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“Sex Education’s Many Sides”: Eugenics and Sex Education in New York City’s Progressive Reform Organizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

Julia B. Haager Open the ORCID record for Julia B. Haager [Opens in a new window]
Julia B. Haager*
Affiliation:
Department of History, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, NY, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article argues that reformers’ racial nativism, belief in the power of eugenics to improve society, and desire to restrict US citizenship to certain racial groups contributed to reproductive and eugenic curriculum used by early public-school sex education programs. It utilizes newspaper accounts and archival records from the headquarters of the American Social Hygiene Association, Committee of Fourteen, United Neighborhood Houses, and Child Study Association in New York City to answer several crucial questions: What dangers did each organization attribute to adolescent sexuality and reproduction? How did each envision its role in societal improvement and in the sex education movement? What did these reform organizations consider as the ideal relationship between the home, school, and society? While the existing scholarship explains how each of these organizations fit into the larger historical context of progressive reform, examining them separately downplays the degree to which ideas about race, reproduction, immigration, and US citizenship circulated among reformers, especially as leaders of these groups worked across organizational lines to promote sex education.

Keywords

sex educationeugenicspublic schoolsimmigrationrace
Type
SHGAPE Graduate Student Essay Prize
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , April 2022 , pp. 74 - 92
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (SHGAPE)

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References

Notes

1 See transcript of the lecture and Q&A in Ora Hart Avery, “Parenthood in High School Home Economics,” 82–91 (quote on 88) in “Child Study Association of America: Conference on Parental Education, Bronxville, NY October 1925,” box 45, folder 478, Child Study Association Collection, Social Welfare History Archive (hereafter SWHA-CSA), University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.

2 For a detailed discussion of sex education as it relates to developments in educational psychology and moral reform, see Moran, Jeffrey, Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the 20th Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002)Google Scholar, 98–117; and Wheeler, Leigh Ann, Against Obscenity: Reform and the Politics of Womanhood in America, 1873–1935 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 115–32.Google Scholar

3 Moran, Jeffrey P., Teaching Sex; Leigh Ann Wheeler, Age of Obscenity; Reform and the Politics of Womanhood in America, 1873–1935 (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2004);Google Scholar Shah, Courtney, Sex Ed, Segregated: The Quest for Sexual Knowledge in Progressive-Era America (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2015)Google Scholar; Freeman, Susan K., Sex Goes to School: Girls and Sex Education before the 1960s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008);Google Scholar Natalia Mehlman, “Sex Ed … and the Reds? Reconsidering the Anaheim Battle over Sex Education, 1962–1969,” History of Education Quarterly 47 (May 2007): 203–32; Lord, Alexandra M., Condom Nation: The U.S. Government’s Sex Education Campaign from WWI to the Internet (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2009);Google Scholar Jensen, Robin E., Dirty Words: The Rhetoric of Public Sex Education, 1870–1924 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010);Google Scholar Michael A. Rembis, Defining Deviance: Sex, Science, and Delinquent Girls, 1890–1960 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011).

4 Moran, Teaching Sex, 216.

5 Wheeler, Against Obscenity, 115–23.

6 Shah looks at the National Medical Association’s opposition to scientific racism in African Americans’ sex education curricula; the presupposition of heterosexual middle-class masculinity in the YMCA and Boy Scouts of America’s “character building” program; and the policing of working-class women’s sexuality via the Chamberlin Kahn Act during World War I. Shah, Sex Ed, Segregated, xiii–xvi.

7 For a discussion of progressive reformers’ understanding of modernity and urban decay, see Jeffrey Moran, “‘Modernism Gone Mad’: Sex Education Comes to Chicago, 1913,” Journal of American History 83 (Sept. 1996): 481–513. For the historiographical scholarship on race science and reproduction more broadly, see, for example, Alexandra M. Stern, Eugenic Nation: The Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Johanna Schoen, Choice & Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Kluchin, Rebecca M., Fit to Be Tied: Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America, 1950–1980 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011);Google Scholar Nelson, Jennifer, Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Briggs, Laura, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002);Google Scholar and Andrea Tone ed., Controlling Reproduction: An American History (Wilmington, VA: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1997).

