In her 1905 publication, Some Ethical Gains through Legislation, Florence Kelley asserted that there was "a right to childhood . . . [that] must be guarded in order to guard" the Republic. She held that childhood was a period from birth through age nineteen that had special needs fulfilled only by enlightened parents and government protection. Kelley believed that a federal agency employing "both male and female social work and health care professionals [could best] correlate, make available, and interpret the facts concerning the physical, mental and moral condition and prospects of children of the United States, native and immigrant."

Kelley and like-minded activists, such as New York's Lillian D. Wald and members of the soon to be organized National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), argued that a federal bureau investigating and advocating children's interests would provide the same service for the nation's youngest citizens that already existing government agencies did for other constituent groups. Wald asked, "if the Government can have a department to look after the Nation's farm crops, why can't it have a bureau to look after the Nation's child crop?"

Florence Kelley spelled out ten specific areas that seemed to be the most pressing children's issues at the time: infant mortality, birth registration, orphanage, desertion, illegitimacy, degeneracy, delinquency, offenses against children, illiteracy and child labor.[1]

In 1912, Congress agreed that children were a distinct group that needed special attention by establishing the U.S. Children's Bureau. From the agency's founding until its powers were severely diminished during a government restructuring in 1946, the U.S. Children's Bureau served as the nation's leading advocate for children. In that role the bureau was the major contributor to a new twentieth-century definition of childhood and children's rights.

Redefining Childhood
The creation of the U.S. Children's Bureau reflected an increasing awareness that modernization had directly influenced the structure and function of childhood and family life. The late nineteenth-century gave birth to what historians call the modern age. Traditional definitions of childhood had relied on a rural lifestyle, children's physical immaturity and legal distinctions linked to English Common Law. Childhood and family life had never been entirely secure, but modernization appeared to bring stresses unknown to a more rural America. New technologies, urbanization, growing ethnic diversity, a widening gap between the richest and poorest Americans and industrial capitalism in the late-nineteenth century altered what many believed to be the basic structure of society: childhood and family life.

The philosophical development of a middle-class family ideal during the same period was an attempt to adapt family life to this more modern time. According to the new ideology, home and family life became a more private place where parents and children could be sheltered from the dangers, sinful temptations, and corruptions of the outside world. As Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg explain in their book, Domestic Revolutions, "Marriages were . . . more based on romantic love, relations between husbands and wives had grown increasingly affectionate and egalitarian, children stayed at home longer than before and parents devoted increased attention to the care and nurture of their offspring."[2]

The nuclear family was a place of emotional fulfillment as well as practical need. Mothers must be full-time homemakers, fathers work as the family's sole breadwinner, and children should spend their time going to school and participating in activities specific to childhood. Many Americans saw this model as necessary for a stable society. A protected childhood that extended well beyond age fourteen was something that all families should want and provide for their children. However, it was also becoming increasingly clear that many families were not living anything close to this idyllic lifestyle.

In 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt had brought national attention to the plight of many young Americans by calling a White House conference on orphaned and dependent children. This meeting served as the model for future presidential conferences on children's public policy that have taken place in Washington approximately every ten years. Overall, participants in the 1909 meeting concluded that "home life is the highest and finest product of civilization . . . [and] children should not be deprived of it except for urgent and compelling reasons." By "home life," the conference attendees meant the middle-class model of the nuclear family. In addition, participants maintained that the opportunity for a healthy life was the primary right to childhood. To meet this goal they underscored efforts to reduce infant mortality and preventable childhood diseases as well as called for child labor reform. And finally, the report endorsed the federal children's bureau idea. This conference was among the primary factors convincing Congress to pass legislation establishing the U.S. Children's Bureau. President William Howard Taft signed the seminal bill into law on April 9, 1912 (Stat. L., 79). This act made the United States the first country in the world to create a national agency mandated solely to investigate and report on the needs of children.

The U.S. Children's Bureau's Philosophy
Although a popular idea, the U.S. Children's Bureau did face opposition. Critics felt that the agency's mandate to "investigate and report . . . upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life" overstepped the federal government's role. The Roman Catholic Church also feared that the agency would interfere with parochial education. Led by Julia Lathrop, the first woman to head any federal agency (eight years before women received the right to vote at the federal level), the Children's Bureau fought to end such opposition by promoting the middle-class definition of childhood for all American children. The Children's Bureau also claimed that only a single agency could effectively understand and advocate for the "whole child."

Mid-to-late-nineteenth-century popular novels by American writers such as Horatio Alger, Jr. (Ragged Dick) had advanced the idea that personal success depended on self-discipline, hard work and high moral character. The primary responsibility for achieving success rested with the individual; especially in the years of childhood and adolescence. Indeed, many of Alger's boy heroes were orphans who succeed with some luck, but primarily through their own volition and with only limited help from adults. Romance novels and works like Louisa May Alcott's Little Women encouraged girls to also better themselves according to a prescribed standard. In addition, most protagonists in Victorian fiction had adult responsibilities by age fourteen.

