The Blossoming of Child Psychology in Postwar America

High expectations were immediately assigned to the rapidly growing number of American children born after World War II, as they were seen as the generation which would enable the nation to realize its full potential in the second half of the 20th century. Advice for new parents on a wide range of child-oriented topics—nutrition, health, education, and many more—flowed freely, with Dr. Benjamin Spock considered the expert of experts. With psychological thinking heavily informing everyday life in postwar America, there was considerable pressure to raise a “well-adjusted” child.

In fact, a true revolution in child raising took place at mid-century, with science-based and psychological research determining common practices for the generation that would one day be known as baby boomers. In addition to an emphasis on self-regulation and “understanding” the child, a link between physical and emotional health had been established. It’s safe to say that the postwar interest in, if not obsession with, psychoanalysis was clearly evident in the thinking and techniques of the day, putting more pressure on parents lest they cause permanent trauma to their child’s psyche.

Framed as a matter of national security and defense of our system of free-market capitalism during the Cold War, child psychology blossomed in the postwar years. Rather than leave the development of a child and adolescent to chance—a risky thing, given the stakes involved—experts of all stripes made their presence known to help parents manage the process of growing up.

While Dr. Spock’s name became synonymous with baby and childcare in the postwar years (his book, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, sold 500,000 copies in the six months following its initial publication in 1946), he was hardly alone in doling out the dos and don’ts of parenting. From the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, a steady stream of experts from a wide variety of fields offered their own take on how to raise a physically and mentally healthy child. Not just psychologists and psychiatrists but medical doctors, home economists, educators, sociologists, religious leaders, health officials at government agencies, and other professionals and organizations came forth with an abundance of theories and research designed to produce a group of adults ideally equipped to lead the nation into the future.

Understanding the thoughts, motives, habits, and emotions of children was key, argued Arthur T. Jersild, a professor of education at Columbia University, urging that parents and teachers have a plan in place lest young people develop feelings of anxiety, guilt, and self-reproach. It could be seen how, during this “Age of Anxiety,” adults were projecting their own fears upon children, a theme addressed in Erik Erikson’s 1950 book Childhood and Society.

Raising emotionally healthy children in postwar America

With the threat of a nuclear war between the superpowers a genuine concern in the early 1950s, raising a “normal” child was not considered easy. Providing children with love and assurance was paramount, experts believed, as the reality of atomic energy led to the inescapable truth that the world could blow up at any moment. “You and I cannot tell the children that there will be no bombs, but we can, through the society, help strengthen and prepare them for whatever may lie ahead,” wrote Morgan Dix Wheelock, president of the Children’s Aid Society, in the organization’s 1951 annual report.

“Duck and cover” drills at schools were routine, a practice designed to reassure students that an atomic blast could be survived. The effects of such drills on children were unclear, some thinking that students shrugged them off (or even welcomed them as a break from class routine) and others believing they triggered significant tension.

While many believed that television was rotting children’s brains, others felt that the new medium was helping relieve some of the Cold War anxieties by boosting their overall psychological well-being. Phillip Polatin, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia, held that Western shows, in particular, were excellent outlets for children’s hostility and aggression and thus not at all the passive entertainment some claimed television to be. While or after watching cowboy and Indian shoot-‘em-ups, boys, some armed with cap pistols, often engaged in hero versus villain battles, a healthy release of latent apprehensions and inner angst.

More broadly, many experts viewed entertainment media in general as a good way for children (as well as adults) to engage in the entirely normal realm of make-believe. Mental and emotional maladjustments “are often due to the suppression of childish daydreams and fantasies,” stated Herbert Kupper, a Los Angeles psychiatrist in 1951, thinking that mass entertainment (including movies, radio, and comic strips) provided a healthy release of internal fears and aggression. Television wasn’t as good as live theater or reading a book in this regard, Kupper noted, but even the “boob tube” was harmless as long as there was some connection with reality.