NZHistory.net.nz, New Zealand history online - children

Film: children meet the Queen at Athletic Park, 1954

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:00:00 +1200

Film clip: children gathering to meet the Queen

Still shots and description

The Royal couple are standing in the back of a specially converted jeep as it drives past thousands of children gathered in Athletic Park. As their car passes the children they all swarm en masse to the other side of the field to get another look as the jeep turns a corner.

Baby farmers

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:00:00 +1200

Being a single mother is never easy. In the days before state benefits, life could be very tough. Women relied on their families and friends, church or community groups to help financially or to mind the children while they went out to work. Public disapproval was strong – society expected children to be born within marriage and raised by two parents.

Film: children welcome the Queen at Forbury Park, Dunedin, 1954

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:00:00 +1200

Film clip: children's welcome at Forbury Park, Dunedin

Still shots and description

Chinese dragons and clowns entertain and thousands of children in the stands and on the grounds welcome the Royal couple in Forbury Park.

Commentary:

'Forbury Park, our children await, and we have our own way of keeping them amused. Orderly lines, mark you, well that's what we told 'em, but who could stop our bairns from playing personal tribute to the Queen? - ach, this is the children's hour. They sweep across the park like the blaeberries in a highland wind. It's a true game of devotion which blows around them now.'

Children and adolescents, 1930-1960

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:00:00 +1200

The family in the 1930s and '40s

Film clip: moving to the Hutt Valley

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:00:00 +1200

Film clip: moving from the city

Still shots and description

It is with small regret that the Paterson family are moving out from their below-road basement flat in Wellington. It is quite a good one bedroom flat, but far too small for man, wife and two small children. Having to move to a house where there are no steps is quite a common occurrence in Wellington when children arrive. This time it's a shift to a new state house. For Mrs Paterson this is the sixth shift in three years. Like many servicemen's wives she has lacked a real home, so for her it is an eventful day - almost as eventful as the day she heard that her husband really had escaped from Singapore. The lorry rolls along the streets of Waddington, a brand new suburb in Hutt City. On either side are the rows of new state houses, all built in the last nine months.

Children's health - children and adolescents, 1930-60

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:00:00 +1200

Children's health

Health camps

By the late 1940s all New Zealand children had a medical examination on entering school, and were seen by a nurse at standards two and six. These examinations helped identify those who were not 'thriving' in their home environment. Malnourished children were sent to state-supported children's health camps, where they received health care and education. While these camps had been in existence since the early twentieth century, they were mainly temporary and did not come under state control until 1938.

Permanent health camps were then set up in the 1940s and 1950s, most notably in Otaki, Pakuranga, Glenelg and Roxburgh. A key figure in their development was the Director of School Hygiene and later Deputy Director General of Health, Dr H.B. Turbott.

Kids asleep at Otaki health camp

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:00:00 +1200

Education - children and adolescents, 1930-60

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:00:00 +1200

Teaching young people

By 1940 childhood was internationally recognised as a distinct stage in human development. A child's value to the family was no longer seen as primarily economic. Instead, children were viewed in terms of 'emotional capital' as socially priceless. New Zealand followed overseas trends and introduced children's education initiatives in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Pre-school education developments

The kindergarten movement, still outside the state system in the war period, benefited from these changes. Funded by voluntary contributions and limited government grants, by 1940 the movement needed more money to ensure a sufficient supply of teachers. In 1942 the government provided bursaries for trainees, and student numbers increased from 31 in 1941 to 72 in 1944. In the same period the number of kindergartens increased from 39 to 52.

Otaki health camp, 1940s

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:00:00 +1200

From childcare to baby farming

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 12:00:00 +1200

'Fearful slaughter of the innocents'

Salvation Army Boys' Home in Eltham