June 1999
Elizabeth Rose '87, A Mother's Job: The History of Day Care, 1890&endash;1960, Oxford University Press, 1999.
Child care policy is composed of a complicated set of state and federal regulations, tax credits, subsidies, and programs. These complications arise in part from the fact that we expect child care (including early education programs) to meet two goals simultaneously: We expect it to make it possible for parents of young children to work, and we expect it to enhance child development to ensure that children enter school ready to learn. Although it is possible to integrate these two goals, such care will be expensive--often too expensive for families to afford or for policy makers to support. But the complications arise from even deeper conflicts about whether we think mothers should be in the formal labor force or at home with their children--and the fact that society can have different expectations for women of different economic and racial or ethnic backgrounds.
Elizabeth Rose's richly textured case study of the development of day care in Philadelphia makes clear that these conflicts are not new. This important work builds upon Rose's meticulous review of case records and writings from a variety of participants, including day care workers, social workers, and philanthropists dealing with mothers, fathers, and children involved with day nurseries, nursery schools, and other providers of child care. She highlights the conflicting perceptions about the roles of women in the family and in the labor force, how these perceived roles vary with family structure and income, and how these perceptions have changed--or not--over time.
Her work begins with the early development of day care as charity for poor single mothers in Philadelphia, which was a major center in the early development of day care. She traces day care as it grew and changed to include the developmental needs of children and, subsequently, to include the needs of married mothers working to meet the growing demand for labor and those seeking to improve their family's economic well-being.
Simply tracking these transitions and transformations would have been an important contribution to our understanding of the process by which we reached the configuration of child care and early education services that are available to families today. Rose does much more than this: The story she gives us is in its own right a fascinating one. She uses the case records to develop a vivid, sometimes disturbing, and often moving picture of the lives of working women and their relationships with their own families, with the social workers and educators with whom they interacted to arrange for care of their children, with other women in the labor force, and with policy-makers who would determine whether child care would be available. This beautifully and movingly written book goes a long way toward helping us to understand how we have arrived at our current policies for meeting the needs of families and, more important, why it is so difficult to make these policies more rational, coherent, and consistent.
--Ellen Magenheim
Associate Professor of Economics
William R. Halliday '46, Floyd Collins of Sand Cave: A Photographic Memorial, Byron's Printing and Graphics, Louisville, 1998.
Even as humans explore outer space, vast mysteries remain below the earth's surface. And there are great stories to tell about the brave explorers of America's caves, even if they lack the celebrity of astronauts.
One of the boldest was an unlettered Kentuckian, who is the subject of this slim volume by William R. Halliday, past president of the American Spelean History Association. ("Spelean" comes from a Greek word for cave; some alumni will remember a campus spelunkers' club.)
Halliday takes us back to 1925 and "the remote Kentucky cave country when roads were few, schooling optional, and today's science of caves was unimaginable." Tourists were attracted to Mammoth Cave and others that constitute the world's most extensive cave system.
Collins, dubbed "the human groundhog," guessed correctly that most of the major caves were connected. He discovered and developed Crystal Cave on his family's farm, but it was too remote to attract many visitors. So he set out to find an entrance near Mammoth. One January day, he found a promising spot and started blasting and digging deep into Sand Cave--until his foot was trapped by a 27-pound rock.
Thus began one of those sagas that 20th-century media have turned into national melodramas. "Hopelessly buried alive," Halliday writes, "yet where his brothers and a courageous young cub reporter could crawl to him, talk with him, feed and comfort him while mobs brawled overhead; America had never known such prolonged suspense.... America waited tensely by new-fangled radios, eagerly sought out the latest newspaper extra edition."
The would-be rescuers reached Collins too late, and it was deemed too dangerous to recover his body. The shaft was filled, Halliday writes, "memorial services were held, ballads sprang into existence, and Floyd Collins took his place in the folklore of America." (One retelling is "Floyd Collins," a musical commissioned by the American Music Theater Festival in 1994; it won an Off-Broadway Obie Award and was revived this spring in Chicago and Philadelphia.)
Halliday tells the rest of the story--how Collins' family fought the decision to close the shaft and raised money to retrieve his body. The way they did this curiously anticipates today's TV infotainment interviews: by recounting the tragedy on the vaudeville circuit. Even a member of the recovery team took to the stage.
Collins was buried above his beloved Crystal Cave, but the circus wasn't over. The family sold that cave to an entrepreneur, with permission to move the grave to a spot where tourists could view the embalmed corpse. After some nasty court battles, at last Collins rested in peace.
Many of the publication's historic photographs are from the author's own collection, including real and fake photos of Collins' trapped body and a photo of his lantern and boots--with one boot bearing the indentation of that fatal rock.
--Barbara Haddad Ryan '59
Associate Vice President for External Affairs
Editor's Note: Halliday's privately published booklet is available for $4.95 from the author at 6530 Cornwall Court, Nashville TN 37205.
Other recent books
Peter Bart '54, The Gross: The Hits, The Flops--The Summer That Ate Hollywood, St. Martin's Press, 1999. Editor-in-chief of Variety, Bart spotlights the filmmaking of the summer of 1998 blockbusters.
