| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Commodification of Childhood: The Children's Clothing Industry and the Rise of the Child Consumer. By Daniel Thomas Cook. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. x, 211 pp. Cloth, $74.95, ISBN 0-8223-3279-5. Paper, $21.95, ISBN 0-8223-3268-X.)

The commodification of childhood is worth analyzing, according to Daniel Thomas Cook, not only as a business and cultural phenomenon in its own right but also as a key to understanding "the relationship between childhood, consumer culture and modernity more generally" (p. 2). Focusing on the children's clothing industry, Cook documents the creation of the "consuming child" (p. 12) as an identifiable commercial persona and market niche—or rather as a whole range of personae and age-graded market niches. Cook argues that commercial interests did not invade or colonize childhood so much as co-create the contemporary conception of the child as a rights-bearing individual whose desires and needs deserve respect and consideration.

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