1696594340     

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

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2007 [©2007.]

1 online resource (249 pages)

Englisch

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Erscheint auch als: (Druck-Ausgabe)

978-0-8078-6810-2

978-0-8078-5803-5 (ISBN der Printausgabe)

665136129

HQ535

306.850973/0904     Ähnliche Literatur

LOC-SH: Families -- United States -- History -- 20th century ; Families size -- United States -- History -- 20th century ; Eugenics -- United States -- History -- 20th century ; Nostalgia -- United States -- History -- 20th century ; Families policy -- United States -- History -- 20th century

MeSH: Reproduction ; Social Change ; Family ; Eugenics ; History, 20th Century

Families - United States - History - 20th century ; Electronic books

Through nostalgic idealizations of motherhood, family, and the home, influential leaders in early twentieth-century America constructed and legitimated a range of reforms that promoted human reproduction. Their pronatalism emerged from a modernist conviction that reproduction and population could be regulated. European countries sought to regulate or encourage reproduction through legislation; America, by contrast, fostered ideological and cultural ideas of pronatalism through what Laura Lovett calls "nostalgic modernism," which romanticized agrarianism and promoted scientific racism and eugenics. Lovett looks closely at the ideologies of five influential American figures: Mary Lease's maternalist agenda, Florence Sherbon's eugenic "fitter families" campaign, George Maxwell's "homecroft" movement of land reclamation and home building, Theodore Roosevelt's campaign for conservation and country life, and Edward Ross's sociological theory of race suicide and social control. Demonstrating the historical circumstances that linked agrarianism, racism, and pronatalism, Lovett shows how reproductive conformity was manufactured, how it was promoted, and why it was coercive. In addition to contributing to scholarship in American history, gender studies, rural studies, and environmental history, Lovett's study sheds light on the rhetoric of "family values" that has regained currency in recent years.

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Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Nostalgia, Modernism, and the Family Ideal -- 2. New Occasions Teach New Duties: Mary Elizabeth Lease's Maternalist Agenda -- 3. Reclaiming the Home: George H. Maxwell and the Homecroft Movement -- 4. The Political Economy of Sex: Edward A. Ross and Race Suicide -- 5. Men As Trees Walking: Theodore Roosevelt and the Conservation of the Race -- 6. Fitter Families for Future Firesides: Florence Sherbon and Popular Eugenics -- 7. American Pronatalism -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Z.