Ask the Scholar

The Children's Charter was adopted as a set of national goals by the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection in 1930. The Conference had prepared 31 volumes of technical findings and recommendations covering every conceiveable childhood concern from prenatal care and a safe environment during childhood to expanded educational opportunities and the promise of health care for the physically and mentally handicapped. Realizing that the public would have a hard time understanding such detailed recommendations, President Hoover urged the preparation of the Children's Charter to summarize the Conference's more important recommendations and to solicit public support for state and local efforts to make the recommendations a reality. (Follow-up conferences were held in most states and medium and large-sized cities.) To read the Children's Charter is to realize how much has been accomplished as a result -- and to re-dedicate ourselves to fulfill its pledge in our time.