The Children’s Bureau Research Guide

About the Children’s Bureau

History

The Children’s Bureau was a bureau established in the Department of Commerce and Labor by an Act of April 9, 1912 (37 Stat., 79). The bureau was quickly changed to the Department of Labor by an Act of March 4, 1913 (37 Stat., 736). The bureau was charged with investigating and reporting to the Department of Labor regarding all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life among all classes of people. They were especially charged with investigating the questions of infant mortality, birth rate, orphanage, juvenile courts, desertion, dangerous conditions, accidents and diseases of children, employment, and legislation affecting children in the United States. These were all important topics as child labor and infant mortality were dramatically higher in the early 20th century.

The Children’s Bureau continued to be a part of the Department of Labor until 1946. When the Social Security Administration then known as the Federal Security Agency was created the Children’s Bureau was transferred effective July 1946 (60 Stat. 1095). The Federal Security Agency functions were then transferred to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953 (67 Stat. 18, 19). When the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was abolished by the Department of Education Organization Act (93 Stat. 695) in 1979 it was split between the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services. The Children’s Bureau stayed within the new Department of Health and Human Services where it resides to this day. Although over time the organizational placement and role has changed the for the Children’s Bureau, it currently resides within the Department of Health and Human Services as an office of the Administration for Children & Families.

Duties

The current duties of the Children’s Bureau focuses on improving the lives of children and families through programs that reduce child abuse and neglect, increase the number of adoptions, and strengthen foster care.

Finding Children’s Bureau Publications

Children’s Bureau publications in our catalog

You can find Children’s Bureau publications in the California State Library’s online catalog. In the advanced search, select “Author/Creator” and type in Children’s Bureau.

If you are searching for a particular document, you can select “Title” and “contains” from the drop-down menus for the next search box and enter important words from the title.

You can also add keywords or controlled subject terms to find Children’s Bureau documents on specific topics or narrow by date or material type.

Many of our pre-1932 Children’s Bureau publications may be available only in microfiche. Not all of our Children’s Bureau publications from 1933-1975 may be in our catalog. Please contact us to find these difficult to find publications.

Children’s Bureau publications online

The Children’s Bureau is currently part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services – Administration for Children & Families. You can explore the Children’s Bureau website. In addition, you can copy and paste the agency website URL into the Wayback Machine to see archived versions of the website as it appeared in the past. This is a great way to find older documents, agency news announcements, and more which may have only appeared on the website for short periods of time.

Do you not see a Children’s Bureau document in our catalog? You may search the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications for Children’s Bureau Publications. The Catalog of Government Publications is the finding tool for federal publications including historical and current publications.

To find even more documents, you can search the holdings of thousands of libraries at once through WorldCat. This can help you locate documents in libraries around the world, many of which are not digitized. WorldCat also links to digitized documents hosted on HathiTrust, the Internet Archive, and other platforms.

Notable and Interesting Children’s Bureau Publications

A Children's Bureau pamphlet titled Infant Care from 1924.
Infant Care by the Children’s Bureau was one of many bestselling pamphlets and one of the most popular government publications for decades. Infant Care had been through 45 million copies and 10 revisions by the end of 1961.
A Children's Bureau periodical titled Children Today from March 1972.
Children Today a periodical published by the Children’s Bureau had a wide audience and included news and reports, history, letters, editorials, and more.