Scientific Motherhood and Eugenics

BY ANNELISE PHELPS

In the early 1900s, texts on “scientific motherhood” were central to spreading the messages of the American eugenics movement. Scientific motherhood was based on the idea that mothers can and should look to science as a guide for how to raise the “fittest” children. Probably the most famous practices to come out of the movement for scientific motherhood were the “better baby contests” held at state fairs, including Washington’s (1). These contests tested not only the fitness of the babies but the child-rearing capabilities of their mothers, all based upon certain ideas about what constituted science, motherhood, and fitness.

The Science

Better baby and fitter family contests reflected the close ties between eugenics and research on animal breeding. Supporters of the eugenics movement often used agricultural language to promote their messages. For example, a pediatrician and eugenics supporter in the early 1900s wrote: “[The] highest attention has long been paid to the breeding of handsome and healthy animals, and but little to the breeding of beautiful and healthy children” (2). The use of agricultural rhetoric in these new conversations about motherhood seemed to give scientific merit to the practice of eugenics. Indeed, the better baby contests were set up similarly to livestock competitions to promote the goal of creating “a better crop of children.” During the contests, judges performed measurements and tests on the babies and reviewed their families’ eugenic histories in order to determine which baby was the most fit. These contests promoted the idea (common within eugenic literature) that science could objectively rank human beings based on an assessment of physically measurable qualities. They also implied that a woman’s primary role in society was to follow eugenic teachings in order to give the next generation of Americans the best possible health and quality of life (2).

Motherhood

Eugenic literature on motherhood made clear that a woman’s success as a responsible U.S. citizen was based on whether or not her genes were eugenically fit enough to pass on to the next generation. Doctors and biologists who supported eugenics told American women that they should only procreate if they fit a certain eugenic image of the ideal mother. That ideal was an able and obedient woman, ready to lead a life of domesticity to support her husband and children. Additionally, guidebooks outlined particular ways women should behave prior to marriage, in marriage, and while pregnant. For example, Eugenics, or the Laws of Sex Life and Heredity suggested that in determining one’s own fitness for marriage and reproduction, “accomplishments, social position, health and beauty should all be considered” (3).

Eugenic guidebooks also told women when to have children. The optimal age for pregnancy was that which produced the least birth defects and instances of infant mortality. Most sources pegged that prime age as the early 20s: women were not ready to be mothers in their teens, and women in their late 20s and beyond experienced more complications with child-bearing (4). All of the eugenic guidebooks stressed the importance of having the right number of children at the right time in order to optimize the eugenic fitness of one’s offspring and thus future generations. Additionally, the guidebooks urged that a woman must choose the right man in order to ensure the eugenic well-being of her children. Women were told to avoid marrying men who were poor, non-white, or physically or mentally disabled. “Don’t fail,” women were warned, “to consider the grade of the one you are to marry” (3). Racism, ableism, and classism all influenced contemporary views of what constituted the right “grade” of mate.

Eugenics and Birth Control

Eventually (and ironically), given the concern with child and maternal welfare, the eugenic motherhood movement intersected with the birth control movement. The birth control movement often utilized the ideology of the American eugenics movement to advance its agenda and appeal to a wider audience. Contained within information distributed by advocates for birth control were themes of promoting good heredity and improving the human race. As historian Linda Gordon notes, “It would be hard to find a single piece of writing on voluntary motherhood between 1890 and 1910 that did not assert that unwanted children were likely to be morally and/or physically defective” (5). Citing a presumed correlation between the mother’s desire for the child and good quality heredity, some proponents of birth control argued women should be given more choice regarding motherhood as central to eugenic measures. Advocates for reproductive rights, such as Margaret Sanger, often used classist eugenic ideology to supplement their arguments for why women should have increased access to birth control. Many supporters of the birth control movement believed that promoting increased access to contraceptives among members of the lower socioeconomic classes would encourage them to have fewer children, thereby helping to lift the burden of the poor from society. Some eugenicists, by contrast, argued against birth control on the grounds those most likely to have the “foresight” to use contraception were the ones the nation most needed to reproduce.

Ultimately, the idea of eugenic motherhood pressured those deemed eugenically fit to make particular life choices (namely, to reproduce for the good of the race). This movement also entailed judgments about eugenic fitness, and in doing so ultimately contributed to support among the public, scientists, and politicians for legalized coerced sterilization.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

ABOVE: July 1919 edition of the “Birth Control Review,” a periodical published by Margaret Sanger