Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor. N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie. J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you? N. Rodgers: I'm feeling rather childlike. How are you? J. Aughenbaugh: I was about to say, I'm reminiscing. N. Rodgers: You're a kid at heart. J. Aughenbaugh: Well, yeah. N. Rodgers: Listeners can't see you, but you're wearing your ball cap and your Yankees hoodie, and you look like a high school boy right now. No offense intended. Except for the goatee, which you probably did not have in high school. J. Aughenbaugh: No. But as my students pointed out yesterday, listeners, we are recording one day after the beginning of the Major League Baseball season. I showed up. N. Rodgers: It begun. J. Aughenbaugh: It began yesterday. Like I could speak English this morning. N. Rodgers: People who's a couple of weeks on, by then, you will already be in full Yankees baseball mode. J. Aughenbaugh: But I showed up yesterday to teach Nia, with a Yankees hat on. I had a Yankees jersey on. Underneath the jersey was a Derek Jeter T-shirt. N. Rodgers: You are so you. It's rather comforting. J. Aughenbaugh: When I left the house, it was cold, I had on my New York Yankees fleece jacket. I look like the proverbial eight-year-old boy going to his first Major League Baseball game. One of the first people that I met was the dean of my college. God bless her, she was just like, "So you're excited about the first day of the season?" I said, "What would give it away?" Then I bent her ear for five minutes about my predictions for the upcoming season of Major League Baseball. Yes. I am a child at heart. There's a good reason. N. Rodgers: She clearly likes you, because she listened. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, she did, even though she probably had 20 other places to go that were far more important than listen to one of her professors wax on about baseball. N. Rodgers: Shout out to Dean and Gracia. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, well done. J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, today, if you haven't picked up where we're going with this. N. Rodgers: We're going to focus on kids. J. Aughenbaugh: We are continuing our series of federal agencies. N. Rodgers: Of interesting cool agencies. J. Aughenbaugh: That perhaps many Americans, or for that matter, our listeners around the world, are not familiar with within the United States federal government. Today's focus is the Children's Bureau. N. Rodgers: We've careened back and forth between things you've never heard of and things that you can't get away from, like the TSA. This is one of those things that you probably haven't heard a whole lot about. I had not heard a whole lot about it until Aughie went down the rabbit hole. J. Aughenbaugh: Did I ever N. Rodgers: Did you know that? Did you know this? I was like, no, I did not know any of those things. Now he is going to tell you all the things that he told me that I didn't know. Have we always had children in the United States, or was this a recent development? . J. Aughenbaugh: Well, that was not a question for which I was prepared. But nevertheless, yes, we have had children in the United States. N. Rodgers: At some point, we started caring about them. J. Aughenbaugh: Since the settlers arrived centuries ago. But the federal government explicitly began to care about them early in the 20th century. The Children's Bureau is a federal agency that was founded in 1912. Currently, it's located within the Department of Health and Human Services, specifically its administration for children and families, but when it was created in 1912, it was not in health and human services because health and human services did not exist. It actually reported to the Department of Commerce and Labor because, Nia, what was the big concern about children in the early part of the 20th century? N. Rodgers: Child labor. J. Aughenbaugh: Child labor, yes. N. Rodgers: I'm going to need you to make these widgets in this factory for 17 hours a day. I didn't even think about that because listeners, if you don't know, children were people in the sense that they worked in the labor force. Traditionally, what they did was they worked on farms. Hence why people had large farm families, whereas because you needed a lot of people to help. When you moved to the Industrial Revolution, then they moved into the industrial part of the United States, where they were working in the same abysmal conditions that adults were working in, but probably somebody said, hey, that's probably not good for kids. That would be my guess. Is that somebody figured out that's a little tougher on kids than it is on adults? J. Aughenbaugh: The Children's Bureau reflects the progressive movement of the late 19th century, early 20th century. N. Rodgers: To stop treating children like adults. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. The bureau was to investigate and issue reports about the welfare of children, including child life among all classes of people. Not just upper class or upper middle class. N. Rodgers: Upper-class white kids. I should say everybody. J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. And investigate questions of infant mortality, birth rate. Should the United States federal government get involved in the provision of orphanages, which at that time was the domain of state governments? Should there be uniformity in regards to state juvenile courts? Desertion by parents? Apparently, this was a big issue during the Industrial Revolution. N. Rodgers: Spare the kid and walk away. That's hard. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Dangerous occupations, which we just mentioned, accidents and diseases of children. At that time, there were no collected data on accidents and diseases that targeted children more than adults. Employment, once again, then legislation that could be adopted by the federal government. That would apply to all children, no matter what state or territory they lived in, based on what infamous clause of the US Constitution. N. Rodgers: The Commerce Clause, because everything comes from the Commerce Clause. J. Aughenbaugh: But because so many children were now working in manufacturing, and what they were producing was being shipped, distributed across state lines, the thinking of progressives was, now we can use the Commerce Clause to get involved in legislation that previously was considered the domain of states and within most rural states, left to the families on the farm. N. Rodgers: Because back in the day, you didn't get the California produce sold in Virginia thing that you do now. It was much more local. This whole farm-to-table movement that we've had in the modern era would be so foreign to our ancestors because they were like, oh, yeah, that's how it works. You're on the farm and you bring it in, and you eat it on the table. They didn't have this concept of instant travel because they didn't travel. You raised what you ate, and maybe if you had extra, you sold it locally to other people or you traded for something. J. Aughenbaugh: You didn't grow soybeans because you were hoping to go ahead and feed some country in Europe. N. Rodgers: Or send them off to China. They didn't even have that concept. J. Aughenbaugh: You feed your livestock, you feed your family, and then then if there are extra, okay, then people in surrounding towns, villages, etc., would get to enjoy that. But but the other thing is, again, Nia, for our listeners, you and I grew up in rural areas. This idea that the national government would have the audacity to go ahead and. N. Rodgers: Tell parents parents how to raise children. Basically. J. Aughenbaugh: Was completely foreign and it was even more foreign at the turn of the 20th century, when the Children's Bureau was being created. N. Rodgers: Even the idea that you would know when children had been born. I hate to break this to modern people, but many children were born with no birth certificate, no whatever because one, you didn't know whether they were going to make it or not. Sometimes you didn't bother to register them anywhere until it was time to go to school. