The language of childen's rights, the formation of the welfare state, and the democratic experience of poor families in Quebec, 1940-55

Canadian Historical Review

Volumn 78, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 409-442

  Marshall, Dominique ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 1842735577     PISSN: 00083755     EISSN: 17101093     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3138/CHR.78.3.409     Document Type: Review

References (132)

1. Département de l'Instruction publique, Instructions concernant la loi de fréquentation scolaire obligatoire (Quebec 1943), 2, 12
2. Canada, Débats de la Chambre des communes, 1944 (Ottawa: King's Printer 1944), 2
3. Canada, Department of National Health and Welfare (dnhw), Family Allowances: A Children's Charter (Ottawa: King's Printer, nd)
4. Linda Gordon, 'Putting Children First: Women, Maternalism, and Welfare in the Twentieth Century,' Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin-Madison, January 1993, Discussion Paper no 991-993 The formula has also been used by the Save the Children Fund; see, for instance, the brochure published by the Public Affairs Department, Putting Children First, Past and Present (London 1995), order code 550241
5. S.J. Stoljar, 'Children, Parents and Guardians,' in Max Rheinstein, ed., Persons and Families, vol.4 of the International Encyclopedia of Comparative Law, International Association of Legal Science (New York: Oceana Publications 1973), 16 and 42-43
6. The conclusions of this piece are limited to Quebec. Because social legislation was mainly the responsibility of the provinces, they are the logical units of analysis. Even the Department of National Health and Welfare had to rely on provincial schooling authorities and welfare agencies to implement the program of federal family allowances; for this reason it chose to base its work in regional offices located in the capital of each province. This choice of scope shouldn't minimize the idea that federal programs were at once the sign and the instrument of a homogeneization of social and political experiences among Canadians; for a development of these problems of boundaries and identity, see my 'Nationalisme et politiques sociales au Québec depuis 1867: Un siècle de rendez-vous manqués entre l'Etat, l'Eglise et les familles,' British Journal of Canadian Studies 9, 2 (1994): 301-347
7. Marc E. Palmer, 'The Origins and Implementation of Family Allowances in Canada' (ma thesis, Queen's University 1976)
8. Raymond Blake, 'Mackenzie King and the Genesis of Family Allowances in Canada, 1939-1944,' in Raymond Blake and Jeff Keshen, eds., Social Welfare Policy in Canada (Toronto: Copp Clark 1995), 244-54
9. Thérèse Hamel, 'L'obligation scolaire au Québec: Enjeu pour le mouvement syndical et agricole,' Labour/Le Travail 17 (spring 1986): 83-104
10. and 'Obligation scolaire et travail des enfants au Québec, 1900-1950,' Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française 38, 1 (1984): 39-58
11. and 'Reconstruction Politics, the Canadian Welfare State and the Formation of Children's Rights, 1940-1950,' in Greg Donaghy, ed., Uncertain Horizons: Canadians and Their World in 1945 (Ottawa: Canadian Committee for the History of the Second World War 1996), 261-283
12. I borrow the expression from Jacques Commaille, Familles sans justice? Le droit et la justice face aux transformations de la famille (Paris: Le Centurion 1982), 128
13. Gordon, 'Putting Children First,' 8
14. Jose Harris, 'Political Thought and the Welfare State, 1870-1940: An Intellectual Framework for British Social Policy,' Past and Present 135 (May 1992): 117-18, 123
15. See also Jane Lewis, 'The Boundary between Voluntary and Statutory Social Service in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,' Historical Journal 39, 1 (1996): 159
