A feminist analysis of the voices for advocacy in young adult services - Imagination and Scholarship: The Contribution of Women to American Youth Services and Literature

Library Trends, Spring, 1996 by Jane Anne Hannigan

Abstract

This article is a study of six women and their contributions to young adult services in public libraries. The feminist perspective employed focuses on the voices of these women as advocates for young people.

Introduction

Although it is clear that, in the late nineteenth century, public library service to "children" really referred to service to those we would now call "young adults," over time, the emphasis altered and the focus shifted to young children.(1) Consequently, young adults received less and less attention in public libraries. There were, however, women in libraries who consistently supported service to this age group, some seeing it as a part of their mission for the development of good citizens with moral consciences. These were women who spoke out, argued, demonstrated, and led the professional community in the recognition of young adults as a valid and important audience for public library service. Although children's librarians have consistently emphasized the provision of quality literature for children, it will be argued here that young adult librarians gradually diverged from this emphasis on appropriate literature to focus on young adults as persons with identifiable personal and social needs to which the public library could and should respond.

This article focuses on the contributions of some of the key women responsible for the development of young adult services in public libraries. It will offer proof of women's leadership of this development and demonstrate, through the words and lives of particular women, the inspiration they brought to bear on the profession of librarianship. It is important to note, however, that their work must be seen against the backdrop of a number of other developments that converged in mid-twentieth-century america. Psychological studies of adolescents, a new field of young adult literature, and the combination of sociological issues and new forms of technology, communication, and mass media changed both young people themselves and the ways others perceived them.

Male Psychological Interpretations of Adolescence

It was during the mid-twentieth century that new interpretations of Freudian research on adolescence emerged and dominated our understanding of young people. The work of Eric Erikson (1968), Anna Freud (1958), and Peter Blos (1962, 1967), rooted in concepts identified by Sigmund Freud, enunciated a male narrative of adolescent development. This narrative informed our perceptions of young people and the development of their identity, separation, and individualization. As a result of this work, adults came to expect rebelliousness from this newly identified group. This expectation, along with their size and the activity and noise levels emanating from groups of young adults, led to attitudes of antagonism and fearfulness from many adults, including library personnel.

Influences of Technology, Communications

and the Mass Media

Simultaneously, technology, communications, and the mass media opened the world to young people in new ways. Those who had been confined by home, family, and community expectations were now exposed to alternative lifestyles, disillusionment, and failed or corrupt authority figures through the mass media. Through these media also, young adults had access to an expanded youth culture and to role models who encouraged defiance rather than conformance to adult expectations. New technological and communications systems also brought the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s into the homes and the lives of young people everywhere. This increased awareness, often without a depth of understanding, along with the threat of an unwanted war, encouraged antagonistic behavior - or at least the outward symbols of that rebellion. It also tempered the typical adolescent feelings of invincibility with a sense of hopelessness, resulting in behavior that almost courted death rather than challenging it. That courting of death unfortunately became a reality for too many young people as the sexual revolution was followed by the AIDS epidemic.

All of these societal changes broke down traditional authority systems and gave young people greater independence, mobility, market power, and control over their own lives. They also increased that divisiveness between young adults and adult institutions and authority. Thus, many public libraries backed away from their responsibilities for young adult services, and new library leaders with a stronger voice for youth advocacy emerged.

Creation of Young Adult Literature

It is important to keep in mind the evolution of the adolescent novel in this country and how this new body of literature provided additional opportunities for these women librarians to suggest relevant titles that specifically met adolescent needs and interests. Mary Lystad (1980) describes this evolution as follows:

Over a 200-year period, then, there have been definite changes in characterizations of and for adolescents. In the earliest period, until about 1850, the adolescent was seen as a person with one overriding duty: to cast off evil ways and engage in that religious and social activity which would merit him eternal life. The youth was born not to live but to die, and it was important to die in a befitting manner. After 1850, the adolescent was encouraged to expand his horizons and to think not only about life after death but also about life after childhood. Ways of Achieving in the world, especially for boys, were highlighted, and the adolescent was urged to think seriously about and to plan for adult roles, especially as they related to work.