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: But also, if you're out in rural hinterland nowhere, and the midwife comes and helps you have a baby, there's nobody to tell. Nobody cares. I mean, it's not a thing until you get to the modern era of documenting everybody's lives from the moment they are born. What I think is fascinating about this bureau that you have in the notes, and I think it's really interesting. Directed, managed and staffed almost entirely by women. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: At the time would have been unheard of. J. Aughenbaugh: Unheard of. N. Rodgers: This is before women have the right to vote. They are running this agencies. Literally the right to vote for women doesn't come in for another eight, ten years. They would be able to run an agency. Now, it makes sense to me that what they're running is the agency involving children. Because you're looking at this misogynist slash, women should be taking care of children should be doing real work. J. Aughenbaugh: The real legislation, the real politics. We'll go ahead. N. Rodgers: They still made sure women were only in charge of children. But they did have women in charge of it, which is just fascinating because that's not a thing at all that you see in 1912. Good for them that they. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Well, speaking of women, let's get into the history. Most of the research that I found points to the fact that three people, Lillian Wald, Edward Thomas Divine and Florence Kelly were the people who were most responsible for the creation of the Children's Bureau. Two of the three were women. Their first proposal was submitted to President Roosevelt in 1905. N. Rodgers: Theodore. J. Aughenbaugh: Theodore Roosevelt. N. Rodgers: Not Franklin. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, Teddy. N. Rodgers: He of the Big Stick fame? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, in children's toy fame. N. Rodgers: Oh, that's right. Teddy bears. He conquered Cuba. Pretty much by himself, I think. The way he told it. J. Aughenbaugh: The way the initial set of biographers told it, you're like, Wow. N. Rodgers: I did everything. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. And he also created the world. But nevertheless, we're being sarcastic, folks. N. Rodgers: We are being sarcastic. We do love Teddy. He was full of himself. He believed in marketing. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: Let's put it that way. J. Aughenbaugh: Many presidential scholars, listeners, point to Teddy Roosevelt creating the modern era of the presidency and this idea that that a president would go public and ignore the Congress and political parties and directly appeal to the public was something that Teddy Roosevelt did all the time. N. Rodgers: Well, we're being sarcastic about him. He also founds the National Park system. There's all kinds of cool things that he did. He just was a little full of himself. J. Aughenbaugh: Nevertheless, Wald Divine and Kelly were members of what was known as the settlement movement. The basic idea of the settlement movement, was that the country needed to do what European countries were already doing, which is focusing on social welfare issues that government could be used for good, that you just didn't have to accept what economists described as the negative externalities of this new economy known as industrialization. N. Rodgers: The social ills that come with that. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. They created a committee, the National Child Labor Committee, that pushed for explicitly a federal government Children's Bureau. In many ways, it was an interest group that went ahead and said, Yes, we're broadly concerned about social welfare issues, but our focus is going to be on children. They went to work. I mean, think about it. Your first proposal was in 1905. N. Rodgers: Seven years. J. Aughenbaugh: Seven years. That's remarkable to go ahead and get from proposal to the creation of a federal government agency in seven years. Typically, Neo, as we've discussed on this podcast, what has to happen for the federal government to move as quick as seven years or quicker than seven years? N. Rodgers: A war. J. Aughenbaugh: A war or a crisis. N. Rodgers: Some sort of crisis. Maybe President Taft thought this was? At the crisis level. Who knows what he thought because we probably don't have a whole lot of his thoughts on this particular bureau. But so he signs it into law.1912. Who's the first head head of it? Is it one of the three? J. Aughenbaugh: No. The first head was Julia Lathrop. She was the first head. And the legislation was signed by Teddy Roosevelt's protege, signed into law by President William Howard Taft. Some of our listeners are going to be like, wait a minute. Aren't both of those Republicans? Yes. Back then, the Republican Party was known as the Progressive Party. N. Rodgers: Remember that you don't get that switch until the 60s. You don't get that switch until Richard Nixon, the Southern strategy, as it were. J. Aughenbaugh: You don't really get a progressive, if you will, president in the Democratic Party until FDR. That's 20 years later. N. Rodgers: We're part of the Department of Commerce and Labor, but doesn't commerce and labor break up pretty shortly thereafter? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it does. N. Rodgers: Who gets custody of the Children's Bureau? J. Aughenbaugh: The Department of Labor. N. Rodgers: So they were more concerned about the labor portion than they were the commerce portion? