The Hand that Rocked the Cradle: A Critical Analysis of Rockefeller Philanthropic Funding, 1920-1960

Abstract

Past research into the mental hygiene movement in Canada and the United States has tended to view it in isolation from co-temporary projects funded by Rockefeller philanthropy, such as mass communications research. The mental hygiene campaign aimed to modify adult-child relations by reducing the influence parents and teachers held over children’s personality development; the central aim of mass communications research was the development of conformity of opinion. One a project of social engineering, the other of social control, the two projects combined appear to have possessed considerable potential to work in concert to shift weight in the socializing matrix from families and schools to the media at the outset of the post-World War II baby boom.