Women in child development: themes from the SRCD Oral History Project

Research in child development has emerged as a major intellectual discipline and a topic of great interest and importance to society. The Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) has been the leading scholarly society concerned with the advancement of this research. As part of its focus on a history of the field, the SRCD has undertaken an oral history project in which prominent members are interviewed. Of the 102 completed interviews, 47 are women's accounts, which document important contributions women have made to child development. The experiences reported by individual participants reflect themes in the general history of women in psychology and child development during the early and mid-1900s. Women encountered obstacles to their efforts, even as they were supported by others and struggled to achieve prominence amid the sometimes ambiguous or conflicting circumstances that characterized women's entry into child development.