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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Creating Dad: The Remaking of Middle-Class Fatherhood in the United States from 1900- 1930 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4w79j653 Author Hinkle, Caroline Mills Publication Date 2011 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Creating Dad: The Remaking of Middle-Class Fatherhood in the United States from 1900-1930 By Caroline Mills Hinkle A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Paula Fass, Chair Professor David Henkin Professor Mary Ann Mason Fall 2011 Abstract Creating Dad: The Remaking of Middle-Class Fatherhood in the United States from 1900-1930 by Caroline Mills Hinkle Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Paula Fass, Chair Between 1900 and 1930, a wide variety of authors, journalists, parenting experts, boyworkers, and social scientists expressed interest in fostering closer father-child relationships in the United States. As the interest in fatherhood grew through the late- 1910s and 1920s, authors promoting greater paternal involvement also reinterpreted what it meant to be a good father, focusing more on play and camaraderie and less on discipline and education. This dissertation argues that the changing ideal of fatherhood was the result of conscious efforts to convince men to take a more active role in parenting, to revitalize fatherhood by distinguishing the fun, youthful, modern father from the stodgy, Victorian patriarchs of the previous generation. The modern father even had a new name: “Dad.” Interest in fostering greater paternal participation in child-rearing grew in part out of a fear of the “feminization” of boys and particularly emphasized the benefits of fathers’ involvement with sons, but efforts to engage fathers more fully with their children were even more focused on the imagined benefits for men. Authors fretted over the skyrocketing divorce rate and the erosion of the shared economic function of the family and sought to tie the father more tightly to the middle-class home. The changing ideals of fatherhood reflect a more child-centered, democratic middle-class family and a new valuation of youthfulness. This dissertation explores a variety of efforts to connect fathers more fully with their children and to make fatherhood seem modern and fun. Such concerns can be seen in efforts to design homes to appeal more to masculine sensibilities, in efforts to increase father participation in child-focused organizations, in more inclusive advice literature, and in the growth of popular humor about fatherhood. In addition to these developments, fathers began seeking parenting groups and books of their own, and the 1910s and 1920s saw the growth of fathers’ clubs, fathering classes, father-child organizations and events, and books on childrearing written specifically for and by fathers. Rather than joining 1 their wives in parenting groups, these men reached out to other fathers in an acknowledgement of what some called a “fraternity of fatherhood.” 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements .............................................................................................. ii Introduction .............................................................................................................1 Chapter 1. From Mother’s Enforcer to Boy’s Pal: The Changing Ideal of Fatherhood in the American Middle Class, 1900-1930 ..................11 Chapter 2: Fitting In: Finding Room for Men and Boys in the Middle-Class Home ..................................................................39 Chapter 3: From Mothering to Parenting: Child-Rearing Experts and the Inclusion of Fathers ................................................................71 Chapter 4: The Fraternity of Fatherhood: Fathers’ Organizations of the Early Twentieth Century....................124 Chapter 5: Humor and Condescension in Portrayals of Fatherhood, 1900 to 1930 ......................................................................................175 Epilogue: Reflections on Being in the First Generation of “Dads”: Frederic Van de Water Looks Back ..................................................214 i Acknowledgments I would like first to thank my advisor, Paula Fass, not only for the encouragement she gave me as a student, but for the extraordinarily positive and supportive attitude she had toward my sometimes clumsy efforts to find a balance between being a scholar and a parent. Paula assured me that there is room in academics for people who make a whole variety of choices about how to pursue their careers and balance them with parenthood. For this, I have more gratitude than I can describe. In addition to this, Paula is a model of scholarship and an enormously helpful advisor. She offered insightful advice and matched my enthusiasm for my topic at every turn. I am exceedingly fortunate to have her as a mentor. I would also like to thank the other members of my dissertation committee, David Henkin and Mary Ann Mason, for their support and assistance. Their astute critiques have made my project stronger and their advice will continue to help me as I move forward. I had the good fortune to meet Gary Cross when he spent a year at the Center for Working Families in Berkeley while I was a fellow there. Over the following years, he offered me guidance and advice as I researched and wrote. His support of this project has been a great help to me as has his scholarship on masculinity and childhood. I would also like to thank the staffs of the following libraries and archives: The Knights of Columbus Archives; The Kautz Family YMCA Archives at the University of Minnesota; the Iowa State Historical Society; The Hudson Library and Historical Society of Ohio; the University of California, Berkeley Library and its Bancroft Library; the Rush Rhees Library at the University of Rochester; the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at Strong, the National Museum of Play; the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee Archives; the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University; and the Archives and Special Collections Library at Vassar College. I met with universally helpful and knowledgeable people in my dealings with these libraries and collections and I am very grateful for their assistance. I am appreciative of the financial support of the Department of History at U. C. Berkeley, which awarded me fellowships through the years, as well as the Sloan Foundation’s Center for Working Families at U.C. Berkeley, which awarded me a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship and a summer research stipend. I was fortunate to be able to present work at various conferences and I am grateful to my fellow panelists and conference attendees for their insightful comments and questions. The U.C. Berkeley history department’s graduate adviser, Mabel Lee, offered her friendly assistance in navigating the university. My colleagues in the Berkeley history department provided a fun and exciting intellectual environment in which to work. Ellen Berg, especially, provided her support through every stage of this project, sharing sources, reading drafts, and talking with me for hours about my work. The friendship of ii Ellen and her family is one of the best things to come out of my happy time in graduate school. I could not possibly have finished this dissertation without the love, patience and support of my family. I am grateful for the support of my parents, David and Patty Hinkle, which has come in many forms. My daughters, Elise, Lydia, and Nora have provided me with inspiration, encouragement, purpose, and joy. My husband, David McCamant, has been unfailingly enthusiastic, supportive, and kind. He always sees the best in everything— especially in me—and that is a gift I draw from every day. When I was working on my last chapter on humor and condescension toward fathers, I overheard my daughter Elise skeptically tell her friend, “My mother says she is writing a dissertation, but all she seems to do is read comics all day long.” This made me smile and reflect that I have been either very clever or very lucky in choosing a topic for which the sources have held such interest and fun for me. I have enjoyed researching this material immensely, even enjoyed reading old comic strips for hours every day, and for this I am very grateful. It is encouraging and even uplifting to look back and read the words of men and women struggling to improve the lives of families, to read the words of men reaching out to fellow fathers to offer encouragement and support. I did not always agree with the authors I read, but I admired the project of trying to create closer, happier families. iii Introduction In 1925, Frederic F. Van de Water, a self-described “Dub Father,” wrote an article for the Ladies’ Home Journal in which he discussed the problems facing modern fathers. Van de Water characterized himself as bewildered and blustering, following blindly in the footsteps of his own father. The images that accompany the article show a confused and wondering father, scratching his head, while the mother seems decidedly more sure of herself. Van de Water wrote, Mothers are better equipped for parenthood than fathers are. In addition, in support of maternal instinct, there is a continually growing mass of literature on motherhood. …Nothing of which I am aware has ever been done to enlighten a father concerning his part in the delicate task of child rearing. He has neither instinct nor education to help him. I spent four years in two long-suffering universities. I can stumble through an account of the industrial revolution, and I still recall a half dozen chemical symbols. But I don’t know what to do when one’s son is afraid of the dark.1 He continued in this vein, describing his confusion in dealing with various parenting dilemmas. The author depicted fathers as ill-equipped and puzzled, but his descriptions of his own confusion suggest that he was an involved, conscientious, gentle father.

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