Bird Stein Gans

May 29, 1868–December 29, 1944

Cofounder and leader the Society for the Study of Child Nature, Bird Stien Gans (1868-1944).

Image courtesy of The Smithsonian Institution.

In Brief

Bird Stein Gans was educated at Columbia University, the New School for Social Research, and New York University. With a group of other women interested in the new field of parent education, she helped form, and was later elected president of, the Society for the Study of Child Nature in 1888. The organization’s goal was to help parents improve their relationship with their children from a scientific perspective. Gans traveled throughout the United States and internationally to promote this field of study, forming parent education associations in Japan and England. Her belief that parenting is a vocation rather than an instinctual role drove Gans’s work until her death.

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Bibliography

AJYB 44:522.

Archival materials from the Child Study Association, Special Collections, Columbia University Teachers College, New York, NY.

EJ 7:309–310.

“National Council of Jewish Women New York”. Ncjwny.org. https://www.ncjwny.org/.

Obituary. New York Times, December 31, 1944, 26:1.

Rogow, Faith. Gone to Another Meeting: The National Council of Jewish Women, 1883–1993(1993).

Society for the Study of Child Nature. Chap. 1. Summary, 1896–1906, and Reports, 1890–1895.

UJE.

WWIAJ, 1926, 1928, 1938.

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