Where the Wild Things Were

Boyhood and Permissive Parenting in Postwar America

Henry Jenkins

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English

New York University Press
25 February 2025

Popular culture; Media studies; Gender studies: men; Sociology: family & relationships

Series: Postmillennial Pop

Explores iconic works from The Cat in the Hat to The Twilight Zone to explain cultural trends in parenting and how we conceptualize childhood

The 60s produced a Baby Boom generation that catalyzed the dawn of a new era—the space age, the age of television, the global age, and the beginnings of civil rights. At the same time, a new paradigm for parenting was unfolding that put emphasis on permissiveness, defined by what it permitted – the free and unfettered impulses of children. Others worried that the wildness of children, personified by the characters in Maurice Sendak’s 1963 classic children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are, was destructive, disruptive and disrespectful.

Where the Wild Things Were centers on the exploding, contentious national conversation about the nature of childhood and parenting in the postwar US emblematized by Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care. Renowned scholar Henry Jenkins demonstrates that the language that shaped a growing field of advice literature for parents also informed the period’s fictions—in film, television, comics, children’s books, and elsewhere—produced for and consumed by children. In particular, Jenkins demonstrates, the era’s emblematic child was the boy in the striped shirt: white, male, suburban, middle class, Christian, and above all, American.

Weaving together intellectual histories and popular texts, Jenkins shows how boy protagonists became embodiments of permissive child rearing, as well as the social ideals and contradictions that permissiveness entailed. From Peanuts comic strips and TV specials to The Cat in the Hat, Dennis the Menace, and Jonny Quest, the book reveals how childhood and the stories about it became central to Cold War concerns with democracy, citizenship, globalization, the space race, science, race relations, gender, and sexuality. Written by a former boy in a striped shirt, Where the Wild Things Were explores iconic works, from Mary Poppins to Lost in Space, contextualizing them through a critical but respectful engagement with the core animating ideas of the permissive imagination.

By: Henry Jenkins
Imprint: New York University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 599g
ISBN: 9781479831890
ISBN 10: 1479831891
Series: Postmillennial Pop
Pages: 384
Publication Date: 25 February 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Henry Jenkins is Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts and Education at the University of Southern California. He is the author or coauthor of twenty books including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture, and By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism.

Reviews for Where the Wild Things Were: Boyhood and Permissive Parenting in Postwar America

""An ambitious study, deftly grounded in a generous sampling of popular culture, influential figures of the era, historical scholarship, and his own experience, Henry Jenkins' magisterial Were the Wild Things Were invites us on a journey through the many permutations of the permissive imagination. What are you waiting for? Accept his invitation!"" * Philip Nel, author of Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books * ""Impeccably researched; a significant and original contribution to our understanding of baby boom era childhood, and especially boyhood. One of Henry Jenkins’s greatest strengths is his ability to show concrete circuits of influence and exchange between childrearing experts and the popular fiction he analyzes. Considering biographies of writers, producers, illustrators, and animators as well as production histories of the texts he analyzes, Jenkins demonstrates the dynamic and reciprocal relations between intellectual and popular culture."" * Lynn Spigel, Northwestern University *