Status Updates From The Lost Children of Wilder...

In the late 1970's foster care had become one of NYC's hottest political issues.

"The Wilder gatherings were like convocations. Just walking into the room meant drawing the collective gaze of a dozen men who seemed to think you should be wearing an apron"

Through the 1950s, the rise of psychiatry and family-conflict theories of deviant juvenile behavior provided another gloss on the idea that acceptance of motherhood could transform an uncontrollable adolescent into a good woman-or at least a "well-adjusted" one. It was an approach that concorded particularly well with Catholicism. Pope Pius XII had declared in 1945 that every woman was called upon to be a mother...

When Italian immigration swelled, SPCC workers - Anglo-Saxon Protestants all - condemned garlic as a dangerous aphrodisiac; mothers who persisted in cooking with the herb were considered neglectful of their daughters' morals.