Golden Janet, Weiner Lynn
J Soc Hist. 2011;44(3):667-87. doi: 10.1353/jsh.2011.0030.
This article examines American baby books from the late nineteenth through the twentieth century. Baby books are ephemeral publications—formatted with one or more printed pages for recording developmental, health, and social information about infants and often including personal observations, artifacts such as photographs or palm prints, medical and other prescriptive advice, and advertisements. For historians they serve as records of the changing social and cultural worlds of infancy, offering insights into the interplay of childrearing practices and larger social movements.Baby books are a significant historical source both challenging and supporting current historiography, and they illustrate how medical, market and cultural forces shaped the ways babies were cared for and in turn how their won behavior shaped family lives. A typology of baby books includes the lavishly illustrated keepsake books of the late nineteenth century, commercial and public health books of the twentieth century, and on-line records of the present day. Themes that emerge over time include those of scientific medicine and infant psychology, religion and consumerism. The article relies on secondary literature and on archival sources including the collections of the UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library as well as privately held baby books.
本文考察了从19世纪末到20世纪的美国婴儿书籍。婴儿书籍是短暂性的出版物，其格式为有一页或多页印刷页面，用于记录婴儿的发育、健康和社会信息，通常还包括个人观察、照片或手印等物品、医学及其他规范性建议以及广告。对于历史学家来说，它们是婴儿所处不断变化的社会和文化世界的记录，能让人深入了解育儿方式与更大规模社会运动之间的相互作用。婴儿书籍是一个重要的历史资料来源，既对当前的历史编纂学提出挑战，又为其提供支持，它们还说明了医学、市场和文化力量如何塑造了照顾婴儿的方式，以及婴儿自身的行为又如何塑造了家庭生活。婴儿书籍的一种分类包括19世纪末插图丰富的纪念册、20世纪的商业和公共卫生书籍以及当今的在线记录。随着时间推移出现的主题包括科学医学和婴儿心理学、宗教和消费主义等主题。本文依赖二手文献以及档案资料，包括加州大学洛杉矶分校路易丝·M·达林生物医学图书馆的馆藏以及私人持有的婴儿书籍。
