The United States Children's Bureau is a federal agency founded in 1912, organized under the United States Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families. Today, the bureau's operations involve preventing child abuse and assisting with foster care and adoption. Historically, its work was much broader, as shown by the 1912 act which created and funded it:
The said bureau shall investigate and report to [the Department of Commerce and Labor] upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life among all classes of our people, and shall especially investigate the questions of infant mortality, the birth-rate, orphanage, juvenile courts, desertion, dangerous occupations, accidents and diseases of children, employment, legislation affecting children in the several states and territories.Apr. 9, 1912, ch. 73, §2, 37 Stat. 79
During the height of its influence, the Bureau was directed, managed, and staffed almost entirely by women—a rarity for any federal agency in the early 20th century. It was most influential in bringing the methods of reform-oriented social research and the ideas of maternalist reformers to bear on federal government policy.
New Deal legislation, including the Fair Labor Standards Act and Aid to Dependent Children programs, incorporated many reforms that the Children's Bureau and its network of grassroots women's organizations had supported for years. By the time the Children's Bureau was folded into the Social Security Administration in 1946, it began to assume more of its modern role.Kriste Lindenmeyer, "A right to childhood": the U.S. Children's Bureau and child welfare, 1912-46 (University of Illinois Press, 1997), 30.
Organization The United States Children's Bureau is a federal agency founded in 1912 under the Department of Commerce and Labor, folded into the Social Security Administration in 1946 and now organized under the United States Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families.
History
Creation Most accounts of the Children's Bureau's origins point to three people, Lillian Wald, Edward Thomas Devine, and Florence Kelley, who began to discuss the idea around 1903. Their proposal (with colleagues) to President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 reflected the Progressive Era's generally heightened concern for social welfare issues, as well as the influence of the Settlement movement, of which all three were members.Kriste Lindenmeyer, "A right to childhood": The U.S. Children's Bureau and child welfare, 1912-46 (University of Illinois Press, 1997), 9.
Also in 1905, the recently formed National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) agreed to make the establishment of a federal children's bureau its primary legislative goal. The NCLC's effort was supported by women's groups such as the National Consumers League, the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the National Congress of Mothers, and the Daughters of the American Revolution. The proposal also was endorsed by attendees of the first White House Conference on Children and Youth in 1909.Lindenmeyer, 20-24.
The bill establishing the Children's Bureau was passed in 1912 following a lengthy legislative effort, and it was signed by President William Howard Taft on April 9 of that year. The Children's Bureau became the first national government office in the world that focused solely on the well-being of children and their mothers.
Taft appointed Julia Lathrop as the first head of the Bureau. Lathrop, a noted maternalist reformer also active in the Settlement Movement, was the first woman ever to head a government agency in the United States.
At its founding, the bureau was part of the Department of Commerce and Labor; when the two departments' functions were separated in 1913, it became part of the Department of Labor.
1912–1920
The Children's Bureau's first efforts focused on decreasing infant mortality by determining how many babies were dying, through expanded birth registration efforts, and understanding why so many babies died before their first birthday. The Bureau completed birth registration campaigns and conducted infant mortality studies in 10 cities between 1914 and 1921. These studies revealed strong connections between poverty and infant deaths.
The Bureau's commitment to fighting infant mortality resonated with the proliferation of "baby-saving" campaigns throughout the country at this time. The Bureau endorsed activities such as prenatal care, infant health clinics, visiting nurses, public sanitation, certified milk stations, and education of mothers.Lindenmeyer, 49-50. It proclaimed a "Children's Year" beginning April 6, 1918, to protect children from shortages of milk, food, and public health nurses during World War I. As part of this effort, volunteers weighed and measured millions of children, resulting in the publication of the nation's first age, height, and weight standards.
In its first few years, the Children's Bureau published several pamphlets about prenatal, infant, and child care. These booklets were soon in high demand. By 1929, the Bureau estimated that the information in its pamphlets had benefited one-half of all U.S. babies.Ladd-Taylor, Molly, Raising a Baby the Government Way: Mothers' Letters to the Children's Bureau, 1915-1932, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 2.
In 1914, Emma Octavia Lundberg became the first Director of the Social Services Division of the Children's Bureau.
National Baby Week was first observed in March 1916, at the joint suggestion of the Children's Bureau and the General Federation of Women's Clubs. The purpose was to stimulate interest in the proper care of infants and by means of exhibits and conferences, to bring to the attention of parents the standards of infant welfare which had been developed by experts who had studied the subject. In order to promote the success of this work, the Bureau prepared a pamphlet entitled Baby Week Campaigns, describing the methods used in the earlier urban baby-week observances whose success had encouraged the belief that a nation-wide observance would be practicable. This pamphlet was revised to include the best original ideas and devices developed during the campaign of 1916. A similar movement was carried on in 1917. The work begun in these campaigns was developed even more extensively in 1918 in connection with Children's Year activities.