16. Gareth Stedman Jones, 'The Determinist Fix: Some Obstacles to the Further Development of the Linguistic Approach to History in the 1990s,' History Workshop Journal 42 (autumn 1996): 28-29
17. Arlette Farge, La vie fragile (Paris: Hachette 1986), 11 and 322 (my translation)
18. Arlette Farge, La vie fragile Ibid., 12
19. Charles Taylor, 'Interpretation and the Sciences of Man,' Philosophical Papers, vol.2 (1985; Cambridge 1993)
20. In an article in favour of a rejuvenation of the 'linguistic approach,' Stedman Jones identifies precisely such 'notions of right,' within 'states which abide by norms of legality,' as 'indispensable to the task of historical explanation.' 'The Determinist Fix,' 31
21. Hannah Arendt, 'Action,' in The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1989), 198. This life of the polis was defined in opposition to the life of the household, where relations of subjection prevailed, and where citizens freed themselves from the necessities of existence
22. The expression is from Philippe Raynaud, 'Droit, histoire, philosophie,' Le Débat, 72 (Nov. 1992): 202. This project also addresses important aspects of the current debates on the meaning of children's rights: although many analysts agree that 'the very citizenship and status of children and their rights have become common currencies in the political agenda,' they believe that the 'relationship between law and social change' remains one of the least-studied aspects of children's rights
23. Steward Asquith and Malcolm Hill, 'Introduction,' Justice for Children (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff 1994), 12
24. and Philip Alston, 'The Best Interest Principle: Towards a Reconciliation of Culture and Human Rights,' in The Best Interest of the Child (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1994), 1-25
25. Jürgen Habermas, 'What Is Universal Pragmatics,' in Communication and the Evolution of Society (Boston: Beacon Press 1979), 1-68
26. translated by Thomas McCarthy. See also the discussion of 'Consensus' by Raymond Boudon and François Bourricaud in their Dictionnaire critique de la sociologie, 2nd éd. (Paris: Presses universitaires de France 1982), 111-115
27. The Human Condition, 35. She located the apparition of the welfare state, 'a gigantic, nation-wide administration of housekeeping,' at the centre of the problem (28)
28. Irène Théry, 'Vie privée et monde commun. Réflexions sur l'enlisement gestionnaire du droit,' Le Débat, 1995, 14-42
29. For a similar reasoning about Athenian law, see Arendt, The Human Condition, 29, n. 16
30. Stoljar, 'Children, Parents and Guardians,' 3
31. Archives de la Cour du Bien-être social de Montréal (acbes), 1944, 241, 7659, letters of the mother, 11 Feb. and 19 March 1946
32. Jeunesse ouvrière catholique (joc), 'Le problème des jeunes qui ne fréquentent plus l'école,' École sociale populaire 351 (April 1943): 30
33. M.L., Saint-Lasarre, to Victor Doré, 4 July 1944, Centre de documents semi-actifs (cdsa) des Archives nationales du Québec à Québec (anqq), 1946-789, 112 398
34. Paul-André Linteau, René Durocher, and Jean-Claude Robert, Histoire du Québec contemporain: Le Québec depuis 1930 (Montréal: Boréal 1986), 93
35. I have developed this point in 'The Decline of Child Labour in Quebec, 1940-1960: Conflict between Poor Families and the State,' in Tina Loo and Lorna McLean, eds., Historical Perspectives on Law and Society in Canada (Toronto: Copp Clark 1994), 254-88
36. and in Dominique Jean, 'Family Allowances and Family Autonomy: Québec, 1945-1955,' in Bettina Bradbury, ed., Canadian Family History: Selected Readings (Toronto: Copp Clark 1992), 401-437
37. Départment de l'Instruction publique (dip), Recensement scolaire, septembre 1943, 2
38. Recensement scolaire, septembre 1944, 2, 78
39. John Porter, The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1965), 175. For a detailed analysis of the decrease in child labour, see my 'Decline of Child Labour.'
