Every Picture Tells a Story: Parenting Advice Books Provide a Window on the Past

This paper comprises a collection of illustrations, along with background information, analysis, and commentary, from “baby books”—advice books published in the United States for a parent audience from the 1890s to the 1980s. These publications, and especially their drawings and photos, provide a window on past child rearing practices and beliefs. The paper provides historical background on parenting behaviors such as toilet training and infant feeding, then traces changes over time through drawings and photos that appeared in parenting advice publications. These publications grew in popularity as changing work and family structures removed traditional sources of information for parents, and scientific information and expert guidance took their place. Publications from a variety of sources, but especially the U.S. Children’s Bureau, are explored. A finding of note is that images of babies and their families, which in earlier publications were entirely white and middle class, became more diverse over time. The author concludes that published parental advice from professionals made for a fascinating study, was ideologically driven, and often lacked a basis in empirical scientific knowledge of child development, and therefore asserts that parents may regard such advice conditionally.

Blame the Snobs

This chapter highlights the role of the “snobs” in complicating the English language. The whole idea that there was a “correctness” to aim for in English developed slowly, but really took off in the 18th century. It was the age of etiquette and the codification of social rules. Pretty soon there were books on good language too. The first major dictionary of English, Samuel Johnson's dictionary of 1755, was published during this time, and it became a source of authority for spelling. But the advice books and newspaper columns on language usage that followed in the 19th century were more extreme in their pronouncements. In this environment of very public, and intentionally humiliating, language monitoring, a cloud of insecurity developed and perpetuated itself. It is important to note that the Standard English—the “correct,” authorized version—is unsystematic and illogical enough on its own. Some of that is the result of the natural accumulation of historical forces, but some of it comes from intentional meddling.

Early Vernacular Medical Advice Books and Their Popular Appeal in Early Modern Italy

The essay considers the explosion of medical advice publications in the vernacular thatcharacterises the first two centuries of printing, and in particular their chronology and the different textual genres that made up this literature in early modern Italy. It shows that, in spite of the almost exclusive focus on recipe books in recent scholarship, the composition of this literature was much more varied and regimens of health, food regimens, books about the medicinal properties of naturalia, and compendia of medical information of various kinds (diagnostic, preventative and therapeutic) matched and sometimes exceeded the fortune of recipe books. It then goes on to ask what made some vernacular medical advice books particularly appealing to a wide non-professional and non-Latinate audience,while apparently similar publications attracted little interest. To this end it pays unprecedented attention to the full range of elements that determined the appeal of a book: its physical and typographical features, its contents and implicit functions, its author, patron, publisher and geographical reach.

“The Noblest Roman of them all?” Professional versus Popular Views of America’s Country Doctors

This essay studies the images, perceptions, and values of the professional medical journals, as well as popular sources such as magazine and films, to show that the country doctor was a contested figure in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The country doctor’s image embodied competing ideals of a racialized professional and masculine identity that included both place as well as visions of science. Medical professionals pressed an image in their journals and professional advice books that mapped a celebration of science and its predictive value onto urban places that were enshrined in hospitals and laboratory facilities. The public, while embracing this image, also embraced a second one shown in popular media that glorified the self-sacrificing rural solo practitioner. This practitioner’s wisdom came from long contact with patients, he was dedicated to seeing patients in their homes, and his identity was based in the larger needs of the entire community.

People of the book, women of the body

Jews have often been referred to as ‘People of the book.’ This is because books, specifically those that contain rabbinic legal discourse, are understood to be authoritative guides for Jewish life, and those who have achieved mastery in the content of the books are considered authorities. Although ‘people of the book’ is often used to refer to all Jews, book culture has been almost entirely constructed by men, particularly among ultra-Orthodox Jews. This article offers a different framework, one which sees women’s religious authority growing out of embodied experiences. Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) women challenge the dominant paradigm for religious authority by insisting that their pregnant bodies replace books and rabbis. While a woman’s body might be seen as an impediment to her religious authority, I argue that women become capable of exercising religious authority through their embodied experiences of bearing children. During my two years of ethnographic research with Haredi women in Jerusalem, I found that after giving birth to two or three children, Haredi women felt authorized to make decisions about their pregnancies without consulting a rabbi. After a woman has two or three children, she develops what I refer to as ‘reproductive literacy,’ meaning she knows how to use her embodied reproductive experiences as knowledge, expertise, and thus authority over reproduction. Through a close reading of pregnancy advice books and an analysis of how Haredi women use these books, I show that how Haredi women embody authority to make decisions about the maintenance and continuation of Haredi life.

