by Jill Lepore
10. Frances K. Goldscheider et al., “A Century (Plus) of Parenthood: Changes in Living with Children, 1880–1990,” History of the Family 6 (2001) 477–94.
11. On the history of parenting advice, see especially Peter N. Stearns, Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America (New York: New York University Press, 2003), and Ann Hulbert, Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children (New York: Knopf, 2003).
12. Biographical and genealogical information can be found in Box 1 of the CSL Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe. See also Littledale’s obituary: “Mrs. Littledale, Magazine Editor,” New York Times, January 10, 1956. The diaries, which begin on January 1, 1907, can be found in Box 1 of the CSL Papers.
13. Dustin Harp, Desperately Seeking Women Readers: U.S. Newspapers and the Construction of a Female Readership (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), 22–31.
14. All diary entries can be found in the diaries contained in Box 1 of the CSL Papers.
15. Adelheid Popp, The Autobiography of a Working Woman (Chicago, 1913); on life not fit for a human being, see 108–9.
16. Gilman quoted in Gordon, Moral Property, 93.
17. For Sanger comparing another speaker favorably to Gilman, see Sanger’s diary entry for December 17, 1914, in Margaret Sanger, The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, ed. Esther Katz (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003–10), 1:106; and for her seeing Gilman speak in New York earlier that year, see 107.
18. Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, 1:69–74.
19. Gordon, Moral Property, 143. Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, 1:41. Reed, From Private Vice to Public Virtue, 70, 73. Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography (New York: Norton, 1938), 89.
20. Savage’s stories for Good Housekeeping included “Men—and Women’s Clubs,” Good Housekeeping 61 (May 1916), 610–16, and “The Children’s Bureau and You,” Good Housekeeping 66 (January 1918): 53–54.
21. Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, 1:194–5; Reed, Private Vice, Public Virtue, 106–7; Gordon, Moral Property, 156–57; Sanger, Autobiography, 215–21; David M. Kennedy, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970), 82–88.
22. Paul Popenoe, “Birth Control and Eugenics,” Birth Control Review 1 (April–May 1917): 6, and Roswell H. Johnson, “Birth Control Not Prevention,” Birth Control Review 1 (April-May 1917): 6. See also Kennedy, Birth Control in America, 118.
23. Mary L. Read, “Mothercraft,” Journal of Heredity 7 (1916): 339–42.
24. [Name omitted] to Margaret Sanger, November 27, 1922, in Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, 1:355.
25. Barbara Straus Reed, “Littledale, Clara Savage,” in American National Biography Online (2000) and the Finding Aid to the CSL Papers, Schlesinger Library, http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch00098. CSL, “Sublimation,” New Republic, July 16, 1924.
26. Samuel J. Lewis, “Thumbsucking: Its Dangers and Treatment,” Parents’ Magazine, June 1930, 23, 50–51; A.E.P. Searing, “Have Your Children the Daily Bath Habit?,” Parents’ Magazine, June 1930, 27, 71; Mary Fisher Torrance, “How Well Do We Protect Our Children?,” Parents’ Magazine, June 1930, 20–21, 68–70; quote from 20.
27. CSL, untitled typescript, n.d., Box 2, CSL Papers.
28. J. George Frederick, “Can a Tired Businessman Be a Good Father?,” Parents’ Magazine, April 1927, 15.
29. CSL, “And George Did It!”
30. Stella Crossley, “Confessions of an Amateur Mother,” Children: A Magazine for Parents, March 1927, 28–29.
31. Margaret Sanger, Motherhood in Bondage (1928; repr., Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2000), 47. Anne Kennedy, Congressional reports 1925 and 1926, Folders 494, 495, and 496, American Birth Control League Records, Houghton Library, Harvard University. And, on the number of clinics in 1930, see Gordon, Moral Property, 187–88.
32. Memorandum on Proposed Merger between the American Birth Control League and the American Eugenics Society, March 2, 1933. Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records (hereafter PPFA Records) are at Smith College, Sophia Smith Collection, PPFA I, Series 1, Box 3, Folder 4.
