This paper will explore the ways in which the discourse surrounding the emergence of radio linked childhood with the utopian promise of a new technology. Drawing on a variety of sources from the period 1918-1925, including boy scout manuals, "how to" books for building wireless sets, and articles in the popular press, I study how children became messengers for communicating the potentials of radio and also how radio offered confirmation of the value of childhood. Just as children today are said to understand computers far more easily than their elders, children of the wireless age were often seen to have a unique affinity toward radio. "Radio play" -- the literal tinkering with and making of radio sets -- became a significant emblem for children's participation in a technical age, one which identified children as valued participants in America's future. Children's ease with the technology and their inclination for "hands on" learning may be understood as contributing to the cultivation of a new professional engineering class, a group which would be valued for its technical prowess, ingenuity and public service.

Far from an impediment, early debates about television's positive and negative effects on children, families, and society sometimes aided the programming and marketing choices of some producers. This paper reads early Disney television -- specifically, Disneyland and The Mickey Mouse Club -- as a case study in the use of media-effects arguments as marketing guides, and of the popular (re)production of ideas of childhood and family life as nucleation sites for the future of American culture and society.