In this revealing social history, Daniel Thomas Cook explores the
roots of children's consumer culture--and the commodification of
childhood itself--by looking at the rise, growth, and segmentation
of the children's clothing industry. Cook describes how in the
early twentieth century merchants, manufacturers, and advertisers
of children's clothing began to aim commercial messages at the
child rather than the mother. Cook situates this fundamental shift
in perspective within the broader transformation of the child into
a legitimate, individualized, self-contained consumer.
"The Commodification of Childhood" begins with the publication
of the children's wear industry's first trade journal, " The
Infants' Department, " in 1917 and extends into the early 1960s, by
which time the changes Cook chronicles were largely complete.
Analyzing trade journals and other documentary sources, Cook shows
how the industry created a market by developing and promulgating
new understandings of the "nature," needs, and motivations of the
child consumer. He discusses various ways that discursive
constructions of the consuming child were made material: in the
creation of separate children's clothing departments, in their
segmentation and layout by age and gender gradations (such as
infant, toddler, boys, girls, tweens, and teens), in merchants'
treatment of children as individuals on the retail floor, and in
displays designed to appeal directly to children. Ultimately, " The
Commodification of Childhood" provides a compelling argument that
any consideration of "the child" must necessarily take into account
how childhood came to be understood through, and structured by, a
market idiom.
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