Childcare in the 1930s: Irene (Faus) Hagenbuch’s School Project

Raising children isn’t easy—especially during an economic downturn. In the 1930s, the Great Depression put renewed focus on America’s children and how they were being taught. In 1933, Congress tasked the Works Progress Administration (WPA) with setting up nursery schools and hiring unemployed teachers to work at these. At secondary schools, more vocational and practical skills were taught to prepare young people for the difficult economy. Boys took shop classes or studied agriculture. Girls learned to run a household and were trained in cooking, cleaning, sewing, and childcare.

While going through the Hagenbuch Archives, I found a handmade booklet that was created from sheets of paper bound together with brass brads. On the cover was a picture of a child and the stenciled text “Child Care.” Inside were clippings from magazines and newspapers, as well as several handwritten essays about caring for children. The booklet sparked several questions: Who made it, why did they create it, and when was it made?

The cover of Irene Faus’ Child Care project

The first was easy to answer. In small print on the cover was the name Irene Faus—my paternal grandmother—whom I called Nana. Her name appeared throughout the booklet on a number of other pages too. Since she was using her maiden name, it was clear that the booklet has been created before she was married in 1939.

The next question was a bit more challenging. My initial thought was that the booklet was created sometime shortly before Nana had her first child in 1941. Similar informational materials are distributed by hospitals, pediatricians, and birth classes today. However, several pages in the booklet were marked with letter grades. It appeared this wasn’t simply a guide for childcare. Rather, it was a school project. Since multiple pages had letter grades on them, the booklet must have contained multiple assignments, completed over a period of weeks or months. These were then assembled into a single booklet, a finished project, that Nana kept for her own use.

Essay “Food for the Sick and Convalescent” by Irene Faus received an “A” grade

The final question, as to when the booklet was made, was the most difficult to answer because of the number of additional questions it generated. To find an answer, I contacted a number of family members and gathered their insights into Nana’s time in school. Common knowledge in our family is that Nana had an eighth-grade education.

Today, most eighth graders in the United States are between the ages of 13 and 14. So, I started looking for mentions of Irene Faus in newspapers from 1933 to 1934. This pointed me to an article from December 1, 1934 in the The Danville News that described a school program performed at the one-room, White Hall school in Anthony Township, Montour County, Pennsylvania. During the Rural Life Day program, Irene Faus (Nana) sang a duet with another girl, Hazel Shultz. I contacted John Marr, an expert historian from Montour County. John and I had a pleasant exchange, and I learned a lot about the schools in that area. Still, I had my doubts that Nana had attended the White Hall school, since she was living in a different town.

The Madison Township Consolidated School, build in 1931, is now the community center in Jerseytown, PA. Credit: Facebook.com/JerseytownCommunityCenter

Numerous articles from the 1930s mentioned her in the nearby Madison Township School District in Columbia County, PA. The Madison Township Consolidated School had been constructed in Jerseytown, PA in 1931 and was a modern, multi-room building with classes for primary and secondary school students. The junior high school—grades seven through ten—focused on vocational training in home economics and agriculture.

According to The Bloomsburg Morning Press, Nana received accolades for her perfect attendance at the Madison Township School in the spring of 1934 and in the spring of 1935. Her enrollment at the public school in Jerseytown made sense. Family stories describe how she had once lived with her Hilner grandparents in Jerseytown. That said, I cannot explain why Nana was part of the White Hall school Rural Life Day program in 1934.

Irene Faus (right) with her friend Elaine (left) at the Bloomsburg Fair, September 1932

Returning to the Child Care booklet, I looked for more clues about when it was created. Some magazine clippings had dates on them, including the back side of an advertisement for Listerine. This was cut from the April 1935 issue of Pictorial Review magazine. I found no other date that was later than this, suggesting that the project was completed sometime that year. Was Nana in eighth grade during the spring of 1935? She would have turned 15 in March, making her a year older than most eighth graders today. Maybe she had been held back or started public school late?

I spoke with my youngest sister, Julie, to see what she knew. She spent time with Nana in the early 2000s, giving her an opportunity to hear stories and ask questions. According to Julie, Nana mentioned that she had completed eighth grade and had started ninth, but she withdrew from public school after failing math. It was a useful detail. Yes, Nana had an eight grade education, but she had been enrolled for ninth grade.

Clippings found in Irene Faus’ Child Care project

This story was corroborated by a newspaper article too. On November 12, 1935, The Bloomsburg Morning Press published the following:

The Madison Junior High won the junior outdoor basketball title yesterday afternoon, defeating Main at Mainville 20 to 10 to complete an undefeated schedule and to give Madison its first scholastic title. . . . Miss Irene Faus, a substitute, saw considerable service during the season.

Not only was Nana in public school during the fall of 1935, she was also playing basketball—what a find! This was last time I saw a mention of Nana attending school, leading me to suspect that this was her ninth grade year which she never completed. Ultimately, she could have completed the booklet while in eighth or ninth grade.

As discussed in a previous article, after leaving school she found work at Eyer’s store in Turbotville, PA and was paid to help a neighboring family, the Keefers. By 1937, she had met her future husband, Homer S. Hagenbuch (b. 1916).

Irene (Faus) Hagenbuch in a photo booth snapshot taken in 1939 after she married

What amazes me is that Nana kept her Child Care school project for over 70 years, until my father found it around 2009. It’s in reasonably good condition too, suggesting that she probably didn’t use it much. Even so, the clippings and images inside are fascinating to leaf through and provide a snapshot of childcare from the 1930s.

The booklet had a table of contents and covered topics including the mother’s health, caring for babies, and child development. Most pages are an assemblage of magazine and newspaper articles alongside handwritten annotations. Although, the final pages of the booklet are essays written in Nana’s cursive.

Table of contents for Irene Faus’ Child Care project

As mentioned earlier, my hunch is that the Child Care project was created from a series of individual class assignments. Students were asked to find child-related materials in the popular magazines such as McCall’s or in local newspaper columns like “Guiding your Child” by Alice C. Richmond. Some of the practices discussed in the clippings are quite dated by modern standards. However, they are wonderful snapshot of how women were taught to raise their children in the 1930s.

The essays in the booklet are interesting too. They explain the steps in child development, how to care for sick children, and various foods to be eaten by mothers-to-be. The handwritten essays may have been created after listening to in-class lectures or after finishing assigned readings. Either way, it is neat to see Nana’s penmanship as a teenager.

Irene (Faus) Hagenbuch holding her newborn daughter, Barbara, in the spring of 1941. Lee Hagenbuch (b. 1924) may be standing in the background.

Irene M. Faus (b. 1920) married Homer S. Hagenbuch (b. 1916) on March 22, 1939. The couple went on to have four children, including my father, Mark, who was born in 1953. While it appears that Nana rarely used the Child Care project she made in 1935, the booklet was clearly something that she cherished and preserved for the next seven decades. Holding it now, I can only imagine what she would have thought of her schoolwork being perused by her grandchildren, her great grandchildren, and the readers of Hagenbuch.org. Personally, I think she would have been flattered!