Going, Going, Gone

Marriage markets have existed since ancient times. Parents in traditional cultures routinely negotiate for the best deal possible. This fact is so taken for granted that when queried about “markets,” parents attempting to arrange such pairings have trouble even understanding the question. How could it be otherwise? In the West, for much of the past two centuries, young Romeos and Juliets have insisted they will marry for love. Is it possible that we are now coming full circle? People on websites are often eminently practical, using blatant metaphors of the marketplace. Advice books talk about selling yourself and creating your brand. They advise men and women to shop around, to realize there are always trade-offs, to do a cost-benefit analysis, and not to settle for damaged goods. Or they advise that it is wise to invest in a relationship before your market value plummets, and try to position yourself to optimize your romantic options, to be aware that there are opportunity costs in committing to the wrong partner. This chapter discusses market considerations in love.

Peer Leader Reflections on Promoting Discussion in Peer Group-Learning Sessions: Reflective and Practiced Advice through Collaborative Annual Peer-Advice Books

As research has shown, collaborative peer learning is effective for improving student learning. Peer-led team learning (PLTL) is one well-known collaborative-group approach in which groups are facilitated by trained undergraduate peer leaders. This paper contributes to the literature on peer-leader training by examining how peer leaders for a large introductory science course translate their training into practice during their sessions. By conducting qualitative analysis on annual advice books written by emergent peer leaders, we examined the practiced advice and strategies of these peer leaders as they facilitate PLTL groups in a university-level general chemistry course. These advice books are passed on to future peer instructors, creating a community of practice between new and more experienced peer leaders. From the analysis, we discovered that peer leaders focus on developing robust student–student discussion during complex problem solving by 1) creating a community-oriented social and intellectual environment, 2) adapting their tactics and the collaborative-learning strategies to balance different personalities and promote equal participation among all students, and 3) modifying collaborative group approaches when facilitating their sessions. Also, in their correspondence across cohorts, peer leaders provided near-peer support to one another. These annual books disseminate practiced advice between peer-leader generations and are used during new peer-leader training.

The “Use of Lines in Your Clothing Will Work Magic”: Advice to Women From 1914 to 1961 on Using Line to Design an Ideal Body Type

Women have sought and received advice on how to dress for as long as they have been putting clothing on their bodies. One area in which women have received advice on dressing for their body type is the use of line in dress as an illusion to change the way body shape and size is perceived. This study was undertaken to gain a better historical understanding of advice on dressing for different body types between 1914 and 1961. Advice books and textbooks written for women from 1914 to 1961 that included prescriptive information on how to dress for various body types were explored. This time period was selected as it coincides with critical years in the growth and maturity of the home economic movement in the United States. A content analysis of 15 historical texts revealed trends found within the themes of body ideal, line as illusion, and figure types.

Discourses of “Herbivore Masculinity” in Japanese Love Advice Books

In the last decade, discourses of non-conforming masculinities have become increasingly prominent in Japanese mass media. In particular, the so-called “herbivore men” have been made infamous by Japanese newspapers and were accused of being responsible for sinking birth rates and economic stagnation in Japan (Schad-Seifert 2016). In this article, I explore the discourse on the “herbivore men” in Japanese love advice books which are meant to guide and inform the (female) reader’s assessment of potential romantic partners. Utilising Siegfried Jäger’s methodological approach (2015), this discursive analysis focuses on the line of discourse that implicitly criticises the “herbivore men” and rejects their turn away from hegemonic images of masculinity. The analysis yields that the “herbivore man” is constructed as an ‘unnatural’ form of masculinity in these publications, which allegedly causes women to become sexually active and career-driven “carnivores.” Japanese women’s empowerment from hegemonic gender ideals is thereby misrepresented as a symptom of psychological distress due to changing masculinities. By perpetuating ideas of biological determinism linked to the backlash against the “gender-free” movement in the early 2000s, this line of discourse propagates problematic relations of gender and power in Japanese society.