8 Moran, “Modernism Gone Mad,” 482.

9 The literature on Progressive Era public schooling is vast. For a brief sample of scholars who have debated this shifting power dynamic in schools, see, Cremin, Lawrence, The Transformation of the American School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961);Google Scholar Tyack, David B., The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Tyack, David B. and Hansot, Elizabeth, Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1982)Google Scholar; Katz, Michael B., The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts, 2nd ed. (New York: Teachers College Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Spring, Joel H., Education and the Rise of the Corporate State (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972);Google Scholar Kaestle, Carl F., The Evolution of an Urban School System: New York City, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Blount, Jackie M., Destined to Rule the School: Women and the Superintendency, 1873–1995 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995);Google Scholar Ravitch, Diane, The Great School Wars: A History of New York City Public Schools (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Tyack, David and Cuban, Larry, Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995);Google Scholar Reese, William, The Power and Promise of School Reform: Grassroots Movements During the Progressive Era (New York: Teachers College Press);Google Scholar and Zilversmit, Arthur, Changing Schools: Progressive Education Theory and Practice, 1930–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).Google Scholar

10 Reese, The Power and Promise of School Reform, xxi.

11 Reese, The Power and Promise of School Reform, xxii.

12 More recent discussions of “epigenetics” have been seen as a ratification of Lamarckism. For a concise discussion of this contemporary connection, see Jablonka, Eva and Lamb, Marion J., Epigenetic Inheritance and Evolution: The Lamarckian Dimension (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and Ward, Peter, Lamarck’s Revenge: How Epigenetics Is Revolutionizing Our Understanding of Evolution’s Past and Present (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018).Google Scholar

13 Much has been written on how positive and negative eugenics differed. For a concise explanation of how these theories developed in the United States context, see Paul, Diane B., Controlling Human Heredity, 1865 to the Present (New York: Prometheus Books, 1995);Google Scholar Kevles, Daniel J., In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Use of Human Heredity (1985; repr., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998);Google Scholar and Stern, Eugenic Nation.

14 To be clear, I am not suggesting that these different eugenic theories are unimportant. As scholars have noted, the various strains of eugenic theories could at times contradict each other, and there was a schism in the larger eugenic movement over these differences. My point here it to clarify that reformers imperfectly applied different eugenic theories to suit their purposes at the same time that they shared an underlying belief that reproduction affected society. For a discussion of how eugenic theories conflicted and divided the eugenics movement, see Stern, Eugenic Nation, 4–5. For a larger discussion of whiteness as it relates to U.S. citizenship, immigration, and Social Darwinism, see, for example, Peter Kolchin, “Whiteness Studies: The New History of Race in America,” Journal of American History 89 (June 2002): 154–73; Thomas A. Guglielmo, White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color and Power in Chicago, 1890–1945. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); and Fields, Barbara, “Whiteness, Racism, and Identity,” International Labor and Working-Class History 60 (Fall 2001): 48–56, 48.Google Scholar

15 Historian Jeffrey Moran cites a 1927 survey of 1,665 schools where 1,306 almost exclusively taught eugenics in sex education. This far surpassed the 571 who discussed venereal disease or 420 that discussed “internal secretions” and menstruation, demonstrating the degree to which eugenic theories dominated early sex education coursework in U.S. public schools. For a longer discussion of this survey conducted by the educational researchers Usilton and Edison, see Moran, , Teaching Sex, 106–8.Google Scholar

16 For a discussion of UNH, see Gold, Roberta, When Tenants Claimed the City: The Struggle for Citizenship in New York City (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Davis, Aileen Freeman, Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–1914, 3rd ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994).Google Scholar For a discussion of the ASHA’s founding and the Social Purity Movement, see David J. Pivar, Purity and Hygiene: Women, Prostitution, and the “American Plan,”1900–1930 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002) and Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control, 1868–1900 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973).

17 Shah, Sex Ed, Segregated, 4–14; and Moran, Teaching Sex, 35.

18 Pivar, Purity and Hygiene, 130–31.

19 Tanya Hart, Health in the City: Race, Poverty, and the Negotiation of Women’s Health in New York City, 1915–1930 (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 108–10; and Shah, Sex Ed, Segregated, xii.

20 The Committee of Fourteen was founded in 1905 by members of the New York Anti-Saloon League and initially focused on temperance. Whitin was considered a nationwide expert on the law as it relates to prostitution; however, his friendship with Snow and oversight of the education department of the Committee of Fourteen meant that he followed and participated in sex-education developments.

21 The historian Courtney Shah, for instance, notes that Dr. Prince A. Morrow founded the ASHA to bring members of the social purity movement and medical hygiene groups together for sex education that would prevent venereal disease. See Courtney Shah, Sex Ed, Segregated, 7–8; and Moran, Teaching Sex, 33-35.

22 Pivar notes that Whitin was an influential advisor to Rockefeller who funded and supported many of the ASHA’s early sex education initiatives. See Pivar, Purity and Hygiene, 60, 130.

23 Reese, Power and the Promise of School Reform, 202–3.

24 Their personal friendship and professional relationship were due, at least in part, to Frederick H. Whitin’s wife, Mrs. Olive Crosby Whitin, who had served as the executive secretary of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis before it merged with the ASHA. Whitin was also a “trusted advisor” to John D. Rockefeller whose approach to sex education differed from Snow’s and the ASHA’s by prioritizing medical treatment for venereal disease and criminalization of prostitution over the prevention of venereal disease via sex education in schools, colleges, and universities. Despite their different organizational affiliations, Snow relied on Frederick H. Whitin’s knowledge of NYC’s “medico-social problem” (i.e., venereal disease and unfit reproduction) to determine how the ASHA might assist schools with sex education. For more information see: NYPL Committee of Fourteen Records General Correspondence with ASHA Series I, box 9; and Maurice Bigelow, Sex Education: A Series of Lectures Concerning Knowledge of Sex in its Relation to Human Life (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1916), viii. For more background on Snow see Moran, Teaching Sex, 48–49. For more on Whitin’s connections with Rockefeller see Pivar, Purity and Hygiene, 60.

25 This particular letter has not been preserved in Whitin’s or Snow’s papers but there are other letters from this time period between the two because they were friends and involved in the planning of the All-American Conference on Venereal Disease in Washington, D.C., and teacher training courses at Teacher’s College of Columbia University. See, for example, the letter closest in date to their November 1916 correspondence: F. H. Whitin to S. F. Snow, May 22, 1916, Committee of Fourteen Records, General Correspondence with ASHA, Series I, box 9, New York Public Library (hereafter Committee of Fourteen-NYPL). In addition, Whitin corresponded with Max J. Exner, a physician who worked with the YMCA’s and the ASHA’s sex education programs into 1920s. See, for instance, F. H. Whitin to Dr. Max Exner, American Social Hygiene Association, October 16, 1924, NYPL-Committee of Fourteen Records.

26 For a discussion of reformatories for female juvenile delinquents see, for instance, Mary E. Odem, Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1855–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 95–127; and Ruth Alexander, The “Girl Problem”: Female Sexual Delinquency in New York, 1900–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 33–68.

27 Alexander, The Girl Problem, 35. For a longer discussion of how class shaped reformers’ perceptions of wayward girls’ ability to be reformed, see Zipf, Karen, Bad Girls at Samarcand: Sexuality and Sterilization in a Southern Juvenile Reformatory (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University press, 2016),Google Scholar 63–86.

28 Whitin to Snow, Nov. 18, 1916, Committee of Fourteen, NYPL.

29 Whitin to Snow, Nov. 18, 1916, Committee of Fourteen, NYPL.

30 Whitin included this quote from Snow in his November 18, 1916 reply. To my knowledge, the original letter from Snow has not been preserved. See Whitin to Snow, Nov. 18, 1916, Committee of Fourteen Records, General Correspondence with ASHA, Series I, box 9, Committee of Fourteen-NYPL. Snow’s original letter to Whitin has not been preserved in his correspondence. See Personal, Staff Correspondence, William Freeman Snow, Founder, American Social Hygiene Association Records, 1905–1990 (SW 45), box 53, folder 6, SWHA-ASHA. During the First World War Snow worked closely with Bascom Johnson to eliminate red-light districts near army camps and was well connected to anti-vice reformers like Whitin, see also Laura Hyun Yi Kang, “Surveillance and the Work of Antitrafficking” in Rachel, F. Dubrofsky and Amielle Magnet eds., Feminist Surveillance Studies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 39–57.Google Scholar

