GOOD POSTURE IN THE LITTLE CHILD- The Children's Bureau (1935)
As a child growing up in the 1950s and 60s I vividly recall my mother
scolding me to "stand up straight," or "sit up straight."
Parents have probably done this sort of thing for a long time. During
the Progressive Era and on into the New Deal this sort of commonplace
parental advice would be codified by the Children's Bureau in the
form of a typical Bureau "instruction manual." In keeping
with the general spirit of the Progressive Era's faith in the value
of improving our commonplace ideas by the application of scientific
expertise, the Bureau sought in this little booklet to do nothing
less than define in quite a precise way just what it meant to "stand
up straight" or "sit up straight." Thankfully, I
now think, my mother apparently never happened on any of these old
publications from the Children's Bureau, so she did not subject
me to the rigors of the training regimens advised by the Bureau's
experts. My mother apparently thought that just a firm verbal reminder
now and then was all the training I needed. She was probably wrong
in that belief, but I'm glad she held it.
So here, from 1935, is the Children's Bureau's professional exposition
of what my mother was trying to tell me! |
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