Julia Lathrop by Miriam Cohen

Author:Miriam Cohen [Cohen, Miriam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9780429979101
Google: UUhaDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-05-04T05:06:05+00:00

6

Saving Children, Helping Mothers

“A Federal Bureau for Children, its chief a woman, one of your own; what new and mannish venture does she embark on?? She rouses the nation—or tries to rouse it—to the neglect of the baby. She takes the baby out of the obscure, so often neglected and hidden crib into the full light of publicity. ‘Suffer not this little one to be lost sight of. It is a child of the nation!’”

—Lillian Wald1

When Lillian Wald made those comments about Lathrop and the Children’s Bureau at Vassar’s fiftieth anniversary, she was reacting to widespread criticism of the female reformers; they were not behaving as proper women and were threatening the larger social order built around traditional families. In a strategic move Wald emphasized that activist, educated women were not breaking away from their traditional essence but rather fulfilling it. Beyond strategy, Wald’s words highlighted Lathrop’s own sense of her most important job as chief of the Children’s Bureau—to rouse the nation about the health and welfare of babies and their mothers and to do something about it.

For Lathrop the bureau’s infant mortality studies highlighted the critical need to improve standards of care for pregnant women and their young children. Lathrop’s work over nine years would lead to passage of the Sheppard-Towner Maternal and Infancy Act, America’s widest reaching federal social welfare program to date. Women all over the country wrote to the chief seeking advice about pregnancy and childbirth and telling her of various financial challenges they faced in their efforts to be good mothers. Lathrop’s correspondence strengthened her conviction that all mothers and children, regardless of class, ethnicity, or race, deserved access to adequate health care.

As early as 1913 the Children’s Bureau launched its programs of health education with the publication of its pamphlet, Pre-natal Care, followed one year later by Infant Care. To write the pamphlets Lathrop hired Mary Mills West, a widow with five children who turned to writing in order to support her family. In giving West the job, Lathrop rejected advice from some who argued that male doctors should write the bulletins. As she said, “There is a real strategic advantage in having them come from a woman who has herself had the experience of bringing up a family.”2 Lath- rop turned out to be right. The pamphlets contained the latest science on pregnancy and baby care written in a style that was accessible to literate, middle-class mothers. They became instant best sellers, topping all other government publications. The agency distributed thirty thousand copies of Pre-natal Care within the first six months of publication. Lewis Meriam and Fanny Fiske both reported to Lathrop while she was convalescing in Rockford that the bureau could barely keep up with demand.

The pamphlets represented both the strengths and limitations of the progressive approach to child welfare. Pre-natal Care covered many important topics in thirty-eight pages, including the best diets for pregnant mothers, how to arrange for the best medical care, what mothers could expect during childbirth, how to prevent infections that could harm mother or baby, and how to nurse the newborn.

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