This book examines the rise of children's consumer culture in the USA during the twentieth century by chronicling and critically reviewing the children's wear industry from 1917 to 1962. The author uses the medium of children's wear as an illustration as well as a starting point for the history of the development of child consumer culture in the USA. He draws on the area further by applying it as a support for the theorizing of the changes which have occurred in this area. Cook argues that children's wear is a starting point from which to look at the developments of children as consumers, the effects of which have now spread throughout a vast range of consumer goods and environments.
The rise of children as consumers in their own right, alongside that of their mothers, is historically presented, spanning the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Cook offers the differing views of social historians as to the place and development of children within the family circle during this period. Women's development is more briefly described, with an emphasis given to the rise in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries of feminist consciousness and its cultural, political and social consequences. By the 1920s women had taken on the pluralist roles of homemaker, carer, and above all consumer, in order to fulfil the needs of their wider family circle. They had emerged as a definite target for merchants and retailers and they also created a new market by buying for their children.
The American department store presented the perfect lure for this emerging activity. In parallel, trade publications started relating to this new market, which reinforced mothers and their consumer activity in relation to their children even further. Furthermore, with the increase in production of ready‐made children's garments and the changing role of women in society after the First World War, middle‐class mothers were newly open to the possibilities of clothing their children with purchases from the department store. Cook argues that motherhood thus became quantifiable in consumer terms and defined by the mother's consumer practices.
The author argues that the development of the role of the mother as consumer in the 1930s engendered the turning point for children in their consumer function. A paradigm shift is noted as the perspective of the child “pediocularity”, as the author refers to it, not only emerged as a valid viewpoint for retailers, advertisers and society in general, but was also favoured over that of the mother. The child therefore materialized with a consumer voice and choice which had formerly been masked by that of the mother. The author uses examples to chronicle the above development of the child as consumer, such as anecdotes gathered from the sales floors of department stores between 1915 and 1940. Furthermore, the description of what was deemed as appropriate “girls’” clothing style in consumer and trade magazines from around the same period and the development of size ranges for children, as well as age‐graded retail space, also gives colour and credence to this argument. Throughout this period, the author posits that children and their choices move from the periphery of commercial forces to being at the centre of them. Around this same period (1934 to 1940), the rise of child stars such as Shirley Temple embodied a definite shift in the way children were viewed in society and started the trend of what can now be termed as celebrity product endorsement.
The baby boom period, conventionally described as the years between 1945 and 1964, where the birth rate in the USA increased substantially, further fuelled the development of the child as consumer. The children's market was now established and more importantly growing for retailers and marketers alike. The author describes the way in which children's wear retailers as pre‐cursors of the child consumer market were able to take full advantage of this phenomenon.
Cook concludes that the development of the child consumer has become intrinsically linked with the development of children as social beings. He also posits that to understand the arguments put forward by the modernist and postmodernist philosophers concerning the building of character through consumption practices, it is imperative to understand the creation of the child consumer through the twentieth century.
This book would be useful for any academic researcher interested in children and their consumer role in western society. It is a very well‐researched historical perspective of the rise of this phenomenon, which additionally includes pertinent psychological and sociological references.
However, the basis for using children's wear industry as the crutch to explain the rise of the child consumer as a whole may be somewhat contrived. Although this is a very informative perspective, for researchers peripheral to the fashion industry it may prove to be too narrow.
Cook, in his concluding remarks, also raises a huge amount of issues relating to the current situation of children within western society including; changing family structures, pester power, video‐game‐ and film‐incited violence in juveniles and the incidence of tragedies in schools such as that of Columbine. These issues are alluded to without the development of the framework in which they occur, as the book chronicles the rise of the child consumer until 1964 without any reference to the intervening years. It would have been interesting to present the changes, developments and influences occurring in family consumer decision making since 1964 in order to contextualise the emergence of these worrying childhood issues.
However this book remains a very useful and accessible reference guide to anyone interested in the development of children and western consumer society as a whole.
