{"id":770,"date":"2024-06-10T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-10T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/?p=770"},"modified":"2024-06-06T15:17:09","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T15:17:09","slug":"amys-questionnaires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/amys-questionnaires\/","title":{"rendered":"Amy&#8217;s Questionnaires"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Sometime in 1916, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, teenager named Amy Stephens became an amateur sociologist of sorts when she wrote a questionnaire. Over the next few years, nearly six dozen different people\u2014most, teenage girls\u2014answered Amy\u2019s questions. In addition to basic personal information and telephone numbers, Amy asked for a long list of &#8220;favorites&#8221;: from stories to celebrities, names to games, and schools, books, and desserts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some interesting notions emerge from the answers provided by this community of girls. When asked for their favorite book, thirteen said &#8220;bank&#8221; and seven said &#8220;pocket.&#8221; The favorite desserts of thirty-nine involved ice cream, although one girl cheekily declared &#8220;good night kisses.&#8221; The favorite course of study was algebra; the second most popular was shorthand, with several writing the names of their choices for best-looking boy and girl in shorthand. (Not surprisingly, census records show that fifteen respondents\u2014including Amy\u2014worked as stenographers for at least a time after graduation.) The most popular &#8220;exclamation&#8221; was &#8220;Ye Gods&#8221;\u2014including with the extension &#8220;and little fishes.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"622\" height=\"1024\" data-id=\"777\" src=\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Amy-Stephans-44-2-1-622x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-777\" srcset=\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Amy-Stephans-44-2-1-622x1024.jpg 622w, https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Amy-Stephans-44-2-1-182x300.jpg 182w, https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Amy-Stephans-44-2-1-768x1265.jpg 768w, https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Amy-Stephans-44-2-1-60x99.jpg 60w, https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Amy-Stephans-44-2-1.jpg 790w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 622px) 100vw, 622px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Ray Kuester, one of a handful of boys to answer the survey, drew a self-portrait. Image: James Marten<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"684\" height=\"1024\" data-id=\"776\" src=\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Amys-questionnaire-1-684x1024.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-776\" srcset=\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Amys-questionnaire-1-684x1024.jpeg 684w, https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Amys-questionnaire-1-200x300.jpeg 200w, https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Amys-questionnaire-1-768x1150.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Amys-questionnaire-1-60x90.jpeg 60w, https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Amys-questionnaire-1.jpeg 839w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 684px) 100vw, 684px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Some respondents included snapshots of themselves. In Amy&#8217;s own questionnaire, the teenager beams at us cheerfully. Image: James Marten<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>The &#8220;Sport&#8221; and &#8220;Game&#8221; categories each included twenty different answers. &#8220;Sport&#8221; seems to have meant a pastime that young people could do as individuals or in groups, while &#8220;Games&#8221; usually involved competition and score-keeping. Ice and roller skating led the way in the former category, with swimming coming in second. Tennis and &#8220;500&#8221;\u2014a trick-taking card game\u2014were by far the favorite games. Eight girls mentioned flirty variations of games familiar to adolescents of any era: &#8220;Love,&#8221; &#8220;Game of Love,&#8221; and &#8220;Making Love,&#8221; as well as &#8220;Post Office.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Their answers suggest three ways this community of young women maintained social networks:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Proximity: Pockets of two or three girls lived on the same blocks and a significant majority lived in a relatively small section of Milwaukee\u2019s East Side\u2014the oldest section of the city with a mix of upper, middle, and working-class families.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>High School: As the percentage of youth attending high school rose, school became more important in creating and sustaining relationships. Fifty-six girls listed twenty-one different schools, with almost half (including Amy) attending St. John\u2019s Cathedral High School, located a long walk or a quick streetcar ride from the East Side.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Technology: Nearly 80 percent of the girls\u2019 families had telephones, far above the national average. Although they no doubt had to compete for this 1910s version of \u201cairtime,\u201d it is easy to imagine the girls talking on the phone about the movie stars and best-looking boys and girls from their questionnaires.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>In the end, one of the simple pleasures of the questionnaires is that glimpses of personality slyly emerge. One girl wrote that her favorite school subject was &#8220;Anything easy.&#8221; Another noted her favorite sport as &#8220;Anything where boys are.&#8221; A third claimed &#8220;horseradish&#8221; was her favorite dessert. Sometimes the past seems not so distant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>James Marten<\/strong> is professor emeritus of history at Marquette University and the founding secretary-treasurer and a past president of the SHCY. He is author or editor of more than a dozen books on the history of children and youth, most recently the <em>Oxford Handbook of the History of Youth Culture<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023) and <em>A Very Short Introduction to the History of Childhood<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Milwaukee teenager&#8217;s 1916 questionnaires made her into an amateur sociologist of 20th-century girlhood<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":772,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-childish-things"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Amy&#039;s Questionnaires - Digital Childhoods<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sometime in 1916, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, teenager named Amy Stephens became an amateur sociologist of sorts when she wrote a questionnaire.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/amys-questionnaires\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Amy&#039;s Questionnaires - Digital Childhoods\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Sometime in 1916, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, teenager named Amy Stephens became an amateur sociologist of sorts when she wrote a questionnaire.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/amys-questionnaires\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Digital Childhoods\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-06-10T09:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-06-06T15:17:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Amy-Stephans-9JPG-2.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1805\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1261\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"dgeditor\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"dgeditor\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/amys-questionnaires\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/amys-questionnaires\/\",\"name\":\"Amy's Questionnaires - Digital Childhoods\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/amys-questionnaires\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/amys-questionnaires\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Amy-Stephans-9JPG-2.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-06-10T09:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-06-06T15:17:09+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/#\/schema\/person\/a47f86ab7f4d4eab5e01653df55c4806\"},\"description\":\"Sometime in 1916, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, teenager named Amy Stephens became an amateur sociologist of sorts when she wrote a questionnaire.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/amys-questionnaires\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/amys-questionnaires\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/amys-questionnaires\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Amy-Stephans-9JPG-2.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/shcydigitalchildhoods.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Amy-Stephans-9JPG-2.jpg\",\"width\":1805,\"height\":1261,\"caption\":\"In this questionnaire, respondent Marie McFadden added a picture of her family in their Sunday best. 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