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: Which makes sense, considering what children were doing at the turn of the century. J. Aughenbaugh: But interestingly enough, Nia, the Children's Bureau made a rather strategic political decision. Their first, if you will, research efforts weren't about child labor. Instead, they focused on infant mortality. Instead of running the risk of raising the ire of big corporations, manufacturing plants, etc., instead, they went ahead and focused on an issue that cut across socioeconomic classes, racial groups, urban and rural areas. N. Rodgers: Who's going to fight about, literally, babies dying? Nobody's going to say, I think that's a good idea. There's not one person who thinks that's a good idea. If you come out of the gate saying, the first issue we're going to look at is, why are so many babies dying and how can we stop it, how can we cut down on the number of deaths, not one person is going to say, I don't support that. What [inaudible] monster would you be in order to say no, we need more babies so we can eat them, or whatever it is that you're planning on doing? Unless you're a serial killer, you are not going to support baby death. J. Aughenbaugh: Who's going to go ahead and say, as an elected official, I really don't care about babies dying? N. Rodgers: Exactly. You're going around kissing them, not killing them. That's very smart to say, let's pick an issue that we can't lose. We can't lose this issue. J. Aughenbaugh: But to be able to research infant deaths, the Children's Bureau went ahead and said, but we don't know how many children are dying because nobody counts. N. Rodgers: Nobody counts. Even if they counted locally, they don't aggregate that count anywhere. J. Aughenbaugh: The bureau started birth registration campaigns, and the way they justified it was, we can't tell you how many babies are dying. N. Rodgers: Until we know how many babies are being born. Very smart. J. Aughenbaugh: But again, this is all part of the progressives' emphasis on if we get empirical data, then we can come up with better solutions to problems. N. Rodgers: It's the idea of data makes you more able to be effective in government. That's where you start to get this idea of government counting everything and doing it. Now, they had been counting adults for census because the census is in the Constitution. They'd been counting adults, but children weren't people in their world. That's awesome. One of the things you mentioned about one of their early presses is this idea of pamphlets that tell parents what to do. Because part of this is, if parents don't know what to feed their kids, or they don't know how to do this infant and childcare. Let's say, for the sake of a terrifying argument, Aughie and I are married. We are married in rural Pennsylvania, and Aughie says, you know what, we're going to go to the big city and make our fortune. I say, okay, honey, because that's what women said at the time. Off we go to Philadelphia, and he's working in a factory, and I'm working in a factory, and because nature is the way it is, baby comes along, because that's what happens. If we're not near my mom or his mom to give us advice about how to parent or how to raise a child, we're just going to be winging it, and that is not a good idea. I like that they started this information campaign of, here's what you do for colic and here's how you help them sleep at night, and here's how you do all these things, because people think that that stuff comes naturally, but I'm not sure that it does. I think that we like all other animals, learn to parent from our parents, and if we're not around them when we have a baby, we don't get to ask questions, we don't get to say, what do I do when they do this, or whatever. I love the idea that they're making these pamphlets and trying to reach out to these young people and say, It's okay, we'll help you figure out how to have your baby and keep it alive. J. Aughenbaugh: They had pamphlets about prenatal care health clinics, encouraging new parents to take their kids to nurses, and if you didn't have access to nurses, creating a visiting nursing program. They also got into the grill of local government officials about improving public sanitation. N. Rodgers: Making it easier to have clean water. J. Aughenbaugh: They had certified milk stations, and as you pointed out, they had a whole list of pamphlets to educate mothers. Not so much dads. N. Rodgers: Dads are not going to care for children. But what I think, too, is, you mentioned in your notes, and I think one of the most important is weight standards. People take that for granted now. When you take your baby into your pediatrician, they weigh them every time, just like they weigh adults. What they're trying to figure out is, is this baby on standard for being healthy. Is this baby underweight? Is this baby overweight? They were almost never overweight at the turn of the century, but they were underweight quite a bit. They could advise the mom, they need to have more of whatever it is, who knows? But trying to get them because children that are tiny, little thin children, if they get sick, die faster. Being at the correct weight for your age helps you survive to the next stage of growth. J. Aughenbaugh: Because they had this campaign of measuring children and weighing children, this is when you get the first set of age, height, and weight standards in the United States. That way, you then could go ahead and say, Hey, my child might be underweight, or my child is actually progressing in terms of height and weight like most babies for their age. N. Rodgers: But often, those are the earliest signs of some other underlying illness that they need to treat, and if you don't know what that's supposed to be, then you wouldn't. National Baby Week comes along in 1916. J. Aughenbaugh: Then you had Children's Year, which was 2018. N. Rodgers: 1918. J. Aughenbaugh: 1918. But the Children's Bureau played an important role in minimizing the number of deaths by children during the flu epidemic. N. Rodgers: Who? J. Aughenbaugh: Who. That's right. N. Rodgers: In 1918. Because all of this information is helping people avoid having their kids die. J. Aughenbaugh: The Children's Bureau played in a huge role, but again, they made strategic political decisions, Nia, in the early years of its existence, so that they would not incur opposition from rather powerful groups like okay, business, elected officials, nearly all of whom were what gender? N. Rodgers: Female. Male. J. Aughenbaugh: Male. Men N. Rodgers: Sorry. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: I got it. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: The women were doing the work trying to convince men. J. Aughenbaugh: But by focusing on babies. N. Rodgers: What would be a women's issues? J. Aughenbaugh: Issue, yes. N. Rodgers: Then if you couldn't see me, folks, I did air quotes around women's issue because children are, in fact, both parents issue, really. But we only come to that in the modern era. In fact, we come to that in literally modern parenting. Aughie believes that, but even his father and my father were not people who were incredibly engaged with childcare. Like my dad would be like that thing is crying, and you should fix it. J. Aughenbaugh: This doesn't come along to the third wave of feminism of the late 1980s, early 1990s. N. Rodgers: Many of our listeners have been raised in the notion of both parents being responsible. But even just the generation before that was not like, that's really a women's thing. J. Aughenbaugh: Before my parents divorced, I still remember conversations of my mom saying, What would you know about our kids sleeping. N. Rodgers: Eating. J. Aughenbaugh: Eating, changing diaper routines. N. Rodgers: Don't know any of that. J. Aughenbaugh: Now, at the same time that the Children's Bureau was focusing on infant mortality and raising healthy babies, etc, what they were also doing but not generating a lot of PR about was doing a whole bunch of studies, Nia, on child labor. Again, they were very strategic politically. N. Rodgers: Is there a sneaker TantantaTantanta? What are these kids doing? J. Aughenbaugh: The public campaigns were about babies. N. Rodgers: Saving babies, and baby weights and baby heights and stuff. But they're also going around to industries and looking at the conditions in which, slightly older children. We do really mean slightly. We're talking about kids as young as 6, 7, 8-years-old. J. Aughenbaugh: By the time we get to, for instance, 1916, they convinced Congress to pass the Keating Owen Act, which was discouraging child labor. N. Rodgers: But not outlawing it just discouraging it. