In 1890, Shinn, who for the duration of her life lived on her family’s homestead near San Francisco, began a systematic account of her niece’s physical and mental development. She was invited to present her findings at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. In her presentation she pointed out that there was little knowledge of about the mental abilities of young children, which she said was crucial for child educators.
Her cousin psychologist Edmund Sanford encouraged her, to pursue her Ph. D. using the study on the development of her niece as her dissertation (New York Times, 1940). When finished, her dissertation was published in three sections between 1893 and 1899 and was credited as one of the first in depth studies of early child development. She is considered a pioneer in the field of child psychology because of the quality of her observational methods, the novelty of her study, and breadth of her writings.
1898
Upon completion of her degree in 1898, Scarborough and Furomoto (1987) found that she returned to the family homestead to care for her ailing mother. As the only daughter in a household four she felt obligated to care for her mother and father and to help her brother’s wives with their children. Her 1971 biographer concluded his biography of her with the following statement “Neither in literature nor in science had she sustained her early promise” (Burnham 1971b: 286 as cited in Scarborough and Furumoto, 1987p. 53). Scarborough and Furumoto theorized that Shinn suffered from the same problem as many highly educated women in the 19th century_–family and societal expectations. At this time a daughter was a family “possession” who was expected to care for her parents. She wrote to a friend of her sense of obligation to her family and described her mother’s illness, “Mother is liable to sudden violent attacks of illness, not dangerous if I am right at hand to attend to them, but prostrating and requiring great care (to W.W. Campbell, December 18, 1900, LOA). In Shinn’s case she was also needed as a tutor for her younger brother, and later her brother’s children, because they lived in a rural area without access to adequate schooling.
Shinn and her niece, Ruth
Scarbourough, Furumoto (1987), thought that Shinn stopped working in psychology after the publication of her dissertation. However psychology historian Christine von Oertzen recently discovered that Shinn was part of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, a group of female college graduates, continued their educational work after graduation (2013). Shinn was in charge of the child study committee, which she began in 1891. She corresponded with and advised a group of 10 women about their observations of child development. In her book about the Association of Collegiate Alumnae (ACA) von Oertzen said, “Shinn’s emerges as the sole voice in what was in fact a much larger choir of home-bound, college educated women. My analysis of unpublished archival material reveals that collaborative science, as practiced by ACA members, blurred distinctions between university and home, between expert and amateur…”
Her later research
Von Oertzen went on to report that the California ACA mothers collected data, which Shinn used to compare and validate her results. This collaboration resulted in the 1907 publication of The Development of the Senses in the First Three Years of Childhood. Laura Swan Tilley who systematically compared her two sons born 3 years apart completed the only other publication from this group of scholar/mothers, in 1907. Throughout her life, Shinn kept up her research and correspondence with like-minded individuals but her later work remained unknown until recently discovered by von Oertzen. As von Oretzen noted our understanding of science and psychology should not be limited to those who were part of the professional mainstream in psychology (2013).
womenpsychologists 