ABSTRACT
At the dawn of the field of child development and university-based child laboratories, early in the 20th century, forward-looking early education leaders embraced science as a source of understanding child behavior. In these early years, child study included not only the description and understanding of growth and change in children but also the dissemination of this knowledge and its implications for parents, teachers, and others who guided children. Economist Lawrence Frank, a visionary thinker working with the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund, influenced at least nine "child welfare research institutes" between 1917 and 1930—the first university child lab schools—at such institutions as University of California, Berkeley; Iowa State; Minnesota; Michigan; Columbia; Yale; and Merrill-Palmer in Detroit. He did this through the provision of funds, in some cases through the dissemination of his ideas. Frank is credited with ushering in the modem field of child development by supporting and stimulating interdisciplinary research focused on understanding children's normal development and promoting optimal childrearing. He saw these sites as generators of knowledge that would inform the development of social policy regarding families and children (Barbour, 2003; Benham, 1985; Senn, Murphy, Gallagher, Stolz, & Stolz, 1969). These first lab schools, as highly visible centers of child study and research-based information about parenting and teaching, were widely replicated throughout the 20th century.
