The National Panic Over Child Murder and the Construction of Cold War Sexual Ideology, 1947-1953

The National Panic Over Child Murder and the Construction of Cold War Sexual Ideology, 1947-1953

war, politics, sexuality, culture, communism, democracy, crime, academia, lesbian, history

This is an academic article exploring the post-World War II fear of child murder and other sexual crimes committed against women and children. The panic over child murder, fanned by the press and institutionalized by the state, became a vehicle for a wide-ranging discourse about the boundaries of acceptable sexual and gender behavior in postwar America and helped consolidate two public images whose influence continued for decades: that of the gay man as a child molester and that of the domineering mother as the source of a child's psychological ruin.

Chauncey, George Jr.

Yale University

1985

stapled pages; 48 pages; black and white; text

English

BCRW archive, U box 11, folder "University of Toronto"