But turn-of-the-century journalists and writers such as Jonathan Spargo (The Bitter Cry of the Children) portrayed the nation's youngest citizens as victims of a modern society. These writers also extended childhood beyond the traditional age of fourteen. Their view held that individual responsibility could go only so far in an increasingly modern world that demanded education, adult maturity, and experience for success.

The U.S. Children's Bureau immediately began to address what it viewed as the fundamental right of childhood: the opportunity for a healthy life. Frontier conditions and growing urbanization had always made life dangerous for young Americans. Nonetheless, although overall mortality rates had improved, unemployment, low wages, discrimination, and unhealthy living conditions in urban centers showed that children were not faring as well as adults. There was no national birth registration so the Children's Bureau had a difficult time examining nationwide mortality data. However, in Massachusetts birth and death registration records kept since 1851 suggested that infant mortality rates had actually risen in that state. From 1851 to 1854, 131.1 babies under one year of age died for every 1,000 live births. The death rates rose to 170.3 for the years 1870-74. Thereafter, the infant mortality rate fluctuated but remained 16.8 percent higher (153.2) from 1895-1899 than it had been from 1851-1854. This seemed particularly appalling since adult life expectancy had increased by more than ten percent during the same time period. Infants under one year of age had a greater chance of dying before their next birthday than elderly Americans aged seventy-five to eighty-four.[3]

In response, the Children's Bureau began a national campaign to reduce infant mortality and implement birth registration (birth certificates) to better assess why so many babies died.

Coincidentally, paid labor for children was also rising at the turn of the century. Children had always worked, but modern technology and the growth of big business had changed the very meaning of labor. In 1870 approximately 740,000 children age ten through fifteen worked for wages (13.2 percent of the age cohort). By 1910, there were 1,990,225 (18.4 percent) at work for pay. The number was probably much higher since this count did not include those under ten years of age, most who performed piece work at home, were illegally employed, or worked as "independent merchants."[4] Hours were long and conditions dangerous. Even farm work was increasingly "big business." For child welfare advocates, young people barely subsisting and laboring in the nation's factories, streets, tenements, mines, and fields represented one of the worst consequences of modern life.

To Children's Bureau supporters, such circumstances also seemed to offer the greatest opportunity for change. It appeared that the United States was progressing into the modern era at the expense of its youngest citizens. Early death and suffering no longer seem inevitable for adults, so why were things getting worse for so many children? The bureau complained that the lack of birth certificates made solutions difficult. Children, parents, and employers lied about a child's age in order to circumvent new state child labor laws restricting employment for those under fourteen. Information and regulation seemed to be the way to stop this waste of human resources. Birth certificates would verify a child's age. Compulsory school attendance laws coupled with child labor regulation could help to guarantee the right to childhood for all children. A federal child labor law seemed the best road to compliance.

Interestingly the identification of childhood and children's rights occurred at the same time that the proportion of young people in the total population diminished. In 1860, persons nineteen years of age and under constituted fifty-two percent of the U.S. population. By 1900, because of declining birth and death rates, that proportion fell to forty-five percent. Robert Bremner argues that "as children became relatively less numerous, they became more visible and the particular needs of their condition more easily recognized." In a growing industrial America, children were economically worthless but emotionally priceless. According to the 1910 census, persons nineteen and under constituted about forty-two percent of the total population. And those fourteen and under were about thirty-two percent of the total.[5]

In its early years, the U.S. Children's Bureau had little money and a small staff. It continued to promote its philosophy of a single agency working on behalf of the "whole child." In practical reality much of its work focused on infant mortality, the prevention of childhood diseases and the effort to end child labor through federal law. The bureau got a lot of attention from the press. Its publications were widely distributed, and the agency received thousands of letters from ordinary Americans asking for advice and help. Despite its weaknesses, the Children's Bureau significantly contributed to the growing idea that childhood was a time of special need and that society, not just families, had a responsibility to project the rights of the "whole child" for all young people.

Consequences of the Children's Bureau's Early Efforts
In 1921, Congress passed the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act. Over the next eight years, this significant legislation provided the Children's Bureau with funding to encourage and regulate state efforts to reduce the nation's high infant mortality and improve children's overall health. The program was available to all children in the participating states regardless of financial need. Opposition from the American Medical Association, which viewed Sheppard-Towner as "socialized medicine," and a more conservative political climate led to the program's demise in 1929. In addition, Sheppard-Towner failed to permanently prescribe a role for the federal government in protecting maternal and child health. But, the Sheppard-Towner Act certainly raised awareness about saving babies' lives. By 1929 forty-five states and Washington, D.C. granted birth certificates and the nation's infant mortality rate had dropped to 67.9 deahts per 1,000 live births.[6] Race, class, and region still made a dramatic difference in the chances for an individual baby's survival. Nevertheless, the causes of preventable deaths were now clear and the Children's Bureau had at least introduced the idea into the national political debate that fundamentally all children had the right to a healthy life.