Lauren Belfer '75, City of Light, The Dial Press, 1999. Set in Buffalo, N.Y., at the beginning of this century, this novel portrays city life at a time of great change.
Bob Carrick '53, Ventas: 55 Great Places to Eat in the Country within a Short Drive of the Costa del Sol, Santana Books, 1998. Carrick, who moved to southern Spain in 1981, reviews 55 unconventional restaurants called ventas.
Linda Grant De Pauw '61, Battle Cries and Lullabies: Women in War From Prehistory to the Present, University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. De Pauw, professor of history at George Washington University, places the current public policy debates about women in the military in a historical context.
Edward L. Galligan '48, The Truth of Uncertainty: Beyond Ideology in Science and Literature, University of Missouri Press, 1998. Galligan argues that contemporary American critics should embrace literary truths with all their ardent uncertainties rather than cling to the make-believe certainties of ideologies.
Neil Gershenfeld '81, When Things Start to Think, Henry Holt and Company, 1999. Gershenfeld envisions the future world of technology, based on today's laboratory, demanding that people respond to machines rather than vice versa. Neil Gershenfeld, The Nature of Mathematical Modeling, Cambridge University Press, 1999. This three-part book--complemented by a Web site with problems offering extensions and applications--discusses analytic techniques, numerical methods, and model inference based on observations.
Louise Hawes '65, Rosey in the Present Tense, Walker and Company, 1999. In this story about loss and memory, Hawes' characters struggle through sorrow to find comfort and freedom.
Stephen Henighan '84, North of Tourism, Cormorant Books, 1999. This collection of short stories explores the interactions of travelers crossing cultural boundaries.
Jacob Howland '80, The Paradox of Political Philosophy: Socrates' Philosophic Trial, Rowman & Littlefield, 1998. In this account of Plato's examination of Socrates, Howland interprets the Platonic dialogues.
Michael C. Hudson '59 (ed.), Middle East Dilemma: The Politics and Economics of Arab Integration, Columbia University Press, 1999. Contributors to this scholarly analysis explore the historical and current forces shaping this conflict-prone region.
Richard Martin '67, Our New Clothes: Acquistions of the 1990s, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999. Martin describes more than 100 photographs of costumes, accessories, and fashion illustrations acquired by The Costume Institute during the 1990s.
Franetta L. McMillian '83, The Sound of Light, Franetta L. McMillian, 1998. The author note in this volume of poetry, including "Naming the Monster" and "Unremarkable Child," states that if McMillian "didn't become a writer, she might have been an evil sorceress."
Martha M. (Merrill) Pickrell '60, Emma Speaks Out: Life and Writings of Emma Molloy (1839&endash;1907). Vol. II: Indiana Women Who Made a Difference traces the life of Emma Molloy, the first woman newspaper editor in northern Indiana.
Yopie Prins '81, Victorian Sappho, Princeton University Press, 1999. This work examines Victorian poetry, focusing on the Greek poet Sappho's lyrics.
David Rubinstein '54, But He'll Remember, William Sessions, 1999. Rubinstein weaves his life story, including leaving the States after graduating from Swarthmore and becoming a British citizen in 1964, with historical commentary.
Karen G. Gervais, Reinhard Priester, Dorothy E. Vawter, Kimberly K. Otte, and Mary Solberg '68 (eds.), Ethical Challenges in Managed Care: A Casebook, Georgetown University Press, 1999. By presenting 20 case studies involving ethical dilemmas, this book discusses the goals and practices of managed care.
Charles Sullivan '55, American Folk: Classic Tales Retold, Harry N. Abrams, 1998. This collection of American folk tales, illustrated with watercolors by artist Warren Infield, includes "George Washington and the Cherry Tree," "Pocahontas," and "John Henry."
Brenda (Schwabacher) Webster '58, Paradise Farm, State University of New York Press, 1999. This novel, set in 1929, addresses the threat of Hitler, women's changing roles, and the growth of the psychoanalytic movement.
Nancy Hope Wilson '69, Flapjack Waltzes, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1998. This children's tale about a 10-year-old girl and the death of her brother explores the process of loss and renewal.
Marie (Williams) Bellet '82, What I Wanted to Say, Elm Street Records, 1997. Bellet explores her role as wife and mother striving for holiness in everyday life. In a light acoustic style, she tries to offer hope and encouragement in songs like "One Heroic Moment," a piano ballad, and "If Only," a bluegrass waltz.
Rod Chronister '67, VisionLAB, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999. This educational multimedia program is an interactive study of the experience of human vision. Each study unit includes natural scenes, classic visual illusions, and perceptual challenges.
Harry Schulz '84, Havin' a Ball, New Artists, 1999. Jazz singer Schulz has written some original tunes with Andy Fite. His vocals are recorded with guitarist Fite, bassist Rich Califano, and drummer Roger Mancuso.
Vaneese Thomas '74, When My Back's Against the Wall, Peaceful Waters Music, 1998. In this gospel collection, Thomas wrote songs including "Love Is Surrender," "Say a Prayer," and "We Thank You," to "uplift, encourage, and soothe when life becomes a 'daily grind.'"
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