E. Kitch Childs

Ellen Kitch Childs (April 11, 1937 – January 10, 1993) was an American clinical psychologist and a lesbian activist known for her participation in the women's liberation movement in North America and for advocating for minority women, prostitutes, gays and lesbians. She was a founding member of the University of Chicago's Gay Liberation ^[1] and the first African American woman to earn her doctorate degree in Human Development at the University of Chicago.

Biography[]

Ellen Kitch Childs was born in 1937 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the youngest child in her family. Her older brothers included the jazz musician Kenny Clarke.^[2] As a young girl, she experienced racism and lost two of her brothers to racial violence.^[1] Childs received her B.S. degree in Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh and subsequently served in the United States Navy.^[1] She attended graduate school at the University of Chicago where she obtained a Masters degree and a Ph.D in Human Development in 1972. Childs was the first African American woman to earn her doctorate degree in Human Development at the University of Chicago.^[3]

Childs opened a private practice in Oakland, California, and was one of the first to conduct therapy sessions in her home and her clients' homes. She used a sliding-scale fee structure and provided free therapy sessions in communities that didn't have access to this service, with priority given to Black people, sex workers, people with AIDS, and people living in poverty.^[4] Childs was heavily invested in feminist therapy, and aimed to create a treatment model for therapy where her clients would feel included.^[5] In her client-therapist model she treated her clients on an equal level and made them feel comfortable. She was one of several notable women in psychology, including Phyllis Chesler and Dorothy Riddle, who co-founded the Association for Women in Psychology in 1969.^[1]

Childs advocated for the decriminalization of prostitution through her involvement the sex worker’s rights group COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) and anti-racist social movements.^[4] She was a founding member of the University of Chicago's Gay Liberation Chicago Lesbian Liberation.^[3] and, along with Vernita Gray and , co-founded the Women's Caucus of Chicago Gay Liberation, later re-named the Chicago Lesbian Liberation.^[3]

Childs was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 1993. This honor was given in recognition of her efforts to dismantle the American Psychiatric Association's position on homosexuality, which was listed as a psychological disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders until 1973.^[4]

Representative publications[]

• Childs, E. K. (1966). Careers in the Military Service: A Review of the Literature. National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago.
• Childs, E. K. (1972). Prediction of Outcome in Encounter Groups: Outcome as a Function of Selected Personality Correlates (Doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, Committee on Human Development).
• Childs, E. K. (1976). An Annotated Bibliography on Prison Health Care. Prisoners' Health Project, San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center.
• Childs, E. K. (1990). Therapy, feminist ethics, and the community of color with particular emphasis on the treatment of Black women. In H. Lerman & N. Porter (Eds.), Feminist ethics in psychotherapy (p. 195–203). Springer Publishing Company.

References[]

External links[]

• Psychology's Feminist Voices exhibit
• Psychology's Feminist Voices profile
• Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame profile