40. Bilodeau to Doré, 'Notes pour le surintendant à propos de la fréquentation obligatoire aux États-Unis,' 10 Dec. 1942, anqq, e-13, c.r., 1942-2199, box 2223 (my translation)
41. Family allowances legislators had thought of an administrative tribunal that would settle problems of interpretation of the law; compulsory schooling lawmakers had envisaged a widespread network of parents' associations where adults would support schools, but neither institution was much used by poor families. The letters written to R.B. Bennett during the Depression by citizens in hardship do not contain a rhetoric of equality to the same extent; L.M. Grayson and Michael Bliss, eds., The Wretched of Canada: Letters to R.B. Bennett, 1930-1935 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1971)
42. Cynthia Comacchio, in her study of Ontario public health campaigns during the first forty years of the twentieth century, has written about a set of exchanges more comparable in its nature, but less systematic and widespread, around letters of advice from provincial nurses to expecting and new mothers. Nations Are Made of Babies: Saving Ontario's Mothers and Children, 1900-1940 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1993)
43. See also Ernest Couture, director of the Division de l'hygiène maternelle et infantile to the Minister of National Health and Welfare, La mère canadienne et son enfant (Ottawa: King's Printer 1946), 16th reprint. A similar process was at work when some mothers, among the hundreds of thousands who accepted the offer included with the monthly family allowance cheque to order a free copy of The Canadian Mother and Child, returned letters explaining how helpful it had been for members of their neighbourhood or of their family. The set of letters I found was collected in a binder by a public official and saved by John Taylor, former librarian of the now closed library of the Department of National Health and Welfare; a photocopy of most of them is in my possession
44. From $5 to 8 per child, well below the cost of raising a child
45. I have analysed this phenomenon in 'Les familles québé coises et l'obligation scolaire, 1943-1960,' Lien social et politiqueBriac 35 (spring 1996): 13-21
46. A woman from Montreal to the minister, 21 June 1943, anqq, e 24, 222, a-8. See also J.L. Blanchard, mp for Terrebonne, to Tremblay, 10 Oct. 1946, anqq, e 24, 263, a-8
47. Canada, dnhw, Économisez les vivres (1946)
48. in fact, this leaflet was produced in collaboration with the service in charge of nutrition information for families during the war. dnhw, You and Your Family (Ottawa: King's Printer 1949), 23-25
49. R. Blishen, J. Cawley, and J.E. Pearson, 'Family Allowances in Montreal: A Study of Their Uses and Meaning in a Selected Group of Wage Earning Families' (ma thesis, McGill University 1948), 93
50. Thérèse Roy, 'Influence économique et sociale des allocations familiales' (thèse de ma, Université de Montréal 1949), 47
51. Maurice Tremblay, Albert Faucher, and J.-C. Falardeau, Family Allowances in Quebec City: Report of a Study in the Faculty of Social Sciences of Laval University (Quebec 1951), 45 (found in National Archives of Canada [na], dnhw, rg 29, r233/100-63-2)
52. Théry, 'Vie privée,' 144 (my translation)
53. cdsa, 1943-11200, cas no 67
54. See, for instance, the publicity of the twelfth annual fundraising drive of the Fédération des oeuvres de charité canadiennes-françaises in La Presse, 25 Feb. 1944, 19. Some pamphlets in favour of universal family allowances of the early 1940s were still based on representations of poor children - for example, Dorothy Stepler's 'Family Allowances for Canada,' Behind the Headlines 3, 2 (1943), published by the Canadian Institute of International Affairs and the Canadian Association for Adult Education
55. Marcel Gauchet and Gloria Swain, La pratique de l'esprit humain: L'institution asilaire et la révolution démocratique (Paris: nrf Gallimard 1980), 18. Judging by the sample assembled by Mark Choko, war posters promoting Victory Bonds seem to be showing a similar shift during the interwar years: in 1914-18, images of children were used to symbolize the private world under threat; but in 1939-45 children were depicted outside familiar and domestic scenes, on their own with a flag in the background, more as an invocation of a public future. See for instance the contrast between pages 187, 141, and 115, for the Great War, and no 81, page 187, together with no 64, for the Second World War, although as shown on page 77 and in no 65, private images of children were still used in the old way: Canadian War Posters, 1914-1918, 1939-1945 (Montreal: Éditions du Méridien 1994)
56. Paul Hubert, brief no 30, anqq, e-13, c.r., 1942-1996, box 2218; J.A. Ross, Sagabec, 28 March 1942, anqq, e-13, 1942-2294, box 2235
57. dip, Instructions, 7; Bruce Curtis has noted that this 'discourse of pleasure' was already crucial to the rhetoric of Ontario reformers of the late nineteenth century. See his Building the Educational State: Canada West, 1836-1871 (London: Althouse Press 1988), 378-9
58. See also Louise Charpentier, 'Les programmes et les manuels d'histoire de la réforme scolaire de 1948,' (ma thesis, Université de Sherbrooke 1983), 31
