Play in Post-World War II America

Children have always played. But the kinds of play that are most common today – solitary play, electronic play (with videogames or computers), and play organized by adults – were far less common decades ago. In the past, children’s play took place in groups outdoors and occurred spontaneously. Children ran, swam, played with balls, climbed trees, and took part in make-believe. City kids commonly played on sidewalks and in streets and vacant lots, rather than in parks or playgrounds. Their rural counterparts roamed in fields and forests.

Unlike today, adults were less protective and hovering and were far less worried about children’s safety or about bullying. Not surprisingly, bruised knees, broken bones, fist fights, and wrestling matches were common. Today, in contrast, much play is organized and supervised by adults. Much play these days is toy play. In the past, store-bought toys were less common and play was less commercialized. Children made marbles out of stones, dolls out of socks, balls out of leather stuffed with grass or dirt, and fashioned bats out of tree limbs.

It was during the 1950s and 1960s that mass-produced, mass-marketed toys became common. Toy play was highly sex segregated. Boys constructed buildings with Erector sets and Lincoln logs, conducted experiments with chemistry sets, played with trucks and tanks, and glued model cars and airplanes. Play among girls featured store-bought dolls, handicrafts, and fantasy play involving dressing up.

After World War II, American culture was quite child-oriented. The year 1955 saw the introduction of Play-doh, which children could mold into various shapes and the air-powered Burp gun. Lego blocks were launched that year, as was the Davy Crockett coonskin cap. Ten million caps were sold in a month.

With products like Matchbox cars (launched in 1953), Trix cereal (1954), Mad magazine (1955), and Barbie (1959), marketers discovered that it was possible to target kids as consumers, separate and apart from their parents. Television provided the ideal medium for reaching child consumers. ABC introduced one of the first children’s television shows, “Disneyland,” in 1954, and “The Mickey Mouse Club” the next year. Shows like “Captain Kangaroo,” which debuted on CBS in 1955, contributed to the emergence of an insular world of childhood separate from that of adults.

Today, we look back to the 1950s as a safer time for raising children. But that’s not how it seemed to many parents. The child death rate was four times higher than today, and polio claimed the lives of 3,000 children annually until the Salk vaccine was introduced in 1955. Poverty was also much more widespread then. Two-thirds of Black children and more than a fifth of their white counterparts lived in poverty as recently as 1955, compared to 31 percent of Black children, 23 percent of Hispanic children, and 10 percent of white children today. Even though the Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional in 1954, by 1960 just 1 percent of Black children in the South attended integrated schools. Meanwhile, nearly a million children with disabilities were denied public schooling. Forty percent of kids dropped out of school before graduating high school.

Like parents now, those of 50 years ago worried about youth violence and children’s academic achievement. In 1955, Congressional hearings investigated the link between television and juvenile delinquency and the corrupting effects of comic books. A 1955 bestseller, Why Johnny Can’t Read, ignited a panic over children’s literacy, and prompted publisher Houghton Mifflin to ask Theodor Geisel -- Dr. Seuss -- to write an easy-to-read picture book that would become The Cat in the Hat. Many of the anxieties that obsess parents today – over children’s safety, morals, and their preparation for the job market – actually took root in the seemingly tranquil 1950s.

About the Author

Steven Mintz is a professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood.