Conceiving Parenthood: American Protestantism and the Spirit of Reproduction (review)

In this ambitious intellectual study, Amy Laura Hall tackles the historical tensions between Protestantism and science in the realm of reproduction. Her focus is on the fraught relationship between religion, science, and consumer culture, questioning why twentieth-century white middle-class American families welcomed rather than resisted an ethic of parenthood that differentiates between the "wanted" and the "unwanted." Buying into the consumer ethic of progress, these families implicitly rejected the moral basis of their religion and its emphasis on redemption. Perhaps more surprisingly, they were guided into this ethic of progress by the church itself, beginning in the mid-twentieth century. Ministers stressed that Christian couples were "morally obligated to plan" their families in order to strengthen the community (13). Hall contrasts this religious promotion of a controlled, planned, ideal (white, middle-class) family with the model of irresponsible, unhealthy, out-of-control (non-white, poor) family denigrated by eugenicists, advertisers, and others. With this increasingly visible and pronounced dichotomy of good vs. bad, healthy vs. unhealthy, productive vs. dependent family types, it is not surprising that so many religious consumers bought into this notion that their own families should adhere to a particular size and standard.

Hall mines Christian journals, sermons, hymns, popular magazines, and eugenics archives to present a multi-dimensional portrait of prescriptive parenthood. Perhaps most interesting and entertaining of the many images included in her book are advertisements urging mothers to consider science and technology in their parenting decisions, whether it is for Lysol, baby formula, televisions, or ADHD medications. Such variety, however, also serves to weaken her argument. Hall finds prescriptive parenthood almost everywhere, and at times her book resembles a catalog of promotional material rather than a historical analysis of parenthood or Protestantism. Part of the problem stems from a somewhat disjointed narrative, as Hall skips from 1950s Methodist magazines to twenty-first-century pharmaceutical campaigns for ADHD and back again without hesitation. One paragraph on the eugenics movement jumps from World War II to 1926 to 1968 and back to 1953, for example (283).

As a self-proclaimed pro-life feminist, minister, and professor of theological ethics, Hall is unabashed about the prescriptive nature of her work, hoping that it will help to reform mainline Protestantism. Families need to rethink conceptions of parenthood, she argues, in order to combat the efforts of those seeking to eliminate genetic "imperfections." Her passion and concern spill out from the pages, which may inspire some readers to question the status quo. Her approach, however, obscures the complexities of twentieth-century reproductive history. There is little room for agency in her story (resisters to this prescriptive literature are limited to the book's final pages) and little differentiation between ideas promoted by Nativist ministers in the 1890s, 1950s advertisers, and twenty-first-century scientists researching ADHD. Nevertheless, this is a thoughtful and provocative study on this history of procreation and parenthood in twentieth-century America.