The National Research Council Committee on Child Development and the Founding of the Society for Research in Child Development, 1925-1933

Abstract

To understand the origins of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) we must begin not with its official organization in 1933 but with the founding of the Committee on Child Development (CCD) in 1924 by the National Research Council (NRC). The SRCD evolved directly from this committee and for 15 years continued to receive its support, becoming autonomous only in 1948. The NRC, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, was itself only 9 years old when it established the committee. It was founded in 1916 by reformers within the academy to make that ineffectual organization more responsive to the nation's defense needs and to create a permanent centralized scientific organization that would stimulate and coordinate the research activities of government, industry, and academe (Dupree, 1957).