Kids TV Grows Up: The Path from Howdy Doody to SpongeBob

Children's television plays a key role in the development of children's mass culture, the shared interests, norms, and vocabulary through which children interact with their peers and seek to define themselves as a cohort. Yet, the content and meaning of children's television as a whole, and over time, have barely been explored. Kids' TV Grows Up examines the forces driving the evolution of children's television in the US from its inception through the present day. It offers the first social history of this influential aspect of our culture, providing a comprehensive overview and analyzing iconic programs to reveal how our concept of childhood has changed and how programs produced for children reflect this dynamic. In the earliest days of television, newly suburban families welcomed TV into their homes as an electronic babysitter that would also teach their Baby Boomer children about the world. In the decades since, shifting concerns about the effects of television, new childrearing trends, advances in technology, significantly more diverse audiences, and an increasingly porous boundary between the lives of children and adults have all played roles in the continuing history of children's television. Kids' TV Grows Up tells this neglected but profoundly important story.