59. Humphries S., Hooligans or Rebels: An Oral History of Working-Class Childhood and Youth, 1889-1939, 1981.
60. As recent inquiries have suggested - for example, Madeleine Gauthier and Lucie Mercier, La pauvreté chez les jeunes: Précarité économique et fragilité sociale. Un bilan (Quebec: Institut québécois de recherches sur la culture 1994), 115
61. Jeanne Grisé-Allard, 'Les allocations familiales: Un chèque bien employé,' Relations 7 92 (1948): 240
62. Irène Théry, 'La référence à l'intérêt de l'enfant: usage judiciaire et ambiguïtés,' in Odile Bourguignon, Jean-Louis Rallu, and Irène Théry, eds., Du divorce et des enfants (Paris: Presses universitaires de France 1985), 36-42, Ministère de la Justice and ined, Collection Travaux et documents, No 111
63. acbes, 44-7593, 44-7954, 44-8512, 47-251, 47-371, 48-338, 48-388, 48-2047
64. Gérald Fortin, 'Socio-cultural Changes in an Agricultural Parish,' in Marcel Rioux and Yves Martin, eds., French-Canadian Society, vol.2 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 1964), 104
65. Charles E. Strickland and Andrew M. Ambrose, 'The Baby Boom, Prosperity, and the Changing Worlds of Children, 1945-1963,' in Joseph M. Hawes and N. Ray Hiner, eds., American Childhood: A Research Guide and Historical Handbook (Westport: Greenwood Press 1985)
66. joc, 'Mémoire sur l'orientation des jeunes travailleurs,' 1944, not published, found in anqq, cdsa, 1944-2629, box 112 314, and joc, 'Le problème des jeunes'
67. On the evolution of 'interdependency,' see the introduction of Gill Jones and Claire Wallace, Youth, Family and Citizenship (Buckingham: Open University Press 1992)
68. Godbout J.T., A propos de culture et de pauvreté, Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue D'études Canadiennes, 1995, 30,1.
69. Ruth Roach Pierson traced many occurrences of the withdrawal of government promotion of women's work in They're Still Women After All: The Second World War and Canadian Womanhood (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 1986)
70. Peter McInnis noted a similar movement in the advertisements of banks during the late months of the war and the immediate afterwar in 'Planning Prosperity: Canadians Debate Postwar Reconstruction,' in Donaghy, ed., Uncertain Horizons, 231-260
71. Arendt, The Human Condition, 57
72. 'Entretien avec Philippe Ariès,' Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, no 19, spring 1979 (my translation)
73. 'Loi concernant la fréquentation scolaire obligatoire,' 7 Geo, VI, 1943, c.21, art.290s
74. Rapport annuel du Service du bien-être du Bureau régional des allocations familial de Québec, 1954-1955, na, rg 29, vol.1283. See also R.H. Parkinson, 'Ten Years of Family Allowances,' Canadian Welfare 21, 4 (1955): 195-200
75. Raymand Boudon and F. Bourricaud, 'Egalitarisme,' Dictionnaire critique de la sociologie (Paris: Presses universitaires de France 1985), 217-218
76. acbes, 44-7593, 47-50, 45-8512, 46-92, 48-388, 48-55, 48-1814, 48-2099, 47-1800, 47-29, 46-488, 46-500, 46-729, 44-9802. New universal laws used judicial devices elaborated in the early twentieth century for young delinquents. Designed to protect children from harmful families and from harmful adult detention sites, and also to protect society from these children, that legislation had helped the state to tighten its grip on children and families. Neil Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society: Framing the Twentieth-Century Consensus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1976), 149-50
