Reinventing Childhood after World War II

In his 1956 best seller, The Organization Man, William H. Whyte described the homelife of this new creature as a filiocracy: a child-ruled society. The domination that Whyte described then pales next to the social and economic power of middle-class American children today. That these children often stand in for all children points to the important work that Reinventing Childhood after World War II, a collection of seven essays on U.S. childhood (with one essay on Sweden), attempts to perform. The essays are short and intended for undergraduates. The preface and first essay, both by Paula S. Fass, divide child rearing in the postwar years into two periods: the child-centered Benjamin Spock–influenced years of 1945 to the early 1970s, and the time after 1970, when baby boomers became parents themselves. That second moment, Fass suggests, has intensified Spock's child-centeredness to the point of high anxiety: unnecessarily overprotective and hovering “helicopter” parents devote substantial time, energy, and resources to ensure their children's future success. Without invoking neoliberalism or class tension, Fass argues for a loss of childhood innocence during this age of self-commodification, echoing cries made regularly since the late nineteenth century

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