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" Building a better race: "
W. A. Kline
K. Halttunen
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Latin Dissertation
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English
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| Record Number
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1113185
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TLpq304424381
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| Main Entry
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K. Halttunen
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W. A. Kline
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| Title & Author
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Building a better race:\ W. A. KlineK. Halttunen
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| College
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University of California, Davis
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| Date
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1998
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1998
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Page No
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254
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| Abstract
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The American woman is the leader of the awakened social conscience in a country-wide crusade to build a better race, declared Progressive reformer Mabel Potter Daggett in 1912. Between 1900 and 1960, this "country-wide crusade" to strengthen family and civilization by regulating fertility--more commonly known as eugenics--developed into a powerful and popular ideal. This dissertation analyzes how and why eugenics became an appealing solution to the problem of moral disorder. Eugenics elicited tremendous popular and professional support, I argue, because it linked two issues of great concern to the white middle class in early twentieth-century America: race and gender. White middle-class authority and middle-class manhood both stood in jeopardy because of social and economic changes which undermined established race and gender hierarchies."Race suicide," the fear that the white middle-class birthrate was dropping well below that of immigrants and the working-class, heightened public alarm over this loss of authority. Unless fertility was regulated to compensate for the differential birthrate, eugenicists argued, moral and racial decay would bring the downfall of civilization. Applying eugenic principles to modern civilization, many came to believe, would counter this decline. Specifically, eugenicists wanted to make motherhood an exclusive privilege rather than an inherent right by encouraging the "fit" (primarily the white middle class) to have more children while restricting the "unfit" from doing so. Americans could build a better race, they believed, by instilling a sense of "reproductive morality" into the public consciousness. Reproductive decisions should be based not on individual desire but on racial duty. "Building a Better Race" traces the emergence and evolution of eugenics from a movement primarily focused upon preventing procreation of the "unfit"("negative eugenics") to one centered upon persuading procreation of the "fit" ("positive eugenics"). Between 1900 and 1960, eugenicists appealed to a wide audience of Americans concerned about moral disorder and interested in building a better race. Initially focused on eugenic sterilization, they also succeeded in persuading middle-class Americans to reconsider their procreative potential. Their plea for the middle class to become more "family-minded" was answered in the pronatalism of the 1950s. ftnMabel Potter Dagett, "Women: Building a Better Race," World's Work 25 (1912-13): 228.
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| Subject
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Biological sciences
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Eugenics
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Modern
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Morality
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Race
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Social sciences
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