33. Gordon, Moral Property, 206–8.
34. CSL, “And George Did It!”
35. Marcel C. LaFollette, Making Science Our Own: Public Images of Science, 1910–1955 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), especially 10–25. The Science Service was founded in 1920 as
a nonprofit syndicate, to distribute “general news of science.” Initially financed by newspaper publisher E. W. Scripps, the service was later sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Research Council, and it represents a turning point for scientists’ open and formalized participation in public communications efforts. Its avowed purpose was to promote a positive image of science. The founding editor, chemist and writer Edwin E. Slosson, declared that the Service would not “indulge in propaganda unless it be propagandas to urge the value of research and the usefulness of science.” By the mid-1930s, the Service was meeting a subscription list of over 100 newspapers and reaching about one-fifth of the U.S. reading public.
See also Dorothy Nelkin, Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology (1987; repr., New York: Freeman, 1995). For an interesting and slightly different view, see John C. Burnham, How Superstition Won and Science Lost: Popularizing Science and Health in the United States (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987). Burnham’s chapter 5 is the most relevant. “Between 1920 and 1925,” Burnham writes, “the volume of science news doubled in major papers” (174). Also: by 1927, “the Associated Press had two [science] writers and a special science news service” (175).
36. Nancy Tomes, “Epidemic Entertainments: Disease and Popular Culture in Early-Twentieth-Century America,” American Literary History 14 (Winter 2002): 625–52.
37. Nancy Tomes, The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 183, 249, 251.
38. Bert Hansen, “America’s First Medical Breakthrough: How Popular Excitement About a French Rabies Cure in 1885 Raised New Expectations for Medical Progress,” American Historical Review 103 (1998): 373–418.
39. Thurman B. Rice, The Conquest of Disease (New York: Macmillan, 1927).
40. On de Kruif, see Charles E. Rosenberg, No Other Gods: On Science and American Social Thought (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976, 1997), chapter 7, “Martin Arrowsmith: The Scientist as Hero,” and also Steven Shapin, The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 60–63.
41. Paul de Kruif, Microbe Hunters (New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1926), 3.
42. De Kruif, “Before You Drink a Glass of Milk,” Ladies’ Home Journal, September 1929, 8.
43. Loren A. Schuler, “Talk Given by Mr. Loren A. Schuler, Editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal,” May 26, 1930, Staff Meeting Minutes, Box 8, J. Walter Thompson Company Archives, Special Collections Library, Duke University.
44. “ ‘Parrot Disease’ Baffles Experts,” Washington Post, January 9, 1930. James A. Tobey, “This Month in Public Health,” American City Magazine, March 1930, 175. A sample of early newspaper coverage: “Baltimore Woman Dies,” Chicago Tribune, January 11, 1930; “Parrot Fever Kills 2 in This Country,” New York Times, January 11, 1930; “Three Ill with Rare Sickness,” Los Angeles Times, January 9, 1930; “Hunts for Source of ‘Parrot Fever,’ ” New York Times, January 12, 1930; “U.S. Opens War on Parrot Fever as 20 Stricken,” San Francisco Examiner, January 13, 1930; “Trace Parrots Bearing Fatal Disease to U.S.,” Chicago Tribune, January 12, 1930. For the public health analysis, see Charles Armstrong, “Psittacosis: Epidemiological Considerations with Reference to the 1929–30 Outbreak in the United States,” Public Health Reports 45 (August 29, 1930): 2013–23; L. Elliocott et al., “The Psittacosis Outbreak in Maryland, December, 1929, and January, 1930,” Public Health Reports 46 (April
10, 1931): 843–50; and “Psittacosis,” American Journal of Public Health, July 1930: 756–77. On the outbreak as a whole, see also Jill Lepore, “It’s Spreading,” New Yorker, June 1, 2009.
45. “Parrot Fever Germ Was Found in 1892,” New York Times, January 14, 1930.
46. “General Cumming Tells of Psittacosis,” Atlanta Constitution, January 17, 1930. “Parrot Fever Cases Halted in the City,” New York Times, January 19, 1930. “ ‘Life’ in Sing Sing Offered to All Unwanted Parrots,” New York Times, January 20, 1930.
47. [E. B. White], Talk of the Town, New Yorker, January 25, 1930.
48. A rare exception: “Improvement Seen in Parrot Victims,” Washington Post, Janu-ary 10, 1930.
49. Morrill Goddard, “Talk Given at Monday Evening Meeting,” March 17, 1930, Staff Meeting Minutes, Box 8, J. Walter Thompson Company Archives, Special Collections Library, Duke University. About beating everyone to the story, though, Goddard was either lying or misremembering. American Weekly did not run its story on parrot fever until January 12: “Killed by a Pet Parrot,” American Weekly, January 12, 1930.
