This is 20th century America from the point of view of the youngest Americans. Ideas about infancy and infants changed dramatically in the period. The author believes babies brought “the modern” into the home, hence the title.
This was especially clear in the growth of the consumer economy. Products were offered at the very start of life. Diapers were promoted alongside commercial milk formulas. Clothes and a crib were required, the nursery needed decorating. The house had to be clean and warm. Provision had to be made for the future, for life insurance and college fees. The smallest mouth sucked greedily on the family budget.
The birth of a new baby was now the birth of a new citizen, the next generation, and the future. All births had to be registered. Safe, hygienic hospital deliveries introduced the whole family to medical care. A public health bureaucracy grew to improve sanitation and a safe food supply. The survival chances of the young improved substantially, attested by dramatic falls in the Infant Mortality Rate. Later chapters consider the effect of war and the threat of nuclear fall-out on babies.
As physical health became more certain attention was directed to mental and emotional care. Psychology established itself as a university discipline, and a cultural force in American life, through child development programmes and intellectual assessments. Families looked for advice on all manner of baby issues. It was given on radio and later television, through books and magazines, through pamphlets and brochures. The advice changed considerably over the years – for the better one would like to think. The author shows that mothers were quite prepared to reject advice they did not like.
Janet Golden charts these transformations through her extensive use of baby books, which was inspired. Themselves a product of the “new baby” the finer examples were bought at select outlets, others were offered free by baby-food and baby-clothing manufacturers. They provide a record of the minutiae of little lives and the effect of social change. At first just weight was noted, though that too was significant as growth was recognised as a sign of health; it also sold baby scales. Later mention was made of baby’s first car ride, as the automobile drove into childhood. After 1945 they offered records as detailed as any psychologist might compile: first smile, first word.
Golden has used a wide range of secondary sources and the reader can follow topics referenced in the notes.
The story stops in the mid-1960s and, partly because of this, left out are effective contraception and legal abortion, let alone surrogacy. Also lacking is information on family size, though we know that smaller units became more common. She does consider the unwanted child in the final pages, for whom “modern” meant something rather different. She notes but does not really analyse the racial divide and the effect of urbanization. A more contentious matter is the notion of “modern” itself. In a coda she criticises the failure of America to take child health seriously at a federal level and, despite improvements in outcomes, the country lags behind other “modern” societies which have universal health care and a welfare state.
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