The commoditization of childhood: Personhood, the children's wear industry and the moral dimensions of consumption, 1917-1967

This study is a case history of "the commoditization of childhood"--how childhood has developed into a site for commercial activity. The focus is on the rise, growth and segmentation of the children's clothing industry in the United States, 1917-1967. During this time, children emerge as consumers in their own right and childhood takes on both economic and symbolic exchange values.;The empirical core of the work draws mainly upon industry materials, such as trade journals and business documents to investigate how members of this industry constructed their subject--"the child"--as a persona amenable to conspicuous display. The moral tension between "sacred" childhood and the "profane market" is taken as the engine driving innovations in marketing and ner chandising of children's clothing. This tension, it is found, is resolved either by (re)framing goods as beneficial for children or by (re)framing "the child" as a person who can lay claim to a degree of autonomy and thereby exercise individual choice grounded in its own preferences.;The largest part of the study examines the 1920s through the 1940s illustrating how retail departments in the 1920s structured their stock and service around notions of "the mother" as an agent of and arbiter for her child's consumption. In the 1930s, the industry expanded internally by developing several new age-size ranges of clothing, especially for girls. Each new range signalled a step up from dependency and toward a growing sense of personhood grounded in consumer choice. During this time, the physical layout, iconography and sales strategy of children's departments shifted perspective from the mother as primary consumer to the child.;After the '40s, the Baby Boom and the rise of the teenager and preteen girl as merchandising categories enhanced the focus on marketing from the perspective of youth. Market research on children's "desires" began in the 1960s, further institutionalizinq the personhood status of the child-consumer. Inter-generational conflict over consumption, the sexualization of girls' bodies and the relationship between the rise of "children's rights" and the emergence of what some call "fetal personhood" all relate to the growing commoditization of childhood.