In this season of a million marching mothers for the cause of gun-control legislation, we would do well to remember the powerful history of mothers' activism on issues related to violence and children. As a historian, I have learned that violence against children is part and parcel of American history. We need only recall the horrors of slavery and the massacres of American Indians, often including children. Routine physical punishments of children lasted well into the 20th century. Many social critics have seen poverty, too, as a kind of violence against children.
Today is different.
Children's often-fatal brutality toward one another is occurring because guns are widely available. This manifestation of violence against children has prompted Sunday's Million Mom March and related rallies. Women have been in the forefront of social policy and social movements related to protecting children. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, women conducted politics generally in the name of motherhood. The international peace movement then and the creation of a U.S. Children's Bureau in 1905 were justified on the basis of women's responsibility to and knowledge about children.