Child labor reform was the most controversial subject undertaken by the U.S. Children's Bureau during its early work. For twenty years, the bureau and its supporters continued the crusade to end the worst abuses of child labor. But these efforts failed to gain a permanent federal law regulating the labor of those under eighteen. High adult unemployment during the Great Depression finally influenced Congress to set standards restricting child labor. The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act prohibited the employment of young people under fourteen years of age and restricted the paid labor of those fourteen to eighteen. The tightest restrictions were on fourteen through fifteen year olds, but even those sixteen and seventeen were not permitted to work past 10:00 pm on school nights, in certain industries, or in specified jobs within permitted areas of employment. Jobs for young people were safer due to such regulations.

Child labor laws and state school attendance laws also encouraged children to stay in school. In 1920, less than half of the nation's fourteen to seventeen year olds went to high school. By the 1940s, three-quarters did so, and in 1960, 90 percent attended the nation's secondary schools. Socio-economic class remained a significant factor determining employment and school attendance for those under eighteen. But as the 1960 figures show, going to school through age eighteen became the recommended prescription for all young people by the mid-twentieth century.[7]

The Children's Bureau's efforts in the area of juvenile courts also contributed to the extension and redefinition of modern childhood. In 1874, Massachusetts created special court procedures for children charged with crimes. In July 1899, Cooke County, Illinois established what is generally recognized as the first full-fledged juvenile court system in the world. By 1920, 45 of the then existing 48 states had enacted some form of juvenile court.[8]

The Children's Bureau urged this expansion and drew up standards it believed protected children's rights. Policymakers accepted the idea that juvenile offenders and children dependent upon the state had different needs than adults, and therefore needed distinct legal protections. Most states removed the death penalty for young people under eighteen and juvenile courts became family courts mandated to oversee the rights of children and their families.

The U.S. Children's Bureau and its supporters were never able to fully convince policymakers that its "whole child" philosophy was the best means to protect the right to childhood. Political opposition continued to plague the bureau, despite the agency's widespread popularity with the public. In 1946, the Truman presidency reorganized the federal government along administrative rather than constituency lines. The Children's Bureau lost most of its regulatory authority to larger agencies and became a small office limited to investigation and reporting. However, understanding the Children's Bureau's history helps to illuminate how modern childhood has been defined for twentieth-century America.

By mid-century, most Americans viewed the middle-class family model as the ideal for all American children. The Children's Bureau's ideal was too narrow and meant that many families were designated as "abnormal" because they did not meet the model. However, the agency did succeed in standardizing the basic definition of childhood for all children.

In recent years there seems to be dwindling acceptance of this idea. Efforts to erase barriers of race, class and economics have not given all children the right to childhood. As a consequence, it appears that many Americans have given up on the ideal that every child should have the rights spelled out by Florence Kelley and other Progressive Era child welfare advocates. For example, perhaps it was easier to accept the idea that every child should go to a quality high school when only a minority of young people were expected to earn a diploma. It seemed logical to believe as late as 1960 that teenage pregnancy was not a problem when one-third of American females had their first child before reaching age twenty. It was comforting to support the idea of good health care for all American children until health care costs became a national crisis. The definition of childhood is a social construction that has changed over time. Shifts in public opinion and economics seem to suggest that society is looking for new parameters to understand children and youth. It is possible that the Progressive Era idea of a single federal agency to advocate on behalf of the nation's youngest citizens is worth another try as America redefines childhood to meet the needs of the next century.

[1] Florence Kelley, Some Ethical Gains through Legislation, (New York: MacMillan, 1905, reprint Arno Press, 1969), pp.99-101; Dorothy E. Bradbury, "Four Decades of Action for Children: A Short History of the Children's Bureau," p.1.

[2] Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York: Free Press, 1988), p.xv.

[3] Richard Meckel, Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850-1929 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).

[4] Walter I. Trattner, Crusade for Children: A History of the National Child Labor Committee and Child Labor Reform in America (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970); Robert Willard McAhren, "Making the Nation Safe for Childhood: A History of the Movement for Federal Regulation of Child Labor, 1900-1938," pp.5-6; U.S. Children's Bureau, "Child Labor Facts and Figures' (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1930), pub. no.197.

[5] Robert H. Bremner, From the Depths: The Discovery of Poverty in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 1956); U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Part I, p.57.

[6] U.S. Children's Bureau, "Promotion of the Welfare and Hygiene of Maternity and Infancy, the Administration of the Act of Congress of November 23, 1921, Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1929" (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1928), pub. no.194.

[7] Kriste Lindenmeyer, A Right to Childhood: The U.S. Children's Bureau and Child Welfare, 1912-1946 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), pp.108-138.