77. Jeffrey S. Leon, 'New and Old Themes in Canadian Juvenile Justice: The Origins of Delinquency Legislation and the Prospects for Recognition of Children's Rights,' in Heather Berkeley et al., eds., Children's Rights: Legal and Educational Issues (Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education 1978), 91-154
78. Philippe Meyer, L'enfant et la raison d'Etat (Paris: Point 1977), 184
79. Boudon and Bourricaud, 'Égalitarisme,' 217-18 (my translation)
80. 'Home Thoughts: Germaine Greer on the Folly of "Children's Rights,"' The Independent Magazine, 20 Jan. 1990, 16
81. Jones and Wallace, Youth, Family, and Citizenship, chaps. 1 and 7
82. See also Boudon et Bourricaud, 'Egalitarisme,' 214-15
83. On the language and fictions of the social contract, see Carole Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation (Cambridge: Polity Press 1985)
84. acbes, cases nos 48-156, 48-660, 47-262, 47-479, 44-7659, 44-8019, 44-7854
85. cdsa, 1943-1200, cases nos 5-8, 6-2; acbes, 48-115
86. acbes, 47-640, 46-92, 46-378
87. Quoted in Rapport annuel du Surintendant de l'Instruction publique (rasip), 1947-1948, 95-6
88. See also C.E. Boily, rasip, 1943-1944, 59; D. Savard, rasip, 1945-1946, 55; Conseil de développement social de Montréal, 'L'éducation dans les milieux défavorisés,' in Pierre W. Bélanger et Guy Rocher, eds., École et société au Québec: Élements pour une sociologie de l'éducation (Montréal: hmh 1970), 351
89. Philippe Guarrigue, 'St Justin: A Case Study in Rural French- Canada,' in Études sur le Canada français (Montréal: Université de Montréal, Faculté des sciences sociales, économiques et politiques 1958), 41
90. acbes, 48-362, 48-380
91. Philippe Raynaud, 'Tyrannie de la majorité, tyrannie des minorités,' Le Débat, no 69, March-April 1992, 59
92. Gauchet and Swain, La pratique de l'esprit humain, 16-18, 23-4
93. See also John Modell, Into One's Own: From Youth to Adulthood in the United States, 1920-1975 (Berkeley: University of California Press 1989), 226
94. Philippe Meyer and Lawrence Stone summarized and qualified by Ariès, 'Entretien,' 19
95. Brian J. Low, 'Graduation Day: Schooling for Mental Health in the Cinematic Society of the National Film Board of Canada, 1940-1960,' paper given at the Round Table on Socio-Historical Research on Childhood in Canada, Association for Canadian Studies, Montreal, 1995
96. acbes, 47-1647, 47-89, 47-769
97. Paul Thompson, 'The War with Adults,' Oral History 3, 2 (1975): 37
98. Humphries, Hooligans or Rebels, 21-3
99. David Sutton, 'Liberalism, State Collectivism and the Social Relations of Citizenship,' in Mary Langan and Bill Schwartz, eds., Crises in the British State, 1880-1930 (London: Hutchinson 1985), 65
100. Denis Duclos, 'L'enfance, une espèce en danger?' Le Monde diplomatique, Jan. 1997, 24-5
101. Winnifred Wandersee, Women's Work and Family Values, 1920-1940 (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press 1981), 55
102. John Modell, 'Pattern of Consumption, Acculturation, and Family Income Strategies in Late Nineteenth Century America,' in Tamara K. Hareven and Maris Vinovkis, eds., Family and Population in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1978), 206-224
103. A.M. Willms, 'Setting Up Family Allowances, 1944-45' (ma thesis, Carleton University 1962), 31
104. Edward E. Schwartz, 'Some Observations on the Canadian Family Allowances Program,' Social Service Review 20, 4 (1946): 456