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes discouraging that's right. N. Rodgers: Because you had to start slow. You can't just leap out and change an economy. Seriously, there are ramifications for that economically that the government would not have been able to get behind if you just said children cannot work ever. You don't get that until much later because you have to ease into that thing. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But interestingly enough, when the United States Congress gave the Justice Department the authority to enforce the Keating-Owen Act, it eventually led to a Supreme Court decision, Hammer versus Degenhart. In 1918, the United States Supreme Court said the law was unconstitutional because it exceeded who's Commerce Clause authority. N. Rodgers: Congress. J. Aughenbaugh: Congress. Yes. The vote was 5-4, and the Supreme Court said that labor conditions, which were part of the means of production, were intrastate, not interstate. Therefore, Congress had no authority to regulate it. N. Rodgers: Interesting. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: Your act changes nothing about child labor. J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. N. Rodgers: You can discourage it all you want, but there's no enforcement. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, there's no constitutional authority. This won't change until 1941, US versus Darby. N. Rodgers: Really that long. J. Aughenbaugh: US versus Darby, where the Supreme Court went ahead and said that Congress did have the authority. But again, what is the intervening variable between 1918 and 1941? N. Rodgers: Two wars. J. Aughenbaugh: Well, one you get another war. N. Rodgers: World War I you get the Depression. J. Aughenbaugh: There you go. N. Rodgers: You've got three big hits all right in there in that time period. J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. In particular, with World War II, not only did the nation need a whole bunch of women to go to work domestically because the men were going overseas to fight, but a whole bunch of children were being recruited to work. The federal government was just like, Hey, wait a minute here. This might be a good time to legislate child labor. N. Rodgers: Yeah and the safety. Just really what they're legislating when they're legislating child labor as it comes along later, they're trying to prevent children from getting killed in unsafe work conditions. That's really what they're after. It's not that they don't want children to work. I don't know that they cared about children actually working. It's that they cared about children getting killed while working or getting maimed while working. J. Aughenbaugh: Also, as the Children's Bureau began to point out in the 1930s Nia, is that business owners should not want them to die. N. Rodgers: Because they're eventual consumers. J. Aughenbaugh: No, well, they weren't even concerned about the consumers. They viewed them in terms in the way they presented this was, these children are assets. N. Rodgers: You want them to stay alive so that they will. J. Aughenbaugh: You want them to stay healthy because you don't want them to be missing workdays. N. Rodgers: So awful. J. Aughenbaugh: But again, this is the way you politically, as a bureaucracy. N. Rodgers: Move. This is how you move the dial. You move inordinately slowly. J. Aughenbaugh: It's incremental policy change, but at the same time, you got to figure out how to gain leverage with the folks who might oppose what you ultimately want to achieve. But before we get there, Lathrop steps down as the head of the Children's Bureau in 1921. She was replaced by her chief lieutenant, another child labor reformer Grace Abbott. Abbott was running the Bureau's newly created child labor division. Again, it was short lived because the Supreme Court said that the law giving them the authority was unconstitutional. Doesn't matter. Abbott replaces Lathrop, and Abbott convinced Congress to pass the Shepherd Towner Act. This actually, what's the word I'm looking for? Foreshadowed what would become known as cooperative federalism. This law gave federal grants to states if states created child health programs. Even before the new deal. N. Rodgers: It's a carrot. If you will look after children, we will give you the money to create the programs to do it. Is that when we get midwives? J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, you get the midwife training program. Parent education programs where states were given money to hire professionals to travel to rural areas, urban areas. N. Rodgers: Extension visits. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, cooperative extension. N. Rodgers: Here's how you change diapers. J. Aughenbaugh: They modeled it on the well known Cooperative Extension program in the Department of Agriculture which was created in the 1860s. N. Rodgers: Which teaches you how to can and how to safely deal with food and all that other stuff. You're getting a similar thing, but with children. J. Aughenbaugh: That's wonderful. They gave money to states to collect data on maternal and infant mortality. Instead of getting opposition from birth moms and parents about giving the federal government information, the Children's Bureau concluded stake. N. Rodgers: People might be in state. J. Aughenbaugh: State because they may actually know some of these people who are going around. N. Rodgers: It feels less like the feds watching over your shoulder. There's all kinds of issues. Also, I think it's interesting at this time is they established the standards and licensing procedures for maternity homes, which if you don't know what a maternity home was, if a young lady got in trouble. She gets pregnant outside of Wedlock, she often went to a maternity home, which was she got sent away to a place to have her baby. Then come back from that place. It used to be that those places were totally sketchy. In the 20s, you get this no, no, they need to have standards. There needs to be a healthcare standard in these places because these young women are going to return back to life and potentially marry and have other children. We want them to be as healthy as they can be. We want the children to be born as healthy as they can be. Hiding a pregnancy often means an underweight child. It means all kinds of issues. Anyway, exciting. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: Exciting because we're getting a lot more actual care of pregnant women and of infants. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, of their offspring, yes. J. Aughenbaugh: Are you ready to move into the 1930s? N. Rodgers: Yeah. J. Aughenbaugh: The Children's Bureau had a huge impact 1930s in a number of areas. The Children's Bureau began to do research on what other countries were doing in regards to providing national government assistance to families with dependent children. This becomes a part of the Social Security Act of 1935. Before LBJ and President Johnson in the 1960s expanded, if you will, aid to families with dependent children. N. Rodgers: ADC. J. Aughenbaugh: First provision ADC. Now, today it's known as TNF, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. N. Rodgers: Women infants and children. J. Aughenbaugh: The first, if you will, for Ray, it was a test was a part of the Social Security Act of 1935. To me, that was fascinating. The Children's Bureau also began to conduct a whole bunch of studies in regards to things like rickets and other childhood maladies. Now we're going from okay, labor and births, and do you have a healthy kid to what are the common maladies for kids across the country and what can we do to go ahead and address them before they become lifelong chronic conditions that basically. Again, and the way they sold this needle was fascinating. N. Rodgers: Pull the workforce. J. Aughenbaugh: There you go. N. Rodgers: People limits them in the workforce. If you contract polio as a child and forevermore, you can't walk or you walk very poorly, you're not going to be able to stand and put widgets onto something in a factory somewhere. It makes sense to me to set it that way to say, if you have healthy children, you will have a healthy workforce population 10 years later. You need them to be as healthy as you can get them to be. While it's fascinating to me that just saying it because it's a public good would not carry the day, because we know it wouldn't. Reaching into the pockets of these billionaires, millionaires, and billionaires who are running all these industries and saying, This is your workforce, and you want them to be as healthy as possible because they will work harder for you and longer for you is brilliant. It's a brilliant way to get at that idea. J. Aughenbaugh: It's much like the arguments made Nia by reformers to change K through 12 education systems at the state level post World War II. N. Rodgers: You want these people to be able to work in high end manufacturing, you want them to be able to have a knowledge to understand basic engineering [inaudible] in mathematics and stuff like that, if you want them to work in. Not because it's just a good thing to know. J. Aughenbaugh: They didn't sell it. We should aspire to have a really smart citizenry. That's too fuzzy, that's too opaque. N. Rodgers: That's too warm, hey, whatever. J. Aughenbaugh: But if you went ahead and said, what we hear from employers is that they get better productivity from people who have basic math skills, who can read a manual, who can go ahead and follow instructions. Then we should make reforms to our education system. N. Rodgers: Listeners, you're probably hearing that argument today in terms of engineers and other stand professions is you're hearing people like Elon Musk saying, I have to go to India to get people because they're not being trained in the United States in the way that they need to be trained. This argument is still being made. It's just being made at a different level. It was being made at the K through 12 level, and now it's being made at the college level. We need different kinds of training at the college level and get rid of those fuzzy humanities and arts and who cares about that stuff? People need to be able to do the stem fields if we want them to. They need to be technologically sound in order to work in a technological world. This argument continues to be made. It's 150 years later, we're still 130 years later, and we're still making this argument. J. Aughenbaugh: Abbott steps down as chief of the Children's Bureau in 1934. She's replaced by yet another woman. Catherine Lenroot. Lenroot actually serves until the Eisenhower administration. N. Rodgers: How much did their budget grow in this time? J. Aughenbaugh: Because the Children's Bureau effectively lobbied Congress for major programs in the Social Security Act. Their budget grew from $337,000 in 1930 to nearly $11 million by the end of the decade. N. Rodgers: By 39 40. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: That's quite a bit of growth. J. Aughenbaugh: The Bureau became a significant pass through agency, meaning federal dollars were allocated to the Bureau who then passed the money along to states if states were willing to do, for instance, maternal and child health care clinics, ripple children's services. Again, focusing on, if you will, maladies that children suffer. How do you go ahead and minimize those so that these children can grow up to be productive wage earning adults? But even child welfare services. Again, this is the precursor to AFDC, aid to families with dependent children. Their staff grew from 143-400. N. Rodgers: In 10 years. J. Aughenbaugh: That's in a decade, folks. N. Rodgers: They almost triple. No, they do triple. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. N. Rodgers: Sorry [inaudible] J. Aughenbaugh: No. N. Rodgers: That's a big expansion. I love that they're, hey, we should take this and run with it. Again, coming from the point of view of who's going to speak against children? What kind of chucklehead would you You have to be, as a politician, to say, I don't really care if children live or die. I don't really care if children get rickets. I don't really care if children get. I don't care. You may think it, but you are never going to say it. The instant that you say that women who by now have gotten the vote, are going to completely turn away from you, but also they're gonna tell their husbands, if you vote for that fool who doesn't like children, you better get used to living cold on the couch because we're done. J. Aughenbaugh: A whole bunch of quality time on the couch. That's right. N. Rodgers: Because women are not only are they raised to be caregivers, but they also seem to have some natural instincts in that way that probably because they birth children. They're invested in something because for nine months, they were growing it and doing all the it. This idea that somehow you're gonna get away with politicians saying, kids, whatever. That is just not going to fly. Again, smart of these women to maneuver this into such a position that the men in charge of the various industries and in charge of the government can't just say, I don't think we should fund the Children's Bureau, because really, who cares about children? J. Aughenbaugh: Then during World War II, the Children's Bureau, as I already mentioned, focused quite a bit on protecting children who are now going to work to replace all of the men who were drafted into the war. But they also developed standards for daycare to take care of young children because their mothers were now working during the war. N. Rodgers: You have to have daycare now that you didn't have to have before. J. Aughenbaugh: Actually, according to some sociologists, this is the first concerted effort to create daycare in the United States. N. Rodgers: That makes sense because women are working in factories. Men are fighting. J. Aughenbaugh: The country needs daycare so that women can go to work in the factories to supply the weapons, the clothing. N. Rodgers: Materials war? Makes sense. