| 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 Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Children's Culture. By Gary Cross. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 259 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-19-515666-8.) Some Wore Bobby Sox: The Emergence of Teenage Girls' Culture, 1920–1945. By Kelly Schrum. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. xii, 209 pp. $29.95, ISBN 1-4039-6176-X.)
How did American children develop a culture of their own—a culture that was largely beyond parental control and that often stood in opposition to adult ideals? This question lies at the heart of The Cute and the Cool by Gary Cross and Some Wore Bobby Sox by Kelly Schrum. Both authors locate the origins of an autonomous youth culture in the early twentieth century, although they differ as to whether girls or boys developed it first.	1
Cross, in an elegantly written work, examines the evolution of adults' ideals about children and explores how those ideals often had unintended consequences. He describes two conceptions of childhood that have shaped perceptions of children for much of American history. One ideology maintained that childhood should be a time of "sheltered innocence" (p. 13), given that children's minds were blank slates. The other school envisioned childhood as a time of "wondrous innocence" (p. 14), and held that because children could experience wonder and delight as adults could not, such emotions should be provoked in them whenever possible.	2
The idea of childhood as a time of wondrous innocence has had the more marked effects on American culture. During the nineteenth century, adults who were losing their capacity for wonder began to displace it into the world of children. Holidays became more oriented toward youth as adults came to believe that rituals of faith might be best experienced through the eyes of a child. Vacations also gradually became more child centered as parents tried to see the world anew through their offspring's eyes.	. . .

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