family history

Blair L.M. Kelley Tells Black Working Class History Through Family

When the historian set out to write the history of working-class African Americans, her own family's stories proved the best place to begin. 

Authors Call for a Rethink of Birth and Motherhood

Peggy O'Donnell Heffington makes an assertive argument that the United States has a long history of official involvement in motherhood, from making reproduction near-compulsory for white women on one side of the color line to eugenics and sterilization on the other. 

Jeanne Manford's Support for her Gay Son was Revolutionary

At the time Manford began publicly supporting her own gay son and organizing a group for other parents of gay children, 49 states had laws criminalizing gay sex; the scope and bravery of her activism is difficult to appreciate today. 

How did Work Invade Our Idea of Marriage?

Why would people understand marriage through the frame of work and expect to be happy? Historian Kristin Celello explains the alternatives. 

New Resources Help Virginians Fill in Hidden Family Histories Including Enslaved Ancestors

“Researchers and librarians would say things like, 'That history just doesn’t exist.' Or, 'We just don’t have those records,'" Lydia Neuroth with the Library of Virginia explained. "But we are realizing we do. We just haven’t done a good job sharing it.”

Anthropologist on Gathering Family History: Ask Your Elders the Right Questions

University of Texas professor Elizabeth Keating was shocked by how few of her students could discuss their own family's history, and created a guide to investigating. 

A Family Therapist Looks to Historians for Insight on the Changing Forms of Family Estrangement

Stephanie Coonts and Steven Mintz say that the shift in family bonds from obligation and resources to personal growth and happiness have exacerbated tensions and increased the level of estrangement in multigenerational families. 

A Stranger's Gift: Family Photos from Before the Holocaust

Software engineer Daniel Patt has developed an artificial intelligence program that can expedite the searching of photos from repositories like Yad Vashem and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and has provided strangers with the gift of a connection to their relatives. 

The Clinton-Era Law that Still Devastates Black Families

by Dorothy E. Roberts

The Adoption and Safe Families Act mandated state intervention to protect children from neglect, but did nothing to ensure an economic and social safety net to mitigate hardship. The result, spurred by anti-Black tropes, was an acceleration of family breakup by state agencies. 

Our Adoption Policies have Harmed Children

by Mical Raz

Changes adopted under the Clinton administration elevated the adoption of children from foster care as a policy goal, which had the effect of marginalizing biological parents from the process, sometimes contrary to children's best interests. 

Empathy in the Archive: Care and Disdain for Wet Nursing Mothers

by Anna K. Danziger Halperin

"Just like today, women’s decisions in the past about how to feed their babies were shaped by personal preference, to be sure, but the possibilities available are bounded by technological innovations, shifting medical advice, and social, cultural, and economic pressures and practices."

Have We Chosen to Forget our Abolitionist Ancestors, Too?

by James D. Richardson

The author wonders whether his great-great grandfather's commitment to justice before and after emancipation became socially inconvenient and morally demanding to later generations in white America.

Among Other COVID Changes? The Role of Grandparents

by Sarah Stoller

"Just as they were in the 19th century, grandparents are now commonly expected to help, despite their own need for various kinds of support and assistance."

The Golden Age of "Traditional Marriage" Never Was

by Lauren Gutterman

Despite conservative mythologizing, married Americans in the postwar era frequently sought and secured space to explore same-sex attractions and relationships. These histories show that regardless of who controls the Supreme Court, conservatives will be unable to force a narrow model of family life on the public. 

New Digital Access to Freedmen's Bureau Records Boon to Black Genealogists

Ancestry.com has made 3.5 million records of the Freedmen's Bureau available to researchers, making family history and genealogy research much more accessible to African Americans and scholars of Black history. 

Web of Connections: Emma Rothschild's Microhistories of France

by David A. Bell

Historian David Bell reviews an effort to relate three centuries of French history through the lives of the descendants of one undistinguished eighteenth century Frenchwoman. 

The Persistent Joy of Black Women

by Leah Wright-Rigueur

For Black women, claiming joy in motherhood is a rebellion against the historical subjection of "Black mothers’ private lives... to public surveillance, scrutiny, and judgment."

A Supreme Court Case Poses a Threat to L.G.B.T.Q. Foster Kids

by Stephen Vider and David S. Byers

State and local social service agencies for decades have been actively working to protect the safety and dignity of queer youth in the foster care system. A Supreme Court case threatens that progress in the name of "religious freedom." 

The Untold Story of Queer Foster Families

by Michael Waters

Before the legal recognition of same-sex adoptive parents, social workers around the country made decisions to place gay and lesbian teens with gay and lesbian foster parents as a humane and protective act. 

Richard Nixon Bears Responsibility for the Pandemic’s Child-Care Crisis

by Anna K. Danziger Halperin

Today’s child-care crisis may have been fueled by the outbreak, but it is not new. It has been simmering below the surface for decades and can be traced back to President Richard M. Nixon’s 1971 veto of federally funded universal child care.