‘The century of the child’?

Ellen Key’s hope that the twentieth century would be ‘the century of the child’ was an inspiration for many reformers in the first half of the century. Science, it was hoped, could help to improve the lives of children. It was to the fore in the reduction of infant and child mortality, in the measurement of children’s intelligence, and in attempts to understand the workings of children’s minds and instincts and the reasons they might become ‘delinquent’. Other moves to raise the level of childhood lay in reducing child poverty, trying to end child labour and lengthening time spent at school. Behaviourism was the dominant mode of child-rearing until the 1930s. Dr Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946) signalled a new era. For children themselves the most important change was from being expected to contribute to the family economy to becoming consumers in a burgeoning market of toys, comics and games. War brought mass murder to Jewish children, a harsh challenge to any idea of a ‘century of the child’. More mundanely, it faded from view as the territory reformers had mapped out as ‘childhood’ came under threat, above all by new media.