Children of the Great Depression

Abstract

Children of the Great Depression. G. H. Elder. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1974. The tidal wave of the Great Depression had washed over most of the United States by the early 1930s, and the lives of many American families were never the same. But as Glen Elder reminds us, not all families experienced economic devastation, much as the economic boom of today has failed to reach a sizable proportion of the population. In Children of the Great Depression, Elder takes us on a journey through a vast store of archival data to examine how economic deprivation affected families in different ways. To provide a basis for comparison, families were assigned to one of four categories: middle class deprived (having lost at least 35% of their income between 1929 and 1933), middle class nondeprived, working class deprived, and working class nondeprived. Based on this typology, the author examined the manner in which economic changes forced families to adapt, modifying the way children were socialized and affecting their life choices from preadolescence through adulthood. The foundation for Elder's book is a study of the effects of Depression experiences on the social and psychological lives of 167 White children who were fifth- and sixth-grade students in Oakland, California. In the 1960s, Elder carefully examined data amassed by a research team headed by psychologists Harold Jones and Herbert Stoltz beginning in 1932 for a longitudinal analysis known as the Oakland Growth Study. Although the original intent of this now-famous study, conducted under the auspices of the Institute of Child Welfare (now the Institute of Human Development), was to examine individual development through the adolescent years, what resulted was far more impressive-a social scientific tour de force of multiple perspectives and measures that provides a family context for human development across three decades. To recognize the massive scope of this undertaking, one need only examine a portion of the information collected. A questionnaire on emotional and social behavior was administered to the children seven times between 1932 and 1938, and their perceptions of parents were collected using multiple methods. Systematic observations of the children's emotional and social behaviors, mental state, and physical development were made twice a year at the institute. Families were visited yearly, and in-depth interviews with mothers (but, unfortunately, not fathers) took place in 1932, 1934, and 1936. Data were also collected from participants twice in the 1940s, twice in the 1950s (including extensive interviews involving retrospective views of childhood), and again in 1964. Elder joined the institute in 1962, and he and his staff spent a decade analyzing, comparing, combining, reconciling, weaving, and coaxing this quantitative and qualitative data into a compelling account of how families navigate economic crisis and how this influences children's movement into and through adulthood. The enormity of the database and analytic effort (comprehensively detailed in the appendices) is such that it is difficult to comprehend in one reading, and this reviewer learned much from a second reading 25 years after the book was first published. For those seeking a historical basis for the book, Elder clearly acknowledges the two-volume work of William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki (1918), The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. Their efforts at developing a life history approach to sociological research was pivotal in providing an intersection for the study of family life, individual behavior, and social change. …

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