31 Blain, Keisha N., Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a broader discussion of Caribbean immigration in New York City, see Watkins-Owens, Irma, Blood Relations: Caribbean Immigrants and the Harlem Community, 1900–1930 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996);Google Scholar and Sacks, Marcy S., Before Harlem: The Black Experience in New York City Before World War I (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Whitin to Snow, Nov. 18, 1916, Committee of Fourteen, NYPL.

33 Historian Keisha Blain notes, for example, that approximately 20 percent of blacks in Harlem were of Afro-Caribbean origin in the 1920s. Blain, Set the World on Fire, 23.

34 Whitin to Snow, Nov. 18, 1916, Committee of Fourteen, NYPL.

35 Quote from the subsection entitled, “Work in Co-operation.” See William F. Snow, “Progress, 1900–1915,” Social Hygiene II (Jan. 1916): 3–14, box 001, folder 001, SWHA-ASHA.

36 “The American Social Hygiene Association, 1914–1916,” box 170, folder 02, SWHA-ASHA. For more on progressive reform and the extensions of schools’ social services, see Reese, Power and the Promise of School Reform, 27–55.

37 Snow, “Progress, 1900–1915,” 37–46. The cooperation among organizations was also discussed in newspaper coverage of the Fourth International Congress on School Hygiene and in a survey conducted by the ASHA’s Department of Legal Measures. See “Not Forbidden Now: Subject of Sex Hygiene Is Being Discussed by Educators of Country,” Newspaper Clipping (Paper Unknown), June 7, 1913, box 001, folder 005, SWHA-ASHA; and “Relation of the American Social Hygiene Association to Community Welfare,” Department of Legal Measures, Oct. 25, 1923, box 001, folder 001, SWHA-ASHA.

38 A concise explanation of how Lamarkian eugenics contributed to state eugenic laws, forced sterilization, and immigration restriction; see Paul, Controlling Human Heredity, 72–84; Adam Cohen, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck (New York: Penguin Press, 2016), 105–6; and Rembis, Michael A., Defining Deviance: Sex, Science, and Delinquent Girls, 1890–1960 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013),Google Scholar 13–32; and Kluchin, Fit to Be Tied. 11–19.

39 Snow, “Progress, 1900–1915,” 6.

40 Sterns, Peter N., Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 3.Google Scholar

41 Sterns, Anxious Parents, 21–22.

42 For more on how parents and moral reformers sought to protect children from salacious sexual imagery, see Wheeler, Against Obscenity, 115–132.

43 Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontentment: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 (New York: Free Press, 2003); Recchiuti, John Louis, Civic Engagement: Social Science and Progressive-Era Reform in New York City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 1, 74.Google Scholar

44 The literature on municipal housekeeping and settlement houses is vast. For an example of how sex education fit into their offerings see Shah, Sex Ed, Segregated, xii, 15–16. For a discussion on municipal housekeeping and public health, see Molly Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Julia Grant, Raising Baby by the Book: The Education of American Mothers (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); and Reese, Power and the Promise of School Reform, 186–212.

45 For a more detailed overview of the functions and goals of the committees within UNH, see Emily S. Bernheim, Executive Secretary of the United Neighborhood Houses of New York City, “Report of the Executive Secretary for the Committee on Plan and Scope, Jan. 3, 1928,” box 244, folder 33, SWHA-UNH; and “History of the Development of Social Education in the United Neighborhood Houses of NY,” box 245, folder 38, SWHA-UNH.

46 For a longer discussion of parenting experts and “scientific motherhood,” see Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work, 43–73; and Grant, Raising Baby by the Book, 13–38.