50. The New York Times notice calling the magazine “First Aid for Parents” was reprinted in the first issue: Children: A Magazine for Parents, November 1926, 50.
51. Shirley W. Wynne, “How to Guard Against Colds and Flu,” Parents’, January 1930, 26, 43.
52. Samuel J. Lewis, “Thumbsucking: Its Dangers and Treatment,” Parents’, June 1930, 23, 50–51; A.E.P. Searing, “Have Your Children the Daily Bath Habit?” Parents’, June 1930, 27, 71; Mary Fisher Torrance, “How Well Do We Protect Our Children?,” Parents’, June 1930, 20–21, 68–70.
53. CSL, “Parents in Search of Education,” typescript of a talk given at Smith College in 1930, Box 2, CSL Papers. In this regard, and for a contrary note, see also Bertrand Russell, “Are Parents Bad for Children?,” Parents’, May 1930, 18–19, 69.
54. Crossley, “Confessions of an Amateur Mother.”
55. Schlossman, “Founding,” 66.
56. Typescripts of Littledale’s short stories, along with files of rejection letters, can be found in her papers at the Schlesinger. See, e.g., New Yorker to CSL, May 27, 1935, rejecting her story “Intimations of Love,” Box 3, CSL Papers.
57. The transcript of this talk, dated February 24, 1932, is in Box 2, CSL Papers, in a folder titled “Radio talks, January–March 1932.” The radio talks run into Box 3 and appear to have run from 1932 to 1943.
58. CSL, “Living with Our Children,” April 1937, Box 2, CSL Papers. Littledale’s radio addresses, including “Don’t Be a Martyr to Your Children,” “Fathers Are Parents, Too,” and “I Am a Failure as a Mother,” can be found in a series of folders in Boxes 2 and 3. She participated in a debate on spanking in 1935; see the transcript titled “Debate: An Old Fashioned Spanking.” For Littledale’s rules, see “Six Ways to Succeed as a Parent,” October 23, 1936, Box 2. On parenting fashion, see CSL, “New Styles in Babies,” May 1937, Box 2.
59. Sanger to Robert L. Dickinson, February 20, 1942, in Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, 3:115.
60. Betty MacDonald, The Egg and I (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1945), 145, 96, 137, 143, 136–37. The Egg and I was published on October 3, 1945 (“Books Published Today,” New York Times, October 3, 1945). By December 1945, both it and Stuart Little had made it onto lists of the year’s ten best books. “Ten Christmas Lists of ‘Ten Best,’ ” New York Times, December 2, 1945. “The phenomenal success of this little book is the publishing surprise” of the season, Life wrote of The Egg and I on March 18, 1946. See also Jane F. Levey, “Imagining the Family in Postwar Popular Culture,” Journal of Women’s History 13 (2001): 125–50.
61. CSL, “Account of Plane Accident as Dictated by Clara Savage Littledale in Crawford W. Long Memorial Hospital, Atlanta, Georgia, March 4, 1941,” Box 1, CSL Papers.
62. CSL, to Marion Sabin, September 23, 1944, Box 3, CSL Papers.
63. “What is your community doing about courses for expectant parents—both mothers and fathers?” CSL, “What Can We Do About Marriage?,” January 1947, Box 2, CSL Papers.
64. A pamphlet published in 1943 promised that “more healthy children will be born to maintain the kind of peace for which we fight.” Quoted in Gordon, Moral Property, 247; emphasis in original.
65. Cooperation with Religious Leaders, PPFA Records, Smith, PPFA I, Series 1, Box 17, Folder 3.
66. Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, 3:469.
67. Margaret Sanger to D. Kenneth Rose, August 20, 1956, in Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, 3:402.
68. Kennedy, Birth Control in America, 272.
69. James W. Reed, interview with Mary Steichen Calderone, M.D., August 7, 1974, transcript, Schlesinger-Rockefeller Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library, Reel A-1, p. 15.
70. Janice M. Irvine, Talk About Sex: The Battles over Sex Education in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 31.
71. Alan F. Guttmacher, “Memoirs,” typescript, November 1972, PPFA Records, Smith, PPFA II, Administration, Guttmacher, A. F., Autobiography, Rough Draft, Box 117, Folder 39. Davis, Sacred Work, chapter 4.
72. Division of Negro Service, PPFA Records, Smith, PPFA I, Series 1, Box 9, Folder 4. See also Negro Campaign, PPFA I, Series 1, Box 34, Folder 1.
