The Commodification of Childhood

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.

Author Biography

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