Review of Odem's Delinquent Daughters: Female Sexuality and Reform

Introduction and Thesis Overview

This paper analyzes Mary E. Odem's Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885–1920, including the author's thesis and key themes. In this book, Odem studies the sexuality laws designed to protect young women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, along with the reformers who worked to ensure those laws were upheld in court. She writes, "This book explores both the moral reform campaigns that produced new policies of sexual regulation and the actual enforcement of those policies at the local court level" (Odem 2). This statement serves as her central thesis and the underlying thread that ties the entire book together.

The book is broken into two key periods: the 1880s, when society believed young women were morally corrupted by older men, and the two decades following the turn of the century, when reformers believed a new type of delinquent young woman had emerged — one who needed to be policed not from predators, but from her own decadent desires. The first period viewed young women as nothing more than victims of sexual predators; one reaction was to raise the age of consent, in an attempt to hold more men accountable for preying on young women. The second period viewed young women as more willing participants in sexual activity — as "delinquents" who needed to be managed by the court system. Using actual cases she researched, Odem provides numerous examples of both framings, which bring the book to life for the reader.

Two Historical Periods: Victims and Delinquents

Odem uses several key themes to examine the sexuality and mores of the era and how those mores affected young women. The book focuses on the court system, the girls and their families, and the reformers who worked to monitor adolescent girls and their sexual activity. Her first major argument concerns older male predators luring young girls into so-called "white slavery." This framing dominated the first period of reform, casting young women as innocent victims in need of legal protection from unscrupulous men.

Another key theme is her argument that the moral campaigns created to manage female sexuality were rooted in a variety of social constructs. She writes, "First, moral campaigns to control teenage female sexuality were fueled by gender, class, and racial tensions in American society" (Odem 4). Odem maintains that middle-class white women were at the forefront of this reform movement and that they consistently ignored the plight of other women — notably Black women — in their quest for laws governing the actions of men who preyed on young women.

References

Odem, Mary E. Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885–1920. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.