Mollie Stevens Smart (1916-2012)

Presents an obituary for Mollie Stevens Smart (1916-2012). Mollie attended the University of Toronto, from which she graduated with honors in psychology at age 20 in 1936. She studied and worked at the Merrill-Palmer Institute in Detroit, earning a master's degree in child development from the University of Michigan in 1941. She earned her doctorate in educational psychology at the University of Delhi in 1969. An author, teacher, and mentor, Mollie won Fulbright research grants to India and New Zealand and lectured in the United States, India, New Zealand, Canada, and China. She wrote 26 books, most co-authored with her husband, Russell (Rus) C. Smart. Beginning in the 1940s, when Freudian theory had a strong grip on the popular view of child development, the books placed the developing child in the context of family and community systems. The Smarts' best-selling college textbook Children: Development and Relationships (1967, 1973, 1977, 1982) was based on the theories of Erik Erikson and Jean Piaget. Mollie was a member of the American Psychological Association throughout her professional career and held memberships also in the Society for Research in Child Development, the National Council on Family Relations, the Groves Conference on Marriage and Family, and the Fulbright Association. After moving to Ridgefield, Washington, in 2003 with her daughter Ellen following Rus's death in 1996, she applied her great knowledge to advise a community-based organization that serves the needs of new babies born into destitute families. Mollie died at home in Ridgefield on October 22, 2012, at age 96.