105. Brigitte Kitchen, 'The Family and Social Policy,' in Maureen Baker, ed., The Family: Changing Trends in Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson 1984), 180
106. Omer Bédard, truant officer of Sainte-Thérèse-de- Beauport, 1943-4, cdsa, 1946- 789, 112 398. See also Procès-verbal de la Commission scolaire de Champlain, acsvf, 24 May 1955, 13
107. Instructions, 1943, 12
108. See also P.-É. Beaudoin, Enquête scolaire, 1941-1942, 'étude sur l'âge d'admission au premier degré régulier du cours primaire dans la province de Québec,' Rapport préliminaire, 29 April 1944, 4, asjcf, 126-2
109. acbes, cases nos 45-9913, 46-1830, 46-1806, 47-493, 47-1647, 46-1830, 45-8486, 46-9802, 48-156, 46-902, 41-371, 48-362, 46-254, 46-1654, 47-307, 47-630, 47-754, 48-55, 47-224; Barbara Enrenreich, Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class (New York: Pantheon 1989), 50-53
110. Canadian National Education Association, Letter to the provincial ministers of labour, 26 Dec. 1943
111. anqq, e 24, 222, a-8. See, for instance, A. Veilleux, brief no 42, anqq, e-013, c.r., 1942-96, box 2218, and Renée Vautelet, Mémoire sur l'orientation du travail féminin d'après-guerre, prepared for the Conseil d'Orientation Economique, published by the Fédération Nationale Saint-Jean Baptiste, 1944
112. Strickland and Ambrose, 'The Baby Boom,' 552
113. Fournier to Lafrance, 'Interprétation des directives,' 12 Feb. 1949
114. Fournier, 'Directives,' April 1948
115. N.A. Mathieu, 'Extraits du livre d'instructions concernant la fréquentation scolaire obligatoire pour régie interne de la section 'Éducation,' undated
116. P.T. Légaré, 'Notes sur le travail juvénile,' 14 March 1949
117. J.A.M. Caron, 'Directives et procédures spéciales à l'unité "École,"' 1 March 1951
118. all in abrq, 7-6, vol.1; dnhw, You and Your Family, 24-5
119. Viviana Zelizer, 'Special Money: Allowances in the Domestic Economy, 1870-1930,' paper presented at the convention of the Social Science History Association, 1986, St Louis
120. Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (New York: Basic Books 1985), 73-112
121. Claire Langlois, 'L'oeuvre des petits vendeurs de journaux et sa clientèle,' (ma thesis, Université Laval 1952), 60
122. Paul Willis, Learning to Labor: How Working-Class Kids Get Working-Class Jobs (New York: Columbia University Press 1981), 102
123. Dominique Jean, 'Familles québécoises et politiques sociales touchant les enfants de 1940 à 1960: obligation scolaire, allocations familiales et travail juvénile,' (Ph.d. dissertation, Université de Montréal 1989), tables x and xi; acbes, 46-902
124. acbes, 47-223, 47-1505
125. Wallace and Jones, Youth, Family and Citizenship, 20-1
126. See also Michael J. Piva, 'The Workmen's Compensation Movement in Ontario,' Ontario History 65, 1 (1975): 39-56
127. and Ruth Roach Pierson, 'Gender and the Unemployment Insurance Debates in Canada, 1934-1940,' Labour/LeTravail 25 (spring 1990): 77-103
128. Gauthier, 'A propos de culture et de pauvreté,' 50. Gauthier uses the conclusions of Robert Castel and Marcel Gauchet on what they call 'mass individualism' and 'individualist mode of assistance'
129. 'De l'indigence à l'exclusion: la désaffiliation' and 'La société d'insécurité,' in Jacques Donzelot, ed., Face à l'exclusion: Le modèle français (Paris: Éditions Esprit 1991)
130. See also Gauthier and Mercier, La Pauvreté, 97
131. Roger Lesgards, 'Trompeuses sirènes au coeur froid,' Le Monde diplomatique, Jan. 1994, 32
132. Jane Lewis, 'Welfare State or Mixed Economy of Welfare?' History Today 45, 2 (1995): 4-6.