47 These lectures were modeled from those of Dr. Douglas Thom of Boston’s East End Settlement house. See Emily J. Bernheim, Executive Secretary, and Roswell P. May, Secretary of the Legislative Committee, to Headworker, Jan. 13, 1928, box 244, folder 33, United Neighborhood House Records, University of Minnesota, Social Welfare History Archive (hereafter SWHA-UNH); and “All Day Conference of the UNH at the Caroline Country Club, Hartsdale, NY,” box 245, folder 37, SWHA-UNH. For more on the UNH’s concern that immigration enforcement was too lax in NYC, see Benjamin J. Guttewig, Chairman of Special Committee of Board of Directors of Stuyvesant Neighborhood House, “Memorandum for the Board of Directors of the United Neighborhood Houses regarding the Bill now before the United States Senate to increase the salaries of Immigration Inspectors,” n.d., box 244, folder 35, UNH Legal Folder, United Neighborhood Houses of NYC Records.

48 Overstreet was one of the first university professors to push normal colleges to include social hygiene and sex education as a part of teacher training. See “What Would You Conference Report, March 1926,” box 245, folder, 38, SWHA-UNH.

49 See Trenholm, “Summer Report,” M. de G. Trenholm, n.d., box 23, folder 2, Series IV-Resident Managers, Headworkers, and Executive Directors, East Side Settlement House Collection, Columbia University Libraries, New York City, NY (hereafter East Side Settlement House Collection).

50 An attendance roster from the UNH conference in 1926 and others like it have not been preserved so I have been unable to confirm that Trenholm attended the lecture series that featured Overstreet. However, Trenholm’s personal papers document her attendance at Teachers’ College of Columbia University’s summer session on social hygiene. See Trenholm, “Summer Report,” M. de G. Trenholm, n.d., box 23, folder 2, Series IV-Resident Managers, Headworkers, and Executive Directors, East Side Settlement House Collection.

51 “New York’s Biggest Problem, Not Police but Girls,” New York Times, Aug. 4, 1912.

52 “New York’s Biggest Problem, Not Police but Girls,” New York Times, Aug. 4, 1912.

53 “New York’s Biggest Problem, Not Police but Girls,” New York Times, Aug. 4, 1912.

54 “Practical Eugenics” was a strand of positive eugenics inspired by Galton’s and Mendel’s genetic theories and Theodore Roosevelt’s discussion of “race suicide.” Such prominent eugenicists as Karl Pearson and John Franklin Bobbitt popularized ideas like “better breeding” and “being well born.” See, for instance, Karl Pearson, The Problem of Practical Eugenics (London: Dulau and Co., 1912); and John Franklin Bobbitt, “Practical Eugenics: An Address Given before the Conference on Child Welfare at Clark University, Worcester, July 1909.”

55 “New York’s Biggest Problem, Not Police but Girls,” New York Times, Aug. 4, 1912.

56 “New York’s Biggest Problem, Not Police but Girls,” New York Times, Aug. 4, 1912.

57 “New York’s Biggest Problem, Not Police but Girls,” New York Times, Aug. 4, 1912.

58 A note on terminology. The Child Study Federation of America changed its name to the Child Study Association of American in 1924 after receiving funding from the Laura Spellman Rockefeller Foundation. For the sake of clarity, and following the tradition of previous historians, I use the acronym CSA because the organization’s involvement in parental sex education spanned both incarnations.

59 For more on the CSA as it relates to moral reform and motherhood, see Grant, Raising Baby by the Book, chaps. 39–112; Marilyn Coleman, Lawrence H. Ganong, and Kelly Warzinik, Family Life in 20th-Century America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007), 133–160; and Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work, 64–65. On the CSA’s campaign to curtail juvenile delinquency by banning comic books, see Bradford W. Wright, Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 169–71; Amy Kriste Nyber, “Comic Book Censorship in the United States,” Pulp Demons: International Dimensions of the Postwar Anti-Comics Campaign, ed. John A. Lent (London: Associated University Press, 1999), 42–50; and Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), 236. For an example of how juvenile delinquency was a part of the CSA’s earlier agenda during World War I, see Julia Grant, The Boy Problem: Educating Boys in Urban America, 1870–1970 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014)Google Scholar, 113–136.

60 Grant, Raising Baby by the Book, 85–95 and Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work, 43–45.

61 Grant, Raising Baby by the Book, 71.

62 For a longer discussion of these trends in progressive education and parents’ reactions, see, for example, William J. Reese, American Public Schools: From the Common School to “No Child Left Behind” (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 118–48; and Grant, Raising Baby by the Book, 90–91.

