Abstract
As infant survival chances improved, ‘mothercraft’ broadened to include the pre-school child. Infant welfare expanded its focus from infant feeding to the child’s all-round development — physical, mental, social and emotional — as captured in the change of title of Dr Vera Scantlebury Brown’s textbook in 1947 from A Guide to Infant Feeding to A Guide to the Care of the Young Child.1 From the 1930s mothering ‘became the focus of new guidelines; not only the physical care of children, but responsibility for their psychological and emotional development was increasingly laid at mother’s door’.2 At the same time inter-war discourse became more gender-neutral.3 ‘Mothercraft’ became ‘parentcraft’ and debates family-centred, although the onus of responsibility for a child’s development stayed firmly with the mother. After the Depression, mothers were exhorted to aspire to the optimum standard of nutrition and development, a Utopian ideal for producing good citizenry set for Western countries by the League of Nations.
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Notes
Scantlebury Brown, A Guide to Infant Feeding, Melbourne, 1929
Scantlebury Brown and Kate Campbell, A Guide to the Care of the Young Child, Melbourne, 1947.
Gisela Bock, ‘Poverty and Mothers’ Rights in the Emerging Welfare States’, in G. Duby and M. Perrot (eds), A History of Women in the West, Vol. v: Toward a Cultural Identity in the Twentieth Century, F. Thebaud (ed.), Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1994, p. 424.
T.H. Hull, ‘Sex Differentials in Child Mortality, Australia, 1909–1984’, Research Note on Child Survival, no. 13CS, 26 November 1986, IPDP, ANU.
City of Melbourne, Report of MOH, 1938, CMCP, 1938–9, p. 486.
The best source on Cumpston and his conservative social theory is Michael Roe, Nine Australian Progressives, Brisbane, 1984, ch. 5.
CPP, 1926–8, Vol. 4, p. 39 (1285)
J.H.L. Cumpston, The History of Diphtheria, Scarlet Fever, Measles, and Whooping Cough in Australia 1788–1925, Canberra, 1927, pp. 102, 107;
Hilda Bull, ‘The Control of Diphtheria by the New Methods’, TAMC, 1934, p. 326
Christine Heinig, ‘Education in the Lady Gowrie Child Centres’, Australian Institute of Anatomy, Pre-School Child Bulletin, vol. 2, no. 1, April 1940, p. 3.
Historical overviews of the kindergarten movement are given in Peter Spearritt, ‘Child Care and Kindergartens in Australia 1890–1975’, in Peter Langford and Patricia Sebastian (eds), Early Childhood Education and Care in Australia, Melbourne, 1980, pp. 10–38;
Deborah Brennan, The Politics of Australian Child Care, Melbourne, 1994, ch. 1.
Christine Heinig, ‘Education in the Lady Gowrie Child Centres’, Australian Institute of Anatomy, Pre-School Child Bulletin, vol. 2, no. 1, April 1940, p. 3.
Madeleine Mayhew, ‘The 1930s Nutrition Controversy’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 23, no. 3, July 1988, pp. 445–64.
Clements has charted his treks, in F.W. Clements, A History of Human Nutrition in Australia, Melbourne, 1986, p. 97
C.C. Jungfer, Child Health in a Rural Community. Report of the Work of a Health Survey in the Adelaide Hills District, Canberra, 1944.
Kincaid, Report on Child Welfare, 1932, CMCP, 1932-3, pp. 477–8.
Kincaid, Report on Child Welfare, 1933, CMCP, 1933–4, p. 481;
Dale, Report of MOH, 1936, CMCP, 1936–7, p. 544;
Kincaid, Report on Child Welfare, 1930, CMCP, 1930–1, p. 421, 1936, p. 557;
Richard J. Bernstein, ‘John Dewey’, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, pp. 380-5;
Richard Casey, Treasurer, Budget Speech, CPD, vol. 154, 27 August 1937, p. 270;
On Cumpston and national hygiene see James A. Gillespie, The Price of Health, Melbourne, 1991, pp. 51–6.
Mary L. Walker, ‘The Development of Kindergartens in Australia’, MEd thesis, University of Sydney, 1964, p. 193; Brennan, p. 37.
For a detailed description of the centres, see J.H.L. Cumpston and Christine M. Heinig’s Preschool Centres in Australia, Canberra, 1944
R. White, Inventing Australia, Sydney, 1981, p. 140.
F.W. Clements and Margaret MacPherson, The Lady Gowrie Child Centres. The Health Record, Canberra, 1945, p. 11.
Vera Scantlebury Brown, ‘Nutrition of the Pre-School Child’, MJA, 30 July 1938, p. 153.
Edna Hill observed in 1948 that the best records were in Perth, in The Lady Gowrie Child Centres: A First Analysis of Case History Records of Children Attending the Lady Gowrie Child Centres (1939–1946), Canberra, 1949, pp. 3–4
Crawford, ‘Early Childhood in Perth, 1940–1945: From the Records of the Lady Gowrie Child Centre’, in Hetherington (ed.), Childhood and Society in Western Australia, p. 204.
M. McKernan, All In! Australia During the Second World War, Melbourne, 1983, p. 158
On bread and dripping, see Judy Mackinolty (ed.), The Wasted Years? Australia’s Great Depression, Sydney, 1981, p. 105.
F.W. Clements, ‘The Medical Programme to be Carried Out at the Lady Gowrie Child Centres’, Pre-School Child Bulletin, vol. 2, no. 1, April 1940, p. 8.
J. Spence, W.S. Walton, F.J.W. Miller and S.D.M. Court, A Thousand Families in Newcastle upon Tyne: An Approach to the Study of Health and Illness in Children, London, 1954, p. 61.
A. Constance Duncan and Christine Heinig, ‘War Time Children’s Centres’, 8 July 1943, CRS A1928, Item 155/19.
See also Arnold Gesell and Frances Ilg, who advised that instead of ‘striving for executive efficiency’, mothers should be perceptive to their children’s behaviour, in Infant and Child in the Culture of Today: The Guidance of Development in Home and Nursery School, 21st edn., New York, 1943, p. 57.
See C. Urwin and E. Sharland, ‘From Bodies to Minds in Childcare Literature’, in R. Cooter (ed.), In the Name of the Child: Health and Welfare 1880–1940, London, 1992, ch. 7.
Cedric Swanton, ‘Psychology, Baby Health and Child Welfare’, MJA, 13 August 1938, pp. 235–8;
Australian Institute of Anatomy, Pre-School Child Bulletin, vol. 2, no. 1, April 1940, pp. 10–11
Benjamin Spock, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, New York, 1946 (1st published 1945).
Bateson, With a Daughter’s Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, New York, 1984;
‘£500 Gift to Creche by Matthews Family Acclaimed at Meeting’, Bendigo Advertiser, 7 March 1945.
Bowlby’s report, Maternal Care and Mental Health, WHO, 1950, became the book, Child Care and the Growth of Love, 1st published 1953.
Amirah Inglis, Amirah. An un-Australian Childhood, Melbourne, 1983, p. 149
Ian W. McLean and Jonathan J. Pincus, ‘Did Australian Living Standards Stagnate between 1890 and 1940?’, Journal of Economic History, vol. XLIII, no. 1, March 1983, pp. 193–202.
also McLean and Pincus, ‘Living Standards in Australia 1890–1940: Evidence and Conjectures’, ANU Working Papers in Economic History, Canberra, 1982, pp. 13–14
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© 1997 Philippa Mein Smith
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Smith, P.M. (1997). The Pre-schooler and Child Development. In: Mothers and King Baby. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14304-7_10
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