Conceiving the Future: Pronatalism, Reproduction, and the Family in the United States, 1890-1938 (review)

Although the United States has not invested as heavily in overtly pronatalist policies as some European countries, it still has a well-established history of regulating reproduction. In Conceiving the Future, historian Laura Lovett argues that a distinctly American version of pronatalism developed through campaigns that elicited social pressure rather than legislation. In a style similar to that of Gail Bederman's Manliness and Civilization (University of Chicago Press, 1995), Conceiving the Future addresses the efforts of a handful of individual idealists to shape the country's future citizenry. Both Bederman and Lovett draw on Theodore Roosevelt in order to illustrate growing concerns about race suicide, juxtaposing his ideas with those of less well known historical figures. Roosevelt appears in Conceiving the Future alongside Mary Elizabeth Lease, George H. Maxwell, Edward A. Ross, and Florence Sherbon. Each played a central role in promoting ideas of motherhood and family within a larger context of American reform. From Lease's role in the Populist movement, to Florence Sherbon's creation of fitter family contests, Lovett demonstrates how these individuals fused ideas about motherhood and family into a nostalgic, agrarian impulse that sought to recreate traditional values in a modern setting. These individuals, despite their different agendas, shared a "paradoxical fondness for both tradition and progress," known as "nostalgic modernism." (11) They looked to an agrarian ideal: the early American farm family, characterized by self-reliance, independence, and virtue. They believed that this version of the American family would ensure progress and civilization more effectively than an urban model.

Lovett uses nostalgic modernism as a framework for interpreting the meaning of the rural American family in an increasingly urban society. Her analysis is unique, because of its emphasis on idealized agrarianism—a subject usually downplayed in histories of reproduction and race. The varied agrarian ideals promoted by these individuals suggest the wide-ranging appeal of an alternative solution to the problems of an increasingly urban society marked by changing gender roles and racial demographics. She tackles a broad array of rural visions and urban fears—from the politics of populism to the cultural concerns regarding teddy bears (some feared the "destructive potential" of the increasingly popular stuffed toy, embraced not only by children, but also by women, a potential symbol of social and sexual independence). (97) Her liveliest story emerges in the last chapter, a history of Florence Sherborn and her creation of the fitter families for future firesides contests. What started as "better baby" contests (to counter infant mortality) morphed into the more decidedly eugenic fitter family contests in the 1920s. When Sherborn moved from working with the Children's Bureau to becoming professor of childcare at the University of Kansas, she applied her contest expertise to a new setting. As a result of her efforts, at the 1920 Kansas State Fair, human subjects were for the first time judged alongside the "Pet Stock" and "Milch Goat" categories. (148) At this and subsequent rural fair contests, judges evaluated family history, mental condition, physical condition, and health habits (the entire testing process took over three hours). Winners received a medal awarded by the American Eugenics Society that read 'Yea, I have a goodly heritage.'

According to Lovett, the fitter family contests symbolized the culmination of a longstanding agrarian tradition. They successfully popularized notions of eugenics and encouraged pronatalism (at least in "fit" families), and did so in a rural setting (always taking place at state fairs). As such, they represented the most blatant form of social pressure to reproduce. However, as Lovett's previous chapters demonstrate, more pervasive, if more subtle, forms of social pressure existed prior to the popularization of eugenics in the twentieth century. Linking eugenic efforts to earlier agrarian visions is an unusual and intriguing approach to understanding pronatalism in America. But it also introduces additional questions and challenges. Should we understand the 1920s trend toward "positive eugenics...