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15 one A “Bad Mother”Called Quebec T he campaign against infant and maternal mortality was the cornerstone on which the Western child welfare movement of the early 20th century was built. In order to make this fight more effective, the leaders of the movement introduced the first milk stations and infant care clinics, and doctors sought to impose their expertise in the art of looking after babies , while the state found a place for medical professionals in its structure, investing ever more considerable sums in various public health programs. Even after World War II, when this movement was breaking down, the death rate among newborns and mothers continued to be a concern for public authorities and for physicians. The latter justified their interventions and educational campaigns by pointing to the progress already achieved and the possibility of even further declines in the number of deaths. For public health experts in the post-war period, as for their predecessors, the greatness of a nation and the level of a society’s “civilization” could be measured by the yardstick of infant and mother mortality; the campaign against these two scourges could end only with their total eradication.1 On the scale of “civilized” nations, it can be said that Quebec cut a sorry figure. Throughout the entire period under consideration, infant mortality actually surpassed the levels for the whole of Canada, which were already quite high. Compared to Ontario, the benchmark used by all health specialists , they were downright catastrophic. In fact, the title of “bad mother ,” which the commentators at the time readily applied to women whose children died from “avoidable” causes, to use the consecrated expression, applied perfectly to Quebec as a whole, and even more so to its Frenchspeaking Catholic population. Some small comfort could be derived from the fact that, according to official statistics (though these were not particularly reliable), the death rate for mothers in the province remained below the national average until the 1930s. As in the rest of Canada, the likelihood of survival for babies and women in childbirth increased markedly from 16 babies FoR tHe nation decade to decade, but it was not until the 1970s that the rate in Quebec drew level with that in all of Canada. Thus, for the better part of the 20th century, Quebec found itself in an inferior position in comparison with the country overall, and an accusing finger was often pointed at it. While assessing the infant mortality rate in Quebec, this first chapter will attempt to provide a few explanations for a phenomenon that has long been a stain on the reputation of a province otherwise recognized as the most prolific in Canada.2 An Early Death The causes of infant mortality, like the factors that contributed to its decline throughout the 20th century, are numerous and complex. Poverty certainly explained a considerable number of these deaths, for the unsanitary living conditions to which it gave rise could prove fatal for young babies, while it restricted the ability to obtain health care at a time when it had to be paid for. However, other factors have to be taken into account. The presence or absence of adequate sanitary installations (sewers, piped water, and filtration systems for drinking water), of legislation concerning the pasteurization of milk and the inspection of farms and dairies, the state of medical knowledge, the proximity to or distance from urban centres and health services, were all factors in the newborn’s chance of survival. To these must be added attitudes toward childhood and mothering practices, which differed between social and cultural groups. Table 1 provides a picture of the infant death rates for Canada, Quebec, and Ontario for the years between 1921 and 1968, i.e., the proportion of deaths of children aged between zero and one year per thousand live births, by five-year period. An examination of these data dispels all possible doubt: Quebec stands out for five-year averages systematically higher than in the country as a whole, with even greater disparities compared to Ontario. A comparison with the other provinces taken together further shows that only Newfoundland had a higher infant mortality rate than Quebec, except for the period from 1926 to 1930.3 New Brunswick, with the largest minority of Roman Catholic French-speakers outside Quebec, generally came in third place, except for the decade of the 1940s, when it took over from Quebec in second position.4 This table also allows us to see that...

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