Vol. 33, Issue 1, pp 121-141. Husock, H. (2008). Uplifting the “Dangerous Classes”: What Charles Loring Brace’s philanthropy can teach us today”. City Journal; Winter, 2008; Vol. 18, No. 1. Nelson, K. (1995). The Child Welfare Response to Youth Violence and Homelessness in the Nineteenth Century. Child Welfare; January-February 1995, Vol. 74, Issue 1, p 56, 15 p. O’Connor, S. (2001). Orphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ramsey, P. J. (2007, Spring). Wrestling with Modernity: Philanthropy and the Children’s Aid Society in Progressive-Era New York City. New York History, 88(2). Retrieved from http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/nyh/88.2/ramsey.html.