Forman-Brunell, M: Babysitter

Acknowledgments Introduction; 1. The Beginnings of Babysitting; 2. Suburban Parents and Sitter Unions; 3. The Bobby-Soxer Babysitter; 4. Making Better Babysitters; 5. Boisterous Babysitters; 6. Vixens and Victims in Soft Porn and Horror Movies; 7. Sisterhoods of Sitters in the 1980s; 8. Coming of Wage at the End of the Century; 9. Quitter Sitters: The Fall of Babysitting Notes; Bibliography; Index; About the Author

Miriam Forman-Brunell is Professor of History at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. She is the author of "Made to Play House and" general editor of ABC-CLIO's "Girlhood in America." She is also co-director of Children and Youth in History.

"It is remarkable that babysitting has lacked a history. Meticulously researched, written with humor and acute insight, this book not only chronicles the actual experience of babysitting over half a century, but shows how the babysitter served as a cultural lightning rod for anxieties over shifting women's liberation, the waning of masculine authority, teen sexuality, and the decline of the nuclear family. Powerful, provocative, persuasive." Steven Mintz, author of Huck's Raft "Ms. Forman-Brunell certainly brings to this project a scholar's zeal for painstaking research...[Forman-Brunell] does a service by documenting one of the few remaining common denominators of American life -- though this one, too, is disappearing." Wall Street Journal 14th July 2009 "In this well-documented, illustrated discussion of our culture's perceptions of babysitters through the years, the author skillfully demonstrates how changing social mores and attitudes toward girls and women were responsible for the astonishing range of notions about babysitters, running the gamut from child-care provider to home wrecker...Forman-Brunell makes excellent use of the various babysitting handbooks published over the years, and, particularly, of the commercial novels (e.g., The Baby-Sitters Club series) and movies that came out, from domestic comedies to horror films reflecting parents' (and babysitters') worst nightmares."--Ellen Gilbert, Princeton, NJ "From horror movies and pornography to the squeaky-clean cast of the Baby-sitters Club books, our cultural views of babysitters reveal more about our societal hang-ups than they do about the neighbourhood teenagers who watch our children, argues Miriam Forman-Brunell in Babysitter: An American History." Shannon Proudfoot, The Calgary Herald, 7th Aug 2009 "What might have just been an amusing collection of related relics is instead a sophisticated and smooth history of girl culture and shifting family values in Forman-Brunell's capable hands...It's a