The Birth Control Movement and American Society: From Private Vice to Public Virtue, With a New Preface on the Relationship between Historical Scholarship and Feminist Issues

483 Pages·1984·8.897 MB·English

by  James Reed

The Birth Control Movement
and American Society

The Birth Control Movement
and American Society
From Private Vice
to Public Virtue
With a New Preface on
the Relationship between Historical
Scholarship and Feminist Issues
J A M E S H E E D
Princeton University Press / Princeton, N.J.
Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
Guildford, Surrey
Copyright © 1978 by James W. Reed
Preface to the Princeton Edition,
Copyright © 1983 by James W. Reed
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
First Basic Books edition, 1978
First Princeton Paperback printing, 1984
LCC 83-60459
ISBN 0-691-09404-7 / ISBN 0-691-02830-3 (pbk.)
The author wishes to thank the following for permission to quote from the sources
listed