Better Babies and Fitter Families: Eugenics and Forced Sterilization
Eugenics and Birth Control
In 1883, British biologist Francis Galton coined the term "eugenics." Combining the roots of the Greek words for "good" and "origin," eugenicists claimed scientific knowledge about genetics could and should be applied to human breeding. In the late nineteenth century the idea grew into a blend of genetic research and social theory, supported by racialized ideas about "fit" classes of humans. Eugenics influenced American thought by the twentieth century, and was mainstream by the 1920s and 1930s.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, eugenics was considered a method of preserving and improving the dominant groups (those decreed "fit") in the population. Today, eugenics is strongly associated with racist and anti-immigrant rather than scientific genetics. In 1907, Indiana passed the first compulsory sterilization law in the world, and thirty other U.S. states soon followed suit. During the decades when forced sterilization was most common, between 1907 and 1963, the state ordered more than 64,000 compulsory sterilizations. More than 60% of these were performed on women, and nonwhite people of both sexes were dispropotionately targeted.
Please see our timeline later in this exhibit for more details about how this led to legal forced sterilization practices in North Carolina.
While books like Eugenics and Sex Harmony do not advocate outright for forced sterilization, they emphasize racist and ablist ideas about breeding for optimally "fit" generations. Moreover, eugenics ideology embraced sexist stereotypes about marriage and intimate relationships. Reductively, Eugenics and Sex Harmony assumed a masculine preference for blonde women as wives, racializing desire.
Better Babies and Fitter Families
Better Babies contests pitted infants against each for state fair "breeding" awards in the first decades of twentieth-century America. While these contests did emphasize the need for better infant health care in the country, they also upheld racist theories of eugenics. The first such contest was held in 1908 at the Lousiana State Fair in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Judges awarded participating infants (betweeen 6 and 48 months old) points up to a maximum of 1000. Infants could earn up to 700 points for physical appearances lacking any visible deformities or impairments. Doctors and nurses awarded a maximum of 200 points for mental and psychological fitness and 100 points for physical measurements including "normal" height and weight.
In 1913, the Woman's Home Companion (WHC) magazine, took on the organization and sponsorship of Better Babies contests across the U.S. The Woman's Home Companion targeted middle-class American women, with an audience of more than 2.5 million women by 1925. The WHC created the Better Babies Bureau in 1913, and commissioned well-known sculptor and coin designer (and suffragist) Laura Gardin Fraser to design the large bronze coin awarded to each contest winner through the 1920. The Bureau and WHC supplied scorecards and detailed instructions for holding better babies competitions to organizers of state fairs throughout the US. By 1916, more than 47,000 infants had competed in these contests, which were being held in the majority of states in the U.S.
