A National Agenda
for Children, Lost

Child mill worker, Globe Cotton Mill, Augusta, Georgia, January 1909 — the same month Roosevelt convened the first conference. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine. National Child Labor Committee Collection, Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication.

The first White House Conference — the first White House conference of any kind — was convened on January 25, 1909, one of Roosevelt's final acts as president. The idea originated with reformers Lillian Wald and Florence Kelley, who argued that the federal government spent money and attention on agricultural crops and livestock while ignoring the welfare of children. Roosevelt's response: "Bully. Come down and tell me about it."

About 215 delegates attended — social workers, educators, juvenile court judges, labor leaders, and civic leaders. Their central concern was the institutionalization of dependent and neglected children in large orphanages. The conference established the principle that "home life is the highest and finest product of civilization" and called for children to remain with families whenever possible. It also called directly for the creation of a federal Children's Bureau.

Convened in the aftermath of World War I, the 1919 conference produced what the Children's Bureau later described as "the first important body of child health and welfare standards" ever assembled. It focused on maternal and infant care, child labor, and the conditions children needed for healthy development.

The conference's standard on maternity and infancy was directly incorporated into the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921 — the first federal health program for mothers and children, providing grants to states to support prenatal and infant care, particularly for poor and rural women. It was the first major legislative outcome of a White House Conference on Children.

Children walking home from school along Frozen Creek, Breathitt County, Kentucky, 1940. School ran in summer and stopped in January because creek beds, roads, and inadequate clothing made attendance impossible in severe weather. Photo by Marion Post Wolcott. Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication.

Hoover shaped the model that all future conferences would follow. He established government funding for the conferences, created the pre-conference planning committee structure, and broadened the scope from dependent children to the rights and welfare of all American children. The 1930 conference was convened November 19–21 in Washington, D.C., drawing roughly 3,500 delegates from professional fields across the country.

The conference produced 31 volumes of findings, condensed into a 19-point declaration called the Children's Charter — described by later scholars as the most comprehensive statement of children's rights ever assembled in the United States to that point. Hoover called it recognition of "the rights of the child as the first rights of citizenship." The Social Security Act of 1935 drew directly on the conference's framework.

Convened on the eve of the Second World War, the 1940 conference asked what democracy owed its children — and what children owed democracy. It canvassed the fundamental democratic values, services, and conditions essential to children's well-being in a free society, addressing for the first time the effects of economic depression and approaching war on families.

The conference broke new ground by formally addressing rural children for the first time, recognizing the geographic inequities in access to health care, education, and economic opportunity that disproportionately affected children in rural and mountain communities. It also added attention to the needs of children with disabilities and expanded the agenda to include housing and recreation alongside health and welfare.

Child of homesteader, Tygart Valley Homesteads, West Virginia, 1939. Photo by John Vachon. Farm Security Administration Collection, Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication.

The Midcentury Conference was historic for several reasons. For the first time, young people themselves were invited as delegates — nearly 400 youth participants from every state. It focused on healthy personality development, asking how a democracy could produce socially responsible, cooperative people without sacrificing individuality. The conference theme reflected the influence of developmental psychology, particularly the work of Erik Erikson, on national thinking about childhood.

The conference's research on racial inequality in children's development became central evidence in Brown v. Board of Education. Kenneth Clark's studies, commissioned through the conference process, were listed first among the sources cited by Chief Justice Warren in the Supreme Court's decision. The conference also documented dramatic improvements in child health since 1909: the pediatrics work group reported a substantial reduction in infant mortality and an even larger reduction in preschool-age child mortality since the conferences began.

Held on the 50th anniversary of the first conference, the 1960 gathering was the most elaborately organized in the tradition's history, with 210 working groups and more than 7,600 delegates. It explored how to promote opportunities for children and youth to realize their full potential for a creative life in freedom and dignity — a theme reflecting the influence of the civil rights movement and the Cold War context of American democracy.

The conference was the first to seriously engage with racial equity in children's opportunities and welfare, producing 670 formal recommendations spanning education, health, family life, recreation, and civic participation. The conference led directly to the creation of a Congressional Subcommittee on Children and Youth to track implementation — and its findings influenced the Great Society legislation of the 1960s, including Head Start, Medicaid, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

President Lyndon B. Johnson on his poverty tour, Nash County, North Carolina, 1964 — the political backdrop for the 1970 conference. LBJ Library photograph. U.S. Government work, public domain. Wikimedia Commons.

The final conference in 1970 was also the most contentious. Held against the backdrop of Vietnam, the civil rights and women's liberation movements, and profound social division, delegates argued passionately about poverty, racism, war, and the role of government in family life. The conference's stated purpose was "to enhance and cherish the individuality and identity of each American child through the recognition and encouragement of his or her own development, regardless of environmental conditions or circumstances of birth."

The 1970 conference produced sweeping recommendations: a guaranteed annual income for families, universal child care, national health insurance for children, and major education reform. The breadth and boldness of the agenda may have contributed to what came next. Momentum faded after 1970, and no President since has convened a comparable national process on children.