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. This is fascinating to me. After the war, Nia the Children's Bureau gets shifted to what agency? J. Aughenbaugh: You want to guess? N. Rodgers: We could go to health and human. No. J. Aughenbaugh: No. N. Rodgers: Health and human services doesn't exist at that point, does it? J. Aughenbaugh: We don't get health, education, and welfare to the Johnson administration. N. Rodgers: Oh, that's right. Hugh. I don't know. Who is it? J. Aughenbaugh: Social Security. N. Rodgers: That makes sense, sort of. J. Aughenbaugh: Well, if you think about, for instance, the original mission of the Social Security Administration was not just elderly Americans. N. Rodgers: Widows. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: Widows. People who didn't have husbands but had children. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: You're right. Thank you, Aughie. I didn't even think of that. But yeah, that makes sense. It makes sense that they would be put in with that group of people because what the Social Security Administration originally was was vulnerable people. That's the whole point of it it was vulnerable people who needed help from the government to live. J. Aughenbaugh: But in that transfer, Nia, the Children's Bureau lost all of their child labor programs to the Department of Labor. N. Rodgers: Yeah, that makes sense. Their mission changed. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. N. Rodgers: Their mission changed. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. A year before the 1952 election, we finally have another leadership change after nearly 18 years. N. Rodgers: That's a long time to be in charge of something. J. Aughenbaugh: Something, yes. N. Rodgers: That's fucked. J. Aughenbaugh: Again, you're talking and you're talking about committed folks to the call. N. Rodgers: Yes. These few women are, I'm in it forever. J. Aughenbaugh: The next leader was yet another woman, Martha May Elliott. She became the four chief. Now, when the bureau got shifted to Social Security, they then began to focus on programs like the Juvenile Delinquency Project. This is where the bureau gets some criticism because they began to impose, if you will, behavioral standards that would seemingly be appropriate for White, middle class, suburban families, and they wanted those standards to be the norm for all families. We're going to get to a few criticisms at the end of the podcast because that's what we do on this podcast. We try to be balanced. N. Rodgers: We do. We criticize people. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, I go with the more diplomatic we try to be balanced. But hey, the Children's Bureau after World War II, their grant programs to states grew exponentially. Maternal and child health, treatment options for children with disabilities, and in particular, not only families, but now schools. Before we even get to the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was not until Bush 41. N. Rodgers: Right. J. Aughenbaugh: You had the Children's Bureau post World War II, they were saying to schools, you have an obvious, discrete population of children that need particular services, and we think you can integrate them into your educational programs. They created programs for children in foster care, and if you think the foster care system today, listeners, is horrible, before the 1940s and '50s, it was even worse. N. Rodgers: If it existed in pockets. It existed in pockets, not in any standardized system, and it was there was no one watching, there was no regulation. J. Aughenbaugh: In many states, Nia, foster care was provided by nonprofit religious organizations. The state didn't want to have anything to do with it, because in many states, the attitude was that is a family problem. N. Rodgers: Not our problem. J. Aughenbaugh: It's not a societal problem. N. Rodgers: Yeah, it's a failing of a family. Which is not a lot often what it is. But anyway, that's a whole separate issue. J. Aughenbaugh: Eisenhower takes over during the 1950s, the emphasis of the Children's Bureau was on strengthening families. Not a huge shock. This is an era that has been discussed. N. Rodgers: Ionized in history as a leave it to beaver style nuclear family, we want to encourage that kind of thing, and it's not big surprise that this bureau would follow the cultural zeitgeist. N. Rodgers: However, This is a sub theme of the Children's Bureau. At the same time that they were following those political wins, they were behind the scenes beginning to do research for child welfare, so focusing on. J. Aughenbaugh: This is when you start to get the early view of headstart. How how do we get kids ready to learn? How do we make sure that they are in a position physically, emotionally, and psychologically that when they do go to school, it takes? Because otherwise, they're just going and sitting their bodies there, but they're not. N. Rodgers: Actually learning. J. Aughenbaugh: Right. N. Rodgers: You're getting stuff like that. You're getting the early beginnings of the great society. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. This is one of the more fascinating things I learned by doing the research on the Children's Bureau, Nia, is how politically astute this bureaucratic agency has been throughout its history. N. Rodgers: Can I say something rude to you? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: You haven't heard me say lots of rude things to you over the years. J. Aughenbaugh: Well, it's probably not a big surprise that they were simply because it's a program run by women, dealing with men. N. Rodgers: Dealing with men and you got to work what you got. J. Aughenbaugh: They are protecting children who, as we've already discussed in this podcast episode, were afterthoughts or were, how can I put this? They were accessories for successful men. N. Rodgers: Same with wives. J. Aughenbaugh: Children were accessories. N. Rodgers: Women for all of time. I'm going to say, and this sound ugly, and I don't mean it to sound ugly, have learned to play men. J. Aughenbaugh: Sure. N. Rodgers: Because, oh, you're big strong, Aughie, can't you kill us a mammoth? J. Aughenbaugh: I know you worked hard all day at your office job. Come on home. Let me go ahead and pour you a drink, give you your dinner, and, oh, yeah, by the way, I'm going to engage in all forms of really effective subtle manipulation because I've learned how to do this because I don't have real power. N. Rodgers: Exactly. I'm not trying to be on fuzz. J. Aughenbaugh: No. N. Rodgers: Women learned to play men for a long time in order to protect themselves, to protect their offspring, to do all things. J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, Nia has heard this many times off recording, but after my parents divorce, I lived with four women. I heard firsthand what you just described, Nia. If I didn't already know it, but I learned it first hand from listening to these four very talented women. They were, well, of course, you go ahead and do X if you want to go ahead and convince a room full of men that they should do something that they wouldn't think they would want to do. N. Rodgers: That may not naturally fall into their best interests. