The Greatest Generation Grows Up: American Childhood in the 1930s

Abstract

Lindenmeyer borrows her title from Tom Brokaw, who nostalgically referred to the individuals who lived through the Great Depression and fought in World War II as "the greatest generation." Lindenmeyer shares with Brokaw a sense of this group of young people as a distinct generation, molded by the Great Depression and World War II.

The Greatest Generation Grows Up: American Childhood in the 1930s. By Kriste Lindenmeyer. (Chicago: Dee, 2005. xiv, 304 pp. $27.50, ISBN 1-56663-660-4.)

The Greatest Generation Grows Up, by Kriste Lindenmeyer, is a remarkably compelling and enlightening account of the children who came of age in the 1930s. Lindenmeyer borrows her title from Tom Brokaw, who nostalgically referred to the individuals who lived through the Great Depression and fought in World War II as "the greatest generation." Lindenmeyer chooses not to contest Brokaw's assessment of the youth of that era. However, hers is a work of serious historical scholarship that captures rather than memorializes the many diverse experiences of children growing up during the Great Depression.

Stories of newsboys and bootblacks, Mexican students who contested segregation, and children who pleaded with Eleanor Roosevelt to help keep their families from starving bring this history to life, making it a perfect text for courses un the history of childhood. Whether examining New Deal policies, the role of the high school, or popular culture, Lindenmeyer demonstrates how the tentacles of national policies and cultures reached throughout the nation, transforming the experience of growing up. Children in far-flung places studied the same subjects in school, listened to the same radio programs, and might have been among the 10 percent of students who participated in the National Youth Administration program.

The book includes fascinating accounts of transient youth, some of whom experienced grave hardships, while others relished the adventure of riding the rails. The Civilian Conservation Corps stepped in to provide jobs and relief to unemployed young people, alleviating poverty and demoralization. The National Youth Administration enabled young people to earn income and finish their schooling. Lindenmeyer asserts that these and other New Deal reforms helped "level the playing field" among American young people (p. 245).

The enormous expansion of schooling during this era changed the texture of children's lives. School attendance became nearly universal, and high school became a major rite of passage. High schools were breeding grounds for the development of peer-based identities and cultures. Youth similarly expressed themselves as a generation apart through their consumption of movies, comic books, popular music, and radio.

Lindenmeyer shares with Brokaw a sense of this group of young people as a distinct generation, molded by the Great Depression and World War II. Despite many differences in the experiences of these children, there were elements of a common culture that were fostered by an increasing, national identity. In the end, this generation would champion an ideal of American childhood that evolved during their lifetimes for their own children.

As this generation grew up, it was too prone to forget the painful realities and inequities of life in the 1930s, choosing instead to remember an idealized version of childhood that was inaccessible for many. The youth whom Lindenmeyer portrays alternate between frustration and disillusionment, optimism and excitement, in their responses to the tumultuous events of the 1930s and 1940s. The children's experiences were distinguished from each other by gender, region, race, class, and a number of other variables, as Lindenmeyer beautifully demonstrates. Those complexities yield a history that is at once more memorable and powerful than any mythologized version of the past.