Child labor became a focus of the Children's Bureau's efforts beginning around 1915. Between 1915 and 1930, the Bureau published 31 studies examining children's working conditions by visiting child laborers in their homes and workplaces. These studies helped to reveal the prevalence and nature of child labor in the United States. In 1916, Congress passed the Keating-Owen Act, which discouraged child labor. Congress assigned the Children's Bureau the responsibilities of administering and enforcing this law. Chief Lathrop hired noted child-labor reformer Grace Abbott to lead the Bureau's newly created Child Labor Division in April 1917; however, the law was short-lived. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled it unconstitutional in June 1918.
1921–1929
In August 1921, Lathrop stepped down as Chief, and Grace Abbott was appointed to succeed her.Lindenmeyer, 90-91.
The Children's Bureau played a major role in the passage and administration of the Sheppard–Towner Act. This law, passed in 1921, authorized the first federal grants-in-aid for state-level children's health programs. Projects in most states included some or all of the following:
Midwife training programs, licensing, and enforcement Parent education through traveling health demonstrations, health centers, home visits, correspondence courses, and classes Establishment of standards and licensing procedures for maternity homes Data collection on maternal and infant mortality
The program ended in 1929, having helped an estimated 4 million infants and preschool children and approximately 700,000 pregnant women.Lindenmeyer, 104.
Maternal and infant care and child labor were the Bureau's primary focus during its first two decades. However, other topics of research included juvenile delinquency, mother's aid, illegitimacy, foster care, and children's diseases.Lindenmeyer, 139. Notably:
In 1923, a Children's Bureau-appointed committee established the first-ever standards for effective juvenile courts. A 1926 bulletin summarizing the history and current state of mothers' aid legislation helped lay the groundwork for the Aid to Dependent Children provisions in the 1935 Social Security Act. The 1920s saw an increased focus on state and county child welfare services. The Bureau published Foster-Home Care for Dependent Children in 1923.Bradbury, 33–34, 36. The Children's Bureau conducted a study of rickets, in partnership with the Yale School of Medicine and the New Haven, Connecticut, Department of Health, that demonstrated the effectiveness of simple prevention methods.Bradbury, 26–27.
1930–1939
During the early years of the Great Depression, under President Herbert Hoover, the Children's Bureau helped with government efforts to document families' needs and local relief efforts.Bradbury, 29-31. When Congress established the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) in May 1933, the Children's Bureau helped to collect data for the agency to determine how the appropriations would be spent. The Bureau also worked with the FERA to establish the Child Health Recovery Program, providing emergency food and medical care to children in need.Lindenmeyer, 177-178.
In December 1934, Katherine Lenroot succeeded Abbott as Chief of the Bureau. She held this position until 1952. Lenroot, Martha May Eliot, and Grace Abbott worked together to create the child-focused sections of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Social Security bill:Lindenmeyer, 179-183.
Aid to Dependent Children provided federal matching grants for local and state mothers' aid programs. Maternal and Child Health Care funded clinics, professional education, and medical care for needy children. Crippled Children's Services created federal matching grants to help children with physical disabilities. Child Welfare Services provided state grants to address the needs of dependent and neglected children.
When the Social Security Act was signed in 1935, the Children's Bureau was granted authority to administer the last three of these programs. (Aid to Dependent Children was administered by the newly established Social Security Board.) The Bureau grew from distributing $337,371 in 1930 to dispensing nearly $11 million in grants by the end of the decade; its staff grew from 143 to more than 400.Lindenmeyer, 193-194.
In the meantime, the Children's Bureau remained active in the campaign against child labor. In 1933, the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) opened the door for the Bureau to establish industry-specific child labor codes and the first federal minimum age for full-time employment. The NIRA was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in May 1935. Many of its provisions, however, were recreated in the Fair Labor Standards Act passed three years later.Lindenmeyer, 196-198.
1940–1956 Throughout World War II, the Children's Bureau continued to promote the well-being of U.S. children through activities such as developing standards for day care for children of working mothers and a campaign to focus attention on children's physical and emotional needs during the war.Lindenmeyer, 223. Meanwhile, the Bureau worked with the U.S. Committee for the Care of European Children to maintain a central register of unaccompanied refugee children arriving in the United States, to oversee their placement with agencies and foster families, and to establish standards for their care.