Save Our Children: The Sexual Politics of Child Protection in the United States, 1965-1990 explores how social and political movements redefined the meaning of citizenship and civil rights between 1965 and 1990 by deeming certain political and cultural transformations harmful to children. It shows how three diverse groups used child protection as a political tool to reject the expansion of free expression, shape sexual and gender norms, and transform the meaning of minority civil rights: Anita Bryant's anti-gay movement, Save Our Children; the anti-pornography feminist organization, Women Against Pornography; and Tipper Gore's anti-obscenity movement, Parents' Music Resource Center. It also traces this process to Nixon-era political discourses on the "permissive society" and the "silent majority." Save Our Children argues that these attempts to protect children ultimately served to regulate the identities, behaviors and rights of adults, while helping to justify a white middle-class "majoritarian" politics. Each chapter focuses on national struggles and emphasizes the intersections between cultural and electoral politics, identity-based social movements and the mass media. By demonstrating that childhood became a privileged site to negotiate sexual mores, this study of the history of child protection also allows for a deeper understanding of the rise of social conservatism, the backlash against feminism, racial integration and gay rights, and the definition of social citizenship after 1965.
Frank, Gillian Avrum,
"Save Our Children: The Sexual Politics of Child Protection, 1965-1990"
(2008).
American Studies Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z01N7ZJB
