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----- Forwarded message from spklein52@hotmail.com -----
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 09:16:13 -0400
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: SPKlein52@HotMail.com
Subject: Steve Mintz "The Golden Age of Childhood?" editorial ...
To: as-brown@comcast.net
------------------ Andrew, Below is the editorial you asked for.
Regards, Sandy================================Any chance that we
could get a copy of the editorial Steven Mintz has written?
I've tried to locate it through CSM and related links unsuccessfully.
I'm on fire with curiosity.
AB================================
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0428/p09s01-coop.html[1] Commentary >
Opinion
from the April 28, 2005 edition A 'golden age' of childhood?
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Wednesday, April 27th, 2005 01:58 PM (PDT)
HOUSTON (CSM) - Many of America's 78 million baby boomers may feel a
bit older when they realize that this year marks the 50th anniversary
of Play-doh, the fried-chicken TV dinner, and the air-powered Burp
gun. The LEGO "system of play" - 28 sets and 8 vehicles - was
launched in 1955. And it's the year McDonald's Corp. was founded.
Today, we look back nostalgically to the 1950s as a time of a more
innocent childhood. Life was safer as well as simpler then, we sigh.
We worry that modern mass culture has undermined the influence of
parents, and that aggressive advertising is distorting children's
diet, their body image, and their attitude toward material
possessions.
But by placing '50s culture on such a lofty pedestal, we fail to
appreciate the huge advances that have made childhood, in many ways,
a safer and more sheltered time today. What's more, such attitudes
overlook the fact that much of what troubles parents today dated from
that era.
For instance, the modern commercialization of childhood is in fact a
direct outcome of forces that were set in motion during the 1950s. The
first baby-boomer fad - the Davy Crockett coonskin cap, introduced in
1955 - revealed the huge commercial potential of marketing directly
to children. With products like Matchbox cars (launched in England in
1953), Trix cereal (1954),"Mad" (which changed from a comic book into
a magazine in 1955), and Barbie (1959), marketers discovered that it
was possible to target kids as consumers, separate and apart from
their parents.
Television provided the ideal medium for reaching child consumers.
ABC introduced one of the first children's television shows,
"Disneyland," in 1954, and "The Mickey Mouse Club" the next year.
"Disneyland" was the forerunner of modern infomercials: a
program-length advertisement for Walt Disney's about-to-open theme
park. Shows like "Captain Kangaroo," which debuted on CBS in 1955,
contributed to the emergence of an insular world of childhood wholly
separate from that of adults.
Today, we look back to the 1950s as a safer, more orderly time for
raising children. But that's not how it seemed to many parents then.
At the end of the decade, the infant and child mortality rate was
four times as high as it is today - the scourge of polio had claimed
the lives of 3,000 children annually until the Salk vaccine was
developed in 1955.
Two-thirds of black children and more than a fifth of their white
counterparts lived in poverty as recently as 1955. By contrast, 34
percent of African-American children and 14 percent of white children
lived in poverty as of 2003. And even though the Supreme Court ruled
school segregation unconstitutional in 1954, by 1960 just 1 percent
of black children in the South attended integrated schools.
Meanwhile, nearly a million children with disabilities were denied
public schooling as uneducable. And 40 percent of kids dropped out of
school before graduating high school.
Happy sitcom reruns to the contrary, the parents of 50 years ago
were not insulated from fears about youth violence and children's
poor academic achievement. In 1955, several Congressional hearings
investigated the link between television and children's violence,
while others warned of the corrupting effects of comic books. In 1955
alone, Congress considered nearly 200 bills aimed at combating what
was seen as an epidemic of juvenile delinquency. Rudolph Flesch's
1955 bestseller, "Why Johnny Can't Read," announced that "3,500 years
of civilization" were being lost due to bad schools and incompetent
teachers. (This prompted publisher Houghton Mifflin to ask Theodor
Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, to write and illustrate an easy-read that
would become "The Cat in the Hat.") The anxieties that obsess parents
today - children's safety, morals, and international competitiveness -
took root in the seemingly tranquil 1950s.
Nor were 1950s children protected from sexual and physical abuse or
exploitation. In 1955, Vladimir Nabokov published "Lolita," with its
shocking depiction of a middle-aged man's "affair" with a 12-year-old
girl. The book broke a taboo on that subject in what may well have
been the first high-profile commercialization of the eroticization of
pre- and pubescent girls that is now standard commercial fare.
Certainly parents face new challenges today, as they grapple with
expanding work pressures, changing family forms, and an accelerating
commercialization of private life.
But romanticizing the 1950s as the supposed golden age of American
childhood ignores the fact that many of today's problems actually
took root then and obscures real gains made in child welfare since
then. Who knows whether 50 years from now, this may be the platinum
age of childhood?
Steven Mintz, a professor of history at the University of Houston,
is author of 'Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood.' He is
also cochair of the Council on Contemporary Families.
