'Thy children shall rise up and call thee blessed': The transformation from spiritual custodians to Shaker mothers, 1800-1940.

摘要

From the Shakers' inception in America, the Society became a respite for those in need. The Shakers were most receptive to the pleas for assistance by children, potential members of the Church Covenant after years of training and indoctrination. The Shakers employed indenture agreements, particularly when accepting custody of boys. The agreements protected the Society from the legal claims of biological parents, but also enabled it to relinquish responsibility of unruly wards. The Shakers continued to use the agreements into the twentieth century, decades longer than their contemporaries. By the 1850s, the language of these contracts came to emphasize children's happiness at their placements, corresponding to developments in the law and welfare reform.;In the mid-nineteenth century, the law emphasized the "best interests" of the child. The Shaker indenture agreements reveal the intersection of family law and contract law in custody disputes. Welfare agencies, like emerging legal standards, sentimentalized the child and sought rural, familial placements. Paradoxically, the Shakers, over the course of the nineteenth century, came to embody the values of the middle-class family that its religious rhetoric repudiated. As such, the Shakers developed relationships with local welfare agents and came to recognize that their guardianship role may be temporary. As the society became increasingly female and dedicated to welfare initiatives, women forged significant emotional bonds with one another. These bonds explain women's low apostasy rate; women and girls found fulfillment of their temporal needs and emotional satisfaction as Shaker mothers and sisters.