The Greatest Generation Grows Up ─ American Childhood in the 1930s

The Greatest Generation Grows Up describes an America in which grade-based grammar schools and high schools expanded rapidly as education came to be considered a necessity in American life. Children in school were seen as more productive than children in low-paying jobs or no jobs. As a consequence, the social assault on child labor largely succeeded in the thirties. Meanwhile radio broadcasters, filmmakers, and manufacturers were beginning to market their products directly to children and teens, in a powerful link of consumerism with modern childhood. In all, Ms. Lindenmeyer shows how the thirties experience worked to confer greater identity on American children.

Kriste Lindenmeyer teaches history at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati, she has also written A Right to Childhood and edited Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Lives and Politics of Progress. She lives in Owings Mills, Maryland.