Children's Bureau Collection

The U.S. Children's Bureau was established in 1912 with this charge: "The … bureau shall investigate and report … upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life among all classes of our people, and shall especially investigate the questions of infant mortality, the birth rate, orphanage, juvenile courts, desertion, dangerous occupations, accidents and diseases of children, employment, [and] legislation affecting children in the States and Territories."

New: Children's Bureau National Archive Collection (6,000 documents and growing)
Children's Bureau Focused Collection (450 documents)

We continue to digitize Children's Bureau records as part of our commitment to preserving the history of MCH. Check back as we post new resources!

You can also access our MCH History page for the contextual background of the MCH movement in the United States.

NEW!!! Children's Bureau National Archives Collection (6,000 documents and growing)

This collection of records from the Children's Bureau spans 1909/1912-1969 and represents the largest digitized collection tracing children's health throughout the twentieth century. The collection has been transferred from 290 reels of microfiche from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration originally conducted in the early 1990s. Types of materials in the collection include reports, articles, conference materials, addresses and speeches, government documents, memoranda, drafts, and other documents.

The collection consists of approximately 6,000 records to date, representing over 300,000 pages of material, some of which have never been publicly available before; new resources will be added throughout 2024. The collection is divided into six parts: (1) child welfare, (2) child legislation, (3) Children's Bureau history, (4) MCH files, (5) Children's Bureau Merritt files, and (6) Children's Bureau chief's files. You can access the full Children's Bureau collection below.

Some Highlights of the Collection

A 1909 report by Grace Abbott, second chief of the Children’s Bureau, on the First and Second Conference on Child Care and Protection Under Presidential Auspices, outlining the call by President Roosevelt to “conduct research in all matters pertaining to the welfare and children and child life” that led to the establishment of the Children’s Bureau in 1912.
A 1934 speech by President Roosevelt to Congress recommending a social security program as a safeguard “against the hazards and vicissitudes of life” that led to the Social Security Act of 1935 that funds our current MCH Title V programs.
A 1940 radio script by Katharine Lenroot, third chief of the Children’s Bureau, in which she reminds the country that the Health of the Child is the Power of the Nation in which “all children – and that means your children – are well-nourished, healthy, upstanding, intelligent boys and girls, prepared to meet whatever responsibilities life may call upon them to carry, to meet them with courage and personal satisfaction, and to make their contribution to the general strength and effectiveness of the Nation.”
A 1965 speech by Arthur Lesser, Director of MCH Services who later resigned over harsh funding cuts and policies of the Nixon administration, in which he details disparities in infant mortality, the importance of maternal and prenatal care, and President Johnson’s work to amend the Social Security Act to expand MCH and “crippled children’s” services.

You can access the collection in two ways:

1. Search the Collection by Keyword

Enter Keywords

Author

Publication Date (format YYYY...YYYY)

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Search Tips

This special collection provides access to primary source documents that were copied onto microfiche in the 1990s and later digitized and uploaded to the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Library bibliographic database at Georgetown University. While the physical material remains housed at the National Archives and Records Administration, the full-text intellectual property created by the U.S. Children’s Bureau between 1909-1969 is now searchable online.

Given the unique nature of this collection—where archival material has been uploaded into a standard bibliographic database—the MCH Library has created a hybrid search approach that melds standard library practice with archival conventions.

More Search Tips

Each of the ~6,000 individual documents have been assigned a single title that includes the author, a brief description of the content, and the date the document was produced. Therefore, the search field options—Keyword/search term(s), Title, Author, and Date of Publication—all search the same field. (In the future, additional keywords may be assigned to individual documents, but for now, the MCH Library staff has chosen to accelerate research access.)

A few details to be aware of:

In the date range field, use an ellipsis (…) rather than a hyphen between years. Users can also choose a single year, rather than a range.
Any search term (or truncated term) will retrieve all titles with a word that begins with those letters. For example, “war” will retrieve titles with the term “wartime” in them; however, “wartime” will not retrieve titles that have the word “war” only in them.
If you select more than one search time, the retrieval will only include titles that contain all of those terms.
The search results can be sorted alphabetically by title, author, or date produced, and the material can then be displayed in ascending or descending order.

In addition to advanced searching, you can also peruse that full collection or search according to the following National Archives categories: Child Welfare, Child Legislation, Children’s Bureau History, or Maternal and Child Health Files.

Archival Levels of Arrangement
For an overview of the historical records of the Children’s Bureau (1909-1969), visit this page on the National Archives website. The site includes details on the arrangement of the Children’s Bureau material at the depository, record group, series, and filing unit levels. For researchers who wish to request a finding aid that lists the sequential arrangement of the documents within the filing units—as reproduced on microfiche and later digitally scanned in chronological order--please contact the MCH library at [email protected].

Note that the National Archives Children’s Bureau Collection is a subset of the searchable MCH Library database collections.

2. Access Resources by National Archives Categories

You can browse the full collection or scan resources in groups, based on the National Archives storage categories:

Child Welfare. This section contains documents of the Bureau's investigation of a "new" child-welfare activism: investigation of child labor conditions in agriculture, industry, and mining; guidance on public school curricula, teaching methods, and student development; promotion of welfare planning for families of servicemen and defense workers; and organization of international conferences and social worker training programs.
Child Legislation. This section documents the Bureau's legislative activities at the national, state and local levels: shaping a new body of American law on child labor, occupational safety, health and sanitation, education, marriage, divorce, adoption, child abuse, juvenile delinquency, and institutional care.
Children's Bureau History. This section contains documents related to the organizational structure and administrative history of the Bureau; and pioneering surveys on a broad range of social concerns, from nutrition in Kentucky to maternal mortality in California, and from sweatshops in New York to juvenile delinquency in Illinois.
Maternal and Child Health Files. This section includes the Bureau's research portfolio and initiatives in the public health arena: educating the nation on medical technology, disease prevention, maternal and infant care, physical and mental hygiene, nutrition, child psychology, and "treatment and rehabilitation of the handicapped."
Children's Bureau Ella Arvilla Merritt Files. This includes resources related to federal control of child labor, 1913-39 (Coming Soon)
Children's Bureau Chief's Files (Coming Soon)

Children's Bureau Focused Collection (450 documents)

In addition, the MCH Digital Library has pulled out a special collection of Children's Bureau publications that have been digitized separately. These resources highlight the history of the Children's Bureau; materials for families; complete collections of periodicals and serials from 1913 to 1971; and a sample of key resources from 1913 to 1997. This collection includes approximately 450 documents. You can access the collection below.

You can access specific resources through the links below: