Jacobson,
Lisa. Raising Consumers: Children and
the American Mass Market in the Early Twentieth Century.
Précis by Jordan Scavo
Lisa Jacobson’s Raising Consumers examines the roots of juvenile consumerism by tracing it back to its origins in the first decades of the twentieth century (rather than in the post-World War II era, the focus of other studies). Especially during the twenties and thirties, a confluence of advertising boosters, moral reformers, child experts, parents, and children converged to hash out the characteristics of a consumerism that catered directly to children. In turn, this incipient juvenile consumerism informed and transformed the American consumptive landscape, reorienting gender roles and fueling a burgeoning American consumer culture.
The development of juvenile advertising in the early twentieth century began with a dramatic increase in children’s access to disposable income; parents’ sentimentalization of their children also allowed juveniles to stake a larger claim to consumer goods. Around the turn of the century, advertisers recognized children’s influence in shaping parental spending habits and began to create advertisements that incorporated children’s approval of products in order to sway parents’ opinions. Soon after, advertising boosters recognized the maturation of a market for children’s consumer goods and extolled the benefits of advertising directly to children through youth-oriented magazines, thus producing a dramatic rise in advertising revenue for such magazines. The increase in the child’s influence on the consumer landscape was possible due to several new social developments: children’s increased role in family purchasing decisions, the development and proliferation of children’s peer associations and activities, and the greater independence and consumer agency that children wielded. In order to secure and maintain the increased advertising revenue, youth magazines developed methods to engender brand-consciousness and loyalty among their readers and learned to pair the child consumers to specific products. Such pervasive youth-targeted advertising extended to their schools, as producers sponsored writing contests and provided learning aids themed with their respective products. Although youth advertisers aggressively targeted children, they worked carefully to ensure their advertisements did not alienate a family-oriented audience in order to maintain the goodwill of parents.
The (seemingly) reckless increase in child consumerism drew the ire of moral reformers and parenting experts. To encourage juvenile thrift, reformers urged schools to partner with local banks to sponsor student savings accounts. However, some parents and parenting experts disapproved of the compulsory nature of the student savings accounts and the pressure from the schools and reformers to refrain from all spending; instead, they advocated issuing children an allowance to teach them to economize and prioritize their expenditures. However, critics noted that allowances caused children to develop a sense of entitlement and, accordingly, they failed to learn the value of money. Other families, especially during the Depression, allowed their children to help evaluate the family finances, which helped children realize that relative import of various expenses and to appreciate excess income. On the other hand, the Depression wiped out many student savings accounts, which provoked a “spend-it-while-you-have-it” attitude among many Depression-era youth.
In the early twentieth century, consumerism was considered a decidedly feminine activity. However, advertisers used boy consumers as a Trojan horse to break down the gender barrier to consumerism. Advertising boosters promulgated the rise of the boy consumer by highlighting their considerable influence in parental spending. Advertisers appealed to boy consumers by emphasizing their ability to keep the family informed of the latest technological advances and changes to the consumer market. Advertisers downplayed their old stereotype of consumerism as effeminate by describing boy consumers as intrepid and precocious consumers and targeting boys with gender appropriate products such as bicycles, cars, and rifles.
Girl consumers, too, underwent a transformation. Advertising boosters did not consider girls to have the purchasing influence on the household that boys did; rather, advertisers exploited juvenile peer-consciousness to impel girls to consume in order to increase their beauty. The dramatic rise in high school attendance in the twenties and thirties, coupled with increased leisure time for adolescents, created more opportunities for youths to associate and develop the peer-consciousness that would propel the youth-pervasive desire to “fit it.” Advertisers and teen advice columnists played into girls’ fear of rejection and desire for acceptance by offering solutions which invariably included purchasing a specific product to augment female beauty.
The rapid proliferation of public consumer entertainment drew children away from their homes and neighborhoods, to the chagrin of parents and parenting experts. To draw children back into their homes and away from the allure of mass culture, experts recommended that parents implement new methods of retaining children’s interest at home, such as creating playrooms and furnishing them with educational or morally appropriate toys and sports equipment. The experts made a clear distinction between wholesome private entertainment centered in the home and corrupting, unrestrained consumptive entertainment in the public sphere. Going further, parenting authorities suggested that the nature of play (and of parenting) must be redefined for the household; parent participation in children’s play would increase family affection and build strong bonds of friendship and trust between the parents and children.
The advent of radio advertisements intensified youth consumerism and, in particular, changed the child-parent interface of consumerism. Radio advertisers created exclusive listeners’ clubs with incentives for sending in proof of purchases for children’s products. Although these products initially sought parental endorsement by appealing to child health and well-being, children recoiled from such advertisements because they infringed on their consumer agency. In response, advertisers’ radio clubs began catering directly to children by requiring purchases in exchange for prizes and devices to supplement the entertainment value of popular children’s radio shows. Parents and parenting authorities criticized the radio clubs for fostering a feverish demand for the advertised products, and many families found it difficult or impossible to sate their children’s consumptive appetites during the Depression. Additionally, many children developed a cynical attitude toward the radio clubs, expressing frustration at the class-stratified nature of the entertainment their favorite radio programs provided. Others complained that they had been taken advantage of, noting that the cheap and gimmicky “prizes” they had sent away for did not meet their expectations.
Many of the facets of modern youth consumerism took cues from the marketing strategies of the early twentieth century. Gender-based consumerism continues to evolve; advertisers and consumer products still pervade the educational system; advertisers, parents, and parenting authorities continue to jostle for control over the way in which society grooms the next generation of consumers; and peer-consciousness of consumer products dictates the rise, fall, and transition of youth cultures.