Nursery World - 85th Anniversary: Through the ages

Looking back over nine decades of Nursery World magazines, from the Jazz Age to the Noughties, gives a wonderful insight into changing attitudes to children and the professionalisation of the nursery sector.

1920S

The Angel Child

Parents and nurses are becoming interested in psychology, which is the study of the human mind or psyche. When we know even a little of how the mind works, we look upon 'behaviour' in quite a different way from what parents and mums did even 20 years ago. We no longer classify children as good and bad, normal or abnormal ...

'Mary the Angel Child' is placid, never quarrelsome, obedient, gentle, she is perhaps pretty, beautifully mannered, not very robust, perhaps, but sometimes as strong as a pony. Now the doctor's idea of the Angel child might agree with the mother's and nurse's, but not necessarily so. The very goodness of Mary may be an evidence of physical or psychological inferiority. Mary may lack vital energy, lack 'libido' or life force which makes the average healthy child restless, always on the go, often naughty.

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