A Generation Discovered: Children and Families in the Cold War

Baby boomer childhoods have attracted much attention in recent works of history, filling an important gap in the historical literature. Most of the current studies of childhood and adolescence during this time period, however, focus narrowly on specific topics. The books discussed in this review take a somewhat broader scope.

The most comprehensive of these is Marilyn Irvin Holt’s Cold War Kids: Politics and Childhood in Postwar America, 1945–1960 (2014). Holt’s emphasis is not so much on children themselves as on the changing attitudes towards childhood and the federal government’s new concern for children during the 1950s and 1960s. Beginning with a discussion of two White House Conferences on Children, one in 1950 and the other in 1960, Holt argues that following World War II, for the first time in history, the federal government took an active interest in the welfare of U.S. children as a whole (not just the impoverished) and took steps to better their lives.

The federal government was moved to take such action, Holt maintains, as a result of four important changes in postwar society. First, after World War II, American ideas about childhood were significantly different from what they had been a century earlier. By the 1950s, the majority of Americans had come to regard children as innocent and deserving of adult protection. Children of all races and social classes were thought to have rights that society needed to protect and that among these rights were such things as education, opportunity for play, and a chance to reach their full adult potential. Second, the prosperity that many Americans experienced and the attention paid to the family in the post–World War II period made the happiness and well-being of children of all kinds both desirable and seemingly possible.

Such concerns, however, would likely have been left to reform organizations and private charities, as they had been in earlier years, had it not been for the two remaining factors that Holt discusses: the baby boom and the Cold War. The immensity of the baby boom required the federal government to become involved in children’s lives. The United States was not prepared for the tremendous increase in the birthrate that began in 1946, and state and local governments could not adequately solve the problems caused by lack of schools, lack of teachers, and lack of daycare facilities alone. Only the federal government could make a difference. The Cold War also gave a new importance to childhood. If the United States were to remain strong and be able to confront the Soviet Union on all fronts, all U.S. citizens needed to assist in the effort and all had to be healthy, educated, and able to achieve their full potential. A new interest in children was the result.

Cold War Kids is exhaustive it its scope. It considers the influence of a variety of social and cultural factors on children’s lives, including television, polio scares, working mothers, and rock and roll. It also examines myriad government programs and efforts to improve children’s education and healthcare, redress poverty, promote physical fitness, aid child refugees, and combat juvenile delinquency. Among the many federal aid packages, government programs, and initiatives discussed are the Children’s Act of 1949, Crippled Children’s Services, the Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Control Act, and the National Defense Education Act.

Holt’s book undoubtedly fills an important gap in the literature. Other authors have discussed postwar childhood, but no other author has investigated so thoroughly the numerous ways in which the federal government began to assume responsibility for...