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300 “The New Woman in the Making” Leta S. Hollingworth R LetaAnna Stetter Hollingworth (1886–1939) earned a Ph.D.in educational psychology at Teachers College of Columbia University in 1916 and then joined the faculty there, where she built a distinguished career critiquing biological reasons for sex differences in achievement, analyzing the characteristics of exceptional children, and promoting eugenics.InFunctional Periodicity (1914),Hollingworth debunked the popular belief that menstruation impaired women’s mental ability. She used sociological arguments to refute the Darwinian theory that women were less variable then men and hence less capable of great intellectual achievements.1 In the early1910s,HollingworthjoinedtheNewYork–basedHeterodoxy,aconsciousnessraising feminist group that discussed topics such as psychoanalysis, socialism, and birth control. Members included socialist trade unionist Rose Pastor Stokes, the lawyer and political radical Crystal Eastman, and the Industrial Workers of the World organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.2 During the 1920s and 1930s,Hollingworth became one of the leading experts on mentally handicapped and gifted children and a leading proponent of eugenics. As Hollingworth saw it, social or economic inequalities didn’t explain the fewer numbers of gifted children born to members of the lower classes or to recent immigrants , but heredity did. Philanthropy only exacerbated the problem, according to Hollingworth, because it tried to improve what heredity had preordained: “philanthropic efforts,originally meaning love of man,[had] degenerated to mean love of stupid and vicious man.”3 Hollingworth’s “New Woman in the Making” was published in the New York Times Company’s Current History,4 a monthly magazine begun in 1914 and devoted to international news and war coverage. In 1923, the current events magazine charged three dollars a year for subscriptions and reported a circulation of over Current History, Oct. 1927, 15–20. 38,000. The entire October 1927 issue in which Hollingworth’s article appeared was given over to New Woman debates.5 . . . For a general understanding of the New Woman in the making it is, perhaps, enough for us to note that a puzzle or question is created whenever a craving organism is balked in the search for satisfaction; that uninformed, multiple activity is then set up; and that whatever act within the available répertoire happens to bring satisfaction will become fixed habit. . . . First Changes in Woman’s Status We do not know how long the human species had existed before acute thinkers demonstrated the true and invariable cause of infants. At all events this was disseminated knowledge by the time records of civilization were established in Crete, Egypt and Greece. The discovery of paternity must have affected woman’s then existing status variously. In the first place, men learning that they too were creators of children, must have been modified in their attitude toward procreation. In order to identify “his own flesh and blood” it was now plainly to be seen that a man must insure strict faithfulness to himself in sex relations, on the part of the mother. In the interests of such assurance special restrictions were placed upon women,under the concept of feminine virtue. By the time Hammurabi, King of Babylonia, formulated his code of social regulation, in 2250 B.C. . . . , the ideal of feminine virtue was well established, to hold for many subsequent centuries: “If the finger have been pointed at the wife of a man because of another man, . . . for her husband’s sake she shall throw herself into the river.” No similar arrangement is made for a husband in like circumstances. Pair marriage was also,no doubt,definitely promoted by the discovery of paternity. The man, now understanding that the children were created by him as well as by the woman, became the husband of the latter, guaranteeing subsistence, while she stood under obligation to perform for her lord and master such labor as was consistent with the limitations of her reproductive system.In pair marriage,as anciently instituted,the man was lord and master inevitably, because in any contract between two persons for mutual gain the one who needs the other least is in position to dictate terms. Also, the discovery of paternity made it feasible to avoid procreation. This was a long step in the evolution of the New Woman. It is very doubtful whether there were any old maids under the most primitive conditions.After the discovery of paternity the intelligent and intentional old maid became possible. The function of the strong, intelligent old maid must have been extremely important in the making of the...

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