Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and Hilary Marland, Cultures of child health in Britain and the Netherlands in the twentieth century, Clio Medica 71, The Wellcome Series in the History of Medicine, Amsterdam and New York, Rodopi, 2003, pp. vi, 317 (hardback 90-420-1054-1), (paperback 90-420-1044-4).

Abstract

In 1999 a group of Dutch and British historians working in child health gathered at Warwick University for a workshop on ‘Child health and national fitness in the twentieth century’. National fitness emerged as a less important unifying theme to the workshop than had been anticipated. As the editors wrote in the introduction to the volume which emerged from the workshop, the dominance of “national efficiency” was challenged. National efficiency was still viewed as a central motivating factor for child welfare and health in early-twentieth-century Britain by those who wrote on that subject; for example in his chapter on mental deficiency, Mark Jackson cited an early-twentieth-century doctor who proclaimed: “The hand that wrecks the cradle wrecks the nation” (p. 157). Yet it was also shown to be time and place specific. The Dutch historians argued that national fitness was less important in discourses of child health than the “pillared” denominational society of early-twentieth-century Netherlands. Other papers focusing on post-Second World War societies showed that concerns of national fitness had given way to other considerations based on social changes and the new child psychology (such as the “separation anxiety” discussed by Harry Hendrick, the sexual revolution discussed by Hugo Roling, and the anti-psychiatry movement and youth culture discussed by Gemma Blok). This collection of essays highlights the importance of viewing the history of child health in its broader social and cultural context, and the value of comparative history in the unravelling of those contextual constructions. The history of children's health covers a multiplicity of subject areas and this volume is no exception. The subjects range from physical education in schools, the school medical service and educational reform, infant care advice and consumerism, mental deficiency, children's and adolescent residential institutions, corporal punishment, hospital visiting, and sex education. The editors define “the child” as being school aged, between the ages of four and fourteen, and note that most of the essays focus on this age group. However, three deal with infants, and two with adolescents (defined as between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five). In his overview chapter, Roger Cooter laments the continued “adultist” approach to the historical study of children and the lack of children's voice, though he sees Hendrick's essay on hospital visiting as “hinting” at a history of children's own experience of illness and medicine. Deborah Thom perhaps comes closest to uncovering children's views when she uses oral history to assess the extent of physical punishment in the home and at school. One of the goals of the workshop was to reflect upon advances in the historiography of child health since the publication of Roger Cooter's landmark collection of essays, In the name of the child: health and welfare 1880–1940 (1992). For this reason Cooter was invited to contribute the final chapter of this book. Cooter regretted that children had still not become a major focus for historical research except in relation to more general historical agendas or in connection with specific foci, such as the history of sports, masculinity and “mental defectives”. Yet the fifth conference of the European Association for the History of Medicine, held in Geneva in 2001 and entitled ‘Health and the child: care and culture in history’ demonstrates that the situation is not as bleak as indicated by Cooter. This conference attracted over 90 papers and 120 participants. Unfortunately no publication has emerged from the meeting (though some of the participants contributed to the present volume). This contrasts with another conference held the previous year, at the University of Michigan, which resulted in Formative years: children's health in the US, 1800–2000 edited by Alexandra Minna Stern and Howard Markel (2002). Child health does appear to be developing its own specific historiography and this volume is an important contribution.