73. Wylda B. Cowles to Alan F. Guttmacher, Memorandum, May 29, 1962, in PPFA Records, Smith, PPFA II, Box 123, Folder 26, “Negro Problem Correspondence.”
74. Martin Luther King Jr., Family Planning—A Special and Urgent Concern (New York: Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 1966), in PPFA Records, Smith, PPFA I, Negro Campaign, Box 34, Folder 1.
75. See Konrad Reisner to Roy Wilkins, December 20, 1967, and Roy Wilkins to Konrad Reisner, December 28, 1967, in PPFA Records, Smith, PPFA II, Box 123, Folder 26, “Negro Problem Correspondence.”
76. Gordon, Moral Property, 290. See also “Planned Parenthood Blasted by NAACP,” Dayton Daily News, December 13, 1967, in PPFA Records, Smith, PPFA II, Box 123, Folder 26, “Negro Problem Correspondence.”
77. Kennedy, Birth Control in America, viii.
78. Quoted in Gloria Feldt with Carol Trickett Jennings, Behind Every Choice Is a Story (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2002), 94.
79. Gordon, Moral Property, 289. See also Deborah R. McFarlane and Kenneth J. Meier, The Politics of Fertility Control: Family Planning and Abortion Policies in the American States (New York: Chatham House, 2001).
80. Gordon, Moral Property, 289.
81. George J. Hecht, “Smaller Families: A National Imperative,” Parents Magazine, July 1970. And George Hecht to Alan Guttmacher, August 18, 1970, Box 1, Folder 1, Alan Guttmacher Papers, Countway Library, Harvard University.
82. “A Quality Audience,” Parents (New York: Meredith Corporation, 2008); http://www.meredith.com/mediakit/parents/print/audience
.html.
83. CSL, “Your Dad’s a Great Guy!” August 1951, Box 2, CSL Papers.
84. Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel, “Before (and After) Roe v. Wade,” Yale Law Journal 120 (June 2011): 2047, 2049, 2043.
85. Kevin P. Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1969). Memorandum from Patrick J. Buchanan to the President, March 24, 1971, in Hearings Before the S. Select Comm. on Presidential Campaign Activities, 93d Cong. 4146, 4146–53 (1973); Memorandum from “Research” to Attorney General H. R. Haldeman, October 5, 1971, in Hearings Before the S. Select Comm. on Presidential Campaign Activities, 93d Cong. 4197, 4201 (1973); and Jack Rosenthal, “Survey Finds Majority, in Shift, Now Favors Liberalized Laws,” New York Times, August 25, 1972, are quoted and discussed in Greenhouse and Siegel, “Before (and After) Roe v. Wade,” 2053, 2056, 2031.
86. Alan F. Guttmacher, “Why I Favor Liberalized Abortion,” Reader’s Digest, November 1973, 143–47.
87. James W. Reed, interviews with Loraine Lesson Campbell, December 1973–March 1974, Schlesinger-Rockefeller Oral History Project, Reel A-1, 90.
&n
bsp; 88. Greenhouse and Siegel, “Before (and After) Roe v. Wade,” 2061, 2066–67. Robert Post and Reva Siegel, “Roe Rage: Democratic Constitutionalism and Backlash,” Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Law Review 42 (2007): 420–21.
89. Greg D. Adams, “Abortion: Evidence of an Issue Evolution,” American Journal of Political Science 41 (1997): 718, 723. Gordon, Moral Property, 309.
90. Goldscheider et al., “A Century (Plus) of Parenthood.”
91. Joyce A. Martin et al., “Births: Final Data for 2002,” National Vital Statistics Reports, vol. 52, no. 10, December 17, 2003; http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_10.pdf. For data on the start of this phenomenon earlier in the century, see Jane Riblett Wilkie, “The Trend Toward Delayed Parenthood,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 43 (1981): 583–91, especially table 2. Wilkie posits the rise of “couples with an idea of adulthood that does not include parenting.”
92. Guttmacher Institute, “Facts on Contraceptive Use in the United States,” June 2010; http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contr_use.html.
93. Jill Lepore, “Birthright,” New Yorker, November 14, 2011.
94. E.g., Cecile Richards, “We’re Not Going Anywhere,” Huffington Post, April 8, 2011. And see Americans United for Life, “The Case for Investigating Planned Parenthood,” July 7, 2011.