The Commodification of Childhood ：The Children’s Clothing Industry and the Rise of the Child Consumer

Publication subTitle ：The Children’s Clothing Industry and the Rise of the Child Consumer

Author： Daniel Thomas Cook  

Publisher： Duke University Press‎

Publication year： 2004

E-ISBN: 9780822385431

P-ISBN(Paperback): 9780822332688

P-ISBN(Hardback):  9780822332794

Subject： C91 Sociology

Keyword： Childhood -- United States -- History., Adolescence -- United States -- History., Child consumers -- United States -- History., Teenage consumers -- United States -- History., Children's clothing industry -- United States -- History., Mother and child -- United States -- History., Children -- United States -- History.

Language： ENG

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Description

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 trade journals and other documentary sources, 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 disp

Chapter

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

A Brief History of Childhood and Motherhood into the Twentieth Century

Merchandising, Motherhood, and Morality: Industry Origins and Child Welfare, 1917-1929

Pediocularity: From Child's Point of View

Reconfiguring Girlhood: Age Grading, Size Ranges, and Aspirational Merchandising in the 1930s

Baby Booms and Market Booms: Teen and Subteen Girls in the Postwar Marketplace

Concluding Remarks

Appendix: Figures and Tables

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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