Overview

"Through a study of industry publications over much of the century, shows how the U.S. children's clothing industry produced increasingly refined categories of childhood 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 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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9780822332794

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Reviews

Blending the sociologist's theoretical rigor with the historian's attention to detail and change, Daniel Thomas Cook offers us a striking and original explanation of how twentieth-century notions of childhood together with new marketing practices led to the modern autonomous child. --Gary Cross, author of The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Children's Culture Daniel Thomas Cook's The Commodification of Childhood is a pioneering and major contribution to our understanding of consumer culture. On the basis of his detailed and fascinating examination of children's clothing marketing through the twentieth century, Cook constructs a larger template for understanding the complex and evolving relations between consumers and marketers. The theoretical discussions are a tour de force. A must-read for all scholars of consumer society. --Juliet B. Schor, author of The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need

Author Information

Daniel Thomas Cook is a sociologist in the Department of Advertising at University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. He is the editor of Symbolic Childhood.

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