World War II Sample Clauses

World War II. During the 1940s and 1950s, many elites blamed the effects and after-effects of WWII for the perceived rise in juvenile crime. Conservatives believed the absence of parents from the home as fathers left for war and mothers began working for the first time left children without discipline and authority.115 Many assumed that children acted improperly during and after WWII because when they were growing up, they “were denied the guidance of their fathers who were at war.” Subsequently, parents began feeling like teenagers had “been liberated from adult control.”116 They often referred to these teenagers as “latchkey children” since they took care of their own households during the war, often without parental consent or supervision.117 In a September 1942 article for PM magazine, entitled “We’ve Let the War Make Lawbreakers of Our Children,” Judge Polier blamed WWII for the alleged increase in juvenile delinquency. She noted that children from good homes and decent socioeconomic status continued to 115 Xxxxx X. Xxxxxx, Juvenile Justice (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007), 61-62. 116 Xxxxxx, Juvenile Justice, 61-62. 117 Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxx, “Kids, Cops, and Beboppers: Milwaukee’s Post-WWII Battle with Juvenile Delinquency,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 93, No. 1 (Autumn 2009): 17. commit crimes, concluding that absent parents were responsible for the trend.118 Thus, taking a conservative position, Polier held parents responsible for their children’s actions, rather than the children themselves. This perspective illustrated Polier’s alignment with contemporary viewpoints that children were non-willful actors, who were not responsible for their own actions. However, absent parents were not the only wartime impact that Polier blamed for rising juvenile delinquency. From a more leftist viewpoint, she criticized cuts to social programming under wartime budget restraints. During the war, Polier reported that community services were clearly not meeting demand. She described two boys who came before the juvenile court after getting into trouble on the streets. Since their high school had a shortage of teachers, they were only in school for a few hours a day, and spent the remainder of their time wandering the streets with few supervised activities or programs available to them.119 In 1942, Polier received letters from Xxxxxx Connaugton, the Director of Publicity for the Girls Scout Council, and from Attorney Xxxxxx Xxxxxx, urging an increase in social programm...