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: You have to describe it in ways that it will seem like it falls into their best interests. J. Aughenbaugh: Sure. N. Rodgers: Anyway, in the '60s, one of the things that I wanted to mention before we move on because I know we're long for time here is, you also start to see child abuse becoming an issue, becoming something that people say, Hey, we probably ought not harm children physically, mentally or emotionally. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: That it will have an effect on them as adults. There starts to be this connection of, oh, what you do to a child carries through to adulthood, and so some of that is, of course, the rise of psychology as a profession, but it also is, again, seeing children as people. Seeing them as individual people. J. Aughenbaugh: What will they become when they become adults? As Nia is pointing out, listeners, in the 1960s, the Children's Bureau did a whole bunch of studies, and they held meetings with experts, and they crafted a model statute that states then could adopt that would require doctors and hospitals to report suspected child abuse. N. Rodgers: Which Aughie and I fall under today. As a university, we are required reporters. If we suspect that somebody is being abused, we are required to get help for them. J. Aughenbaugh: It's also in the 1960s that President Lyndon Johnson convinced Congress to appropriate a whole bunch of money to the Children's Bureau. They were awash in cash, by the way, in the 1960s. But the Children's Bureau was moved from the Social Security Administration in 1963 to the Welfare Administration, which became a unit of health, education, and? N. Rodgers: Welfare. J. Aughenbaugh: Welfare. Yes. J. Aughenbaugh: It's also at this time that President Johnson explicitly asked money from Congress for AFDC, what was known as welfare. The aforementioned aid to families with dependent children. N. Rodgers: It was called that for a long time, wasn't it? J. Aughenbaugh: Until the Clinton Administration. N. Rodgers: I seem to remember right. I seem to remember as a kid, people mentioning that, and that's where you get food stamps and you get all things because you realize that if children don't eat, they don't do well in school, there's a reason that you want children to have their basic needs met, because they can't perform in school if they don't have those basic needs met. J. Aughenbaugh: What's also fascinating, and I'm going to move us into the 1970s because we're running short on time for this particular podcast episode is, Nia, as we move into the 1970s, the Children's Bureau began to focus on adoption. To me, what's fascinating is if you follow what the Children's Bureau points of emphasis were, it really tracks the development of childcare policy in the United States quite well, because prior to the 1970s, adoption was seen as a private matter. N. Rodgers: People often did not tell their children they were adopted. They didn't. She's just like, no, she's always been with us. J. Aughenbaugh: But the Children's Bureau, their focus in regards to adoption policy shifted from finding children for families to finding parents for children, and that's a huge paradigm shift? N. Rodgers: Yes, it is, centering children rather than parents. J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. N. Rodgers: Because that's what you're doing there. J. Aughenbaugh: The unit of analysis becomes the children, not the childless set of parents? Yes. N. Rodgers: It's less about them than it is about finding a home and finding the correct home for the child. J. Aughenbaugh: The Bureau begins to incur some criticism because the Bureau supported non traditional adoption arrangements, including cross cultural, trans racial, single parent, and they began to advocate for subsidized adoption in the United States Tax Code. To encourage parents to consider adoption. N. Rodgers: You get a tax break. J. Aughenbaugh: You get a tax break, and this does not occur until tax reform during the Reagan administration. N. Rodgers: That's really late. J. Aughenbaugh: But they worked on it for well over a decade, Nia. N. Rodgers: It makes sense that, again, it's about enticing people to do a good thing. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: By touching on their self interest. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: All along this bureau has been about reading the self interest of powerful people and then playing to it. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: In order to get what it needs for infants or children or young people. That's really smart. Hey, you know what? We'll get you a tax break if you'll adopt a kid. We will make this as attractive as we can to encourage people into the system. J. Aughenbaugh: There is a level of political savviness. N. Rodgers: If the whole government was like that, we would own the entire world. J. Aughenbaugh: My goodness. But anyways. N. Rodgers: Does the Bureau still exist? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it does. Yes, the Bureau still exists, but now its primary focus is on research, Nia. Most of its grant programs have been transferred to other units. In particular, the Children's Bureau was usually in favor of categorical grants to where they could specifically monitor what states were doing with the money, but with the Reagan administration and then Clinton administration and Bush 43 administration, the focus went to block grants, which states love because there are not as many strings attached, but for an agency like the Children's Bureau, where they wanted to know that the states were doing the appropriate stuff with the money, you get some pushback. It's one of the rare times that I found in exploring the Children's Bureau that they perhaps either didn't read the political tea leaves as well as they should have or they didn't respond as well. They didn't respond well. N. Rodgers: But they're still out there being basically a pass through organization in the sense. They're still doing what they were always doing, which is giving federal grant money to states to do the work at the state level. J. Aughenbaugh: Yep. To conclude this episode real briefly, listeners, as much as Nia and I have been positive about the Children's Bureau, there have been some criticisms. One of the criticisms was that the Bureau in its early years was trying to impose a middle upper class, if you will, conception of appropriate behaviors. N. Rodgers: Middle upper class, White. J. Aughenbaugh: White, yes. Including the treatment of children and what families should look like. The Children's Bureau throughout the 19, teens, '20s, '30s, even into the '40s, was just like, we want to maintain the nuclear family. There should be a mother and a father. N. Rodgers: They should live this lifestyle. J. Aughenbaugh: Lifestyle, yes. N. Rodgers: If you have immigrant families, where grandparents raise children because parents are working, that's not really the image they're going for. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: Even though that was a huge thing in immigrant families was that multiple generations would live together and old people would take care of babies so that young people could go work, which we would not really say is a great idea. J. Aughenbaugh: Which, by the way, Nia, what you just described is accurate in terms of what every successive wave of immigrants did when they came to the United States. N. Rodgers: You bring your older with you to take care of your baby. J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. N. Rodgers: It's a weird thing that they were trying to be like, no, that's not what a nuclear family looks like. Can I mention one of my criticisms? J. Aughenbaugh: Go ahead. N. Rodgers: While I love a lot of what the Children's Bureau did, and you've heard me say all positive things and Aughie, as well, they had an unfortunate tendency to suggest that minority children should be adopted into white families and be raised more or less white. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: There was a whitewashing of minority foster children. That, in some instances still goes on today. It's an incredibly wrongheaded way to view. I mean, out of that, you get the policies of removing Native American children from their homes and put into white and told not to speak their languages. Some of that is and that is just a racism that has threaded itself unfortunately through the Children's Bureau. All of the women who were in charge of it were white. J. Aughenbaugh: They were. That's a broader criticism of the progressive movement of the turn of the 20th century. N. Rodgers: Is that the white middle class is the standard by which all should measure themselves. Whether they can financially or physically get there or not. If you're held to that standard and you can't make that standard, you're trash which is, again, an unfortunate way to view people. J. Aughenbaugh: I'm going to mention a couple other criticisms. We've already talked about how the Children's Bureau had to, shall we say, manipulate manufacturers and industrial corporations. Interestingly enough, manufacturers and industrial corporations were quite critical of the bureau focusing on child labor laws, even though. Eventually, those sectors of the economy came around to understanding the Children's Bureau emphasis on children's health and keeping them alive meant that manufacturers would have actually a robust workforce to pick from that could do their jobs. But it was interesting. Conservatives, particularly in the last 20-30 years? N. Rodgers: Can I just say? You're talking about old school manufacturing conservatives. Now modern conservatives say what, Aughie. J. Aughenbaugh: That the bureau has lost its focus on childhood safety. N. Rodgers: They say the exact opposite of what conservatives at the beginning said. Conservatives at the beginning said, you're paying too much attention to this childhood safety thing, and, blah. Now conservatives are like, you're not paying enough attention to childhood safety. J. Aughenbaugh: Safety. N. Rodgers: I mean, in fairness to the bureau, it can't win. J. Aughenbaugh: Win. Even liberals have gotten in on the act because liberals have complained that once the bureau was placed in health education and welfare, which eventually became Health and Human Services, the bureau lost its focus on the whole child to just focus on child abuse. N. Rodgers: Focusing too much on child abuse and not enough. J. Aughenbaugh: Enough on the whole child. N. Rodgers: The holistic view of the child. J. Aughenbaugh: Of the child. N. Rodgers: Bureau is like, I can't make anybody happy and that answer is true. J. Aughenbaugh: You can. N. Rodgers: But also I see the liberal complaint of reducing children to child abuse does, in fact. J. Aughenbaugh: Ignore. N. Rodgers: Ignore all these other things about children that you should also be paying attention to. It can't just be about their abuse. It also has to be about all the other old school stuff that they were looking at. J. Aughenbaugh: Like nutrition and how do we get them ready to go to school and learn at school? How do you get them to go ahead and eventually be just like good adults. No matter what they choose to do. Good, healthy adults that are able to go ahead and achieve. N. Rodgers: Are active and can learn and can grow. J. Aughenbaugh: At least the bottom three levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. N. Rodgers: The fact that if you focus on a whole person, you're also focusing on the next generation of a whole person. If you focus on one limited aspect of a person, then you're not preparing that person to be a parent themselves. J. Aughenbaugh: Themselves. That's right. N. Rodgers: There's some valid criticism there. Although overall, I'd say that Aughie and I come down on the positive with the Children's Bureau, because overall, at least its intentions were good. It's intentions have been good. J. Aughenbaugh: It got the federal government to go ahead and focus on a subpopulation of the United States that had been long ignore. Even if they did make mistakes, at least they got the federal government representing the collective to go ahead and say. N. Rodgers: To think of children as people. J. Aughenbaugh: People, that's right. Instead. N. Rodgers: Children as people too. J. Aughenbaugh: People too. Instead of workers on a farm and then eventually workers in a plant, which to me was. N. Rodgers: Vast Improvement. J. Aughenbaugh: Vast improvement. But anyways, Nia, of the agencies that we're doing in this series, this is the one that I really honed in on. Nia was just like Children's Bureau. Sure, Aughie, let's go ahead and do. But this has just been utterly fascinating. I learned so much. I got to admit I'm actually thinking about using this particular podcast episode in my bureaucratic politics class. N. Rodgers: This is actually a really interesting case study for students to see how to work within government. J. Aughenbaugh: That's right, yes. N. Rodgers: Administratively to get what you want from people who may not necessarily want give you what you want. J. Aughenbaugh: What you want. That's right. N. Rodgers: This is a really good example of how to do that thoughtfully. Aughie, thank you. J. Aughenbaugh: Thank you, Nia. You've been listening to civil discourse brought to you by VCU Libraries. Opinions expressed are solely the speaker's own and do not reflect the views or opinions of VCU or VCU Libraries. Special thanks to the Workshop for technical assistance. Music by Isaak Hopson. Find more information at guides.library.vcu.edu/discourse. As always, no documents were harmed in the making of this podcast.