63 Grant, Raising Baby by the Book, 95.

64 For more on this collaboration. see Emily S. Bernheim, Executive Secretary of the United Neighborhood Houses of New York City, “Report of the Executive Secretary for the Committee on Plan and Scope, January 3, 1928,” Box 244, folder 33, SWHA-UNH; and “League of Mothers’ Clubs Prospectus for Leaders’ Forums,” Nov. 1932, box 245, folder 45, SWHA-UNH.

65 The UNH’s inclusion of a lecture on birth control was no accident; much has been written on the relationship between the birth control movement, Margaret Sanger, and settlement houses. My point here is to note that population control—whether through birth control or eugenic sex education—loomed large on the minds of settlement house workers during this time period. For a concise explanation, see Chesler, Ellen, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1992);Google Scholar Gordon, Linda, The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002);Google Scholar Hajo, Cathy Moran, Birth Control on Main Street: Organizing Clinics in the United States, 1916–1939 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010);Google Scholar and May, Elaine Tyler, America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation (New York: Basic Books, 2010).Google Scholar

66 Grant, Raising Baby by the Book, 94.

67 Emily S. Bernheim, Executive Secretary of the United Neighborhood Houses of New York City, “Report of the Executive Secretary for the Committee on Plan and Scope, January 3, 1928,” Box 244, folder 33, SWHA-UNH. See also Grant, Raising Baby by the Book, 94–95.

68 See “League of Mothers’ Clubs Prospectus for Leaders’ Forums,” Nov. 1932, box 245, folder 45, SWHA-UNH.

69 This brochure was loosely inserted with the announcement of this event. See “League of Mothers’ Clubs Prospectus for Leaders’ Forums,” Nov. 1932, box 245, folder 45, SWHA-UNH.

70 Much has been written about the Jewish lower-east-side tenement houses during this time but see Grant, Raising Baby by the Book, for a discussion of how this population responded to white reformers from the CSA.

71 Grant, Raising Baby by the Book, 72–73 and 114–16.

72 Leaders formed the CSA as the headquarters for a number of chapters of the Society for the Study of Child Nature in 1908. See Sidonie M. Gruenberg, “The Child Study Association of America: Its Organization and Methods,” Speech at the National Council of Parent Education Conference in 1930, 169–80, box 45, folder 479, SWHA-CSA.

73 Indeed, in combing through Sidonie Gruenberg’s personal correspondence, it is clear she was a very savvy businesswoman who demanded top dollar for speaking engagements and who regularly received substantial royalties checks from her publications. Many of Sidonie Gruenberg’s lectures on sex education were heavily influenced by or copied verbatim from Benjamin’s. See, for example, Benjamin Gruenberg’s popular pamphlet for teachers published by the ASHA. Benjamin C. Gruenberg, “The Teacher and Sex Education” (New York: The American Social Hygiene Association Publication No. 426, 1924), box 171, folder 11, SWHA-ASHA.

74 Quote from Grant, Raising Baby by the Book, 51. For a discussion of Gruenberg and her work with the PTA, see also Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work, 65–66.

75 Sidonie M. Gruenberg, “The Outlook for Parent Education” given at “C.S. Conference 1929,” Unpublished Lecture, quotes from 3–4, box 33, folder 328, SWHA-CSA.

76 Gruenberg, “The Outlook for Parent Education.”

77 Gruenberg, “The Outlook for Parent Education.”

78 Gruenberg, “The Outlook for Parent Education.”

79 Gruenberg, “The Outlook for Parent Education."

80 Gruenberg, Sidonie M., Elementary Biology: An Introduction to the Science of Life (New York: Ginn and Company, 1919), 437–513.Google Scholar

81 Gruenberg, “The Outlook for Parent Education.”

82 Much to Gruenberg’s and Pilpel’s chagrin, however, the NYC board of education refused her request to have the CSA’s college courses count toward the teacher-training requirements in the NYC schools. John E. Wade, Associate Superintendent of NYC Schools, to Sidonie M. Gruenberg, CSA, June 19, 1931, box 33, folder 337, SWHA-CSA.