Links:
------
[1] http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0428/p09s01-coop.html
----- End forwarded message -----
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 09:16:13 -0400
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: SPKlein52@HotMail.com
Subject: Steve Mintz "The Golden Age of Childhood?" editorial ...
To: as-brown@comcast.net
------------------ Andrew, Below is the editorial you asked for.
Regards, Sandy================================Any chance that we
could get a copy of the editorial Steven Mintz has written?
I've tried to locate it through CSM and related links unsuccessfully.
I'm on fire with curiosity.
AB================================
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0428/p09s01-coop.html[1] Commentary >
Opinion
from the April 28, 2005 edition A 'golden age' of childhood?
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Wednesday, April 27th, 2005 01:58 PM (PDT)
HOUSTON (CSM) - Many of America's 78 million baby boomers may feel a
bit older when they realize that this year marks the 50th anniversary
of Play-doh, the fried-chicken TV dinner, and the air-powered Burp
gun. The LEGO "system of play" - 28 sets and 8 vehicles - was
launched in 1955. And it's the year McDonald's Corp. was founded.
Today, we look back nostalgically to the 1950s as a time of a more
innocent childhood. Life was safer as well as simpler then, we sigh.
We worry that modern mass culture has undermined the influence of
parents, and that aggressive advertising is distorting children's
diet, their body image, and their attitude toward material
possessions.
But by placing '50s culture on such a lofty pedestal, we fail to
appreciate the huge advances that have made childhood, in many ways,
a safer and more sheltered time today. What's more, such attitudes
overlook the fact that much of what troubles parents today dated from
that era.
For instance, the modern commercialization of childhood is in fact a
direct outcome of forces that were set in motion during the 1950s. The
first baby-boomer fad - the Davy Crockett coonskin cap, introduced in
1955 - revealed the huge commercial potential of marketing directly
to children. With products like Matchbox cars (launched in England in
1953), Trix cereal (1954),"Mad" (which changed from a comic book into
a magazine in 1955), and Barbie (1959), marketers discovered that it
was possible to target kids as consumers, separate and apart from
their parents.
Television provided the ideal medium for reaching child consumers.
ABC introduced one of the first children's television shows,
"Disneyland," in 1954, and "The Mickey Mouse Club" the next year.
"Disneyland" was the forerunner of modern infomercials: a
program-length advertisement for Walt Disney's about-to-open theme
park. Shows like "Captain Kangaroo," which debuted on CBS in 1955,
contributed to the emergence of an insular world of childhood wholly
separate from that of adults.
Today, we look back to the 1950s as a safer, more orderly time for
raising children. But that's not how it seemed to many parents then.
At the end of the decade, the infant and child mortality rate was
four times as high as it is today - the scourge of polio had claimed
the lives of 3,000 children annually until the Salk vaccine was
developed in 1955.
Two-thirds of black children and more than a fifth of their white
counterparts lived in poverty as recently as 1955. By contrast, 34
percent of African-American children and 14 percent of white children
lived in poverty as of 2003. And even though the Supreme Court ruled
school segregation unconstitutional in 1954, by 1960 just 1 percent
of black children in the South attended integrated schools.
Meanwhile, nearly a million children with disabilities were denied
public schooling as uneducable. And 40 percent of kids dropped out of
school before graduating high school.
Happy sitcom reruns to the contrary, the parents of 50 years ago
were not insulated from fears about youth violence and children's
poor academic achievement. In 1955, several Congressional hearings
investigated the link between television and children's violence,
while others warned of the corrupting effects of comic books. In 1955
alone, Congress considered nearly 200 bills aimed at combating what
was seen as an epidemic of juvenile delinquency. Rudolph Flesch's
1955 bestseller, "Why Johnny Can't Read," announced that "3,500 years
of civilization" were being lost due to bad schools and incompetent
teachers. (This prompted publisher Houghton Mifflin to ask Theodor
Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, to write and illustrate an easy-read that
would become "The Cat in the Hat.") The anxieties that obsess parents
today - children's safety, morals, and international competitiveness -
took root in the seemingly tranquil 1950s.
Nor were 1950s children protected from sexual and physical abuse or
exploitation. In 1955, Vladimir Nabokov published "Lolita," with its
shocking depiction of a middle-aged man's "affair" with a 12-year-old
girl. The book broke a taboo on that subject in what may well have
been the first high-profile commercialization of the eroticization of
pre- and pubescent girls that is now standard commercial fare.
Certainly parents face new challenges today, as they grapple with
expanding work pressures, changing family forms, and an accelerating
commercialization of private life.
But romanticizing the 1950s as the supposed golden age of American
childhood ignores the fact that many of today's problems actually
took root then and obscures real gains made in child welfare since
then. Who knows whether 50 years from now, this may be the platinum
age of childhood?
Steven Mintz, a professor of history at the University of Houston,
is author of 'Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood.' He is
also cochair of the Council on Contemporary Families.
Links:
------
[1] http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0428/p09s01-coop.html
----- End forwarded message -----