Girl's Childhood

Psychological Development, Social Change, and the Yale Child Study Center

Mayes Linda C., Lassonde Stephen, Weinstein Deborah

Sixty years ago, a group of prominent psychoanalysts, developmentalists, pediatricians, and educators at the Yale Child Center joined together with the purpose of formulating a general psychoanalytic theory of children's early development. The group's members composed detailed narratives about their work with the study's children, interviewed families regularly and visited them in their homes, and over the course of a decade met monthly for discussion. The contributors to this volume consider the significance of the Child Center's landmark study from various perspectives, focusing particularly on one child's unfolding sense of herself, her gender, and her relationships.

Reviews

"A formidable accomplishment and a gift to the scholarly community: this is the first thorough analysis we have of one of the richest archives in the history of the study of childhood. Its reflections on methodology will be of great interest to archivists and present-day longitudinal researchers, even as it finds a mandatory place on the shelf of all scholars of the history of childhood, the family, and mid-20th-century American psychoanalytic culture more generally" – Anne Harrington, Harvard University

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