Why did the infants and toddlers die? Shifts in Americans' ideas of responsibility for accidents -- from blaming Mom to engineering.

Abstract

Changes in ideas about risk and responsibility in injuries are found in American public discourse about who was responsible for accidents that hurt or killed very young children (under six years old). Parents and, in a gendered nineteenth-century world, especially mothers were-blamed for children's injuries. As the world of infectious diseases gave way to medical intervention, injuries became more conspicuous in mortality and morbidity statistics, especially for preschoolers, and home safety campaigns intensified. In the mid-twentieth century, care-givers more generally shared responsibility with mothers, and new public health campaigns emphasized educating parents-and children. Child-rearing authorities emphasized psychological causes of accidents. Near the end of the century, engineering solutions, emphasizing childproofing a youngster's surroundings, offered a technological fix for physical danger, as in medicine bottle caps, and much responsibility passed to purchased items in the child's environment. Language: en