The Commodification of Childhood

by Cook, Daniel Thomas

• ISBN13: 9780822332794
• ISBN10: 0822332795
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-04-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

In this revealing social history, Daniel Thomas Cook explores the roots of children's consumer culture-and the commodification of childhood itself-by looking at the rise, growth, and segmentation of the children's clothing industry. Cook describes how, in the early twentieth century, merchants, manufacturers, and advertisers of children's clothing began to aim commercial messages at the child rather than the mother. Cook situates this fundamental shift in perspective within the broader transformation of the child into a legitimate, individualized, self-contained consumer.The Commodification of Childhood begins with the publication of the children's wear industry's first trade journal, the Infants' Department, in 1917 and extends into the early 1960s, by which time the changes Cook chronicles were largely complete. Analyzing the pages of trade journals, Cook shows how the industry created a market by developing and promulgating new understandings of the "nature," needs and motivations of the child consumer. He discusses various ways that discursive constructions of the consuming child were made material: in the creation of separate children's clothing departments, in their segmentation and layout by age and gender gradations (such as infant, toddler, boys, girls, tweens, and teens), in merchants' treatment of children as individuals on the retail floor, and in displays designed to appeal directly to children. Ultimately, The Commodification of Childhood provides a compelling argument that any consideration of "the child" must necessarily take into account how childhood came to be understood through and structured by a market idiom.

Author Biography

Daniel Thomas Cook is an assistant professor of advertising, and a research assistant professor at the Institute of Communications Research, at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	1	(21)
A Brief History of Childhood and Motherhood into the Twentieth Century	22	(19)
Merchandising, Motherhood, and Morality: Industry Origins and Child Welfare, 1917--1929	41	(25)
Pediocularity: From the Child's Point of View	66	(30)
Reconfiguring Girlhood: Age Grading, Size Ranges, and Aspirational Merchandising in the 1930s	96	(26)
Baby Booms and Market Booms: Teen and Subteen Girls in the Postwar Marketplace	122	(22)
Concluding Remarks	144	(9)
Appendix: Figures and Tables	153	(4)
Notes	157	(24)
Bibliography	181	(20)
Index	201