Children, Health, and the American Dream: Lessons from the 1930s

Time: 12:00-1:30pm

Location: Room 2019, Floor 2U, Claire Fagin Hall

What did the American Dream mean to young people coming of age amid the nation’s worst economic crisis in the 1930s? Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal provided a new model for government’s responsibility for ensuring the health and a future of opportunity for the nation’s youngest citizens. Was the “Greatest Generation” also the first to benefit from a government that built a model framework for ensuring childhood dependency? Can dependency be a good status in a nation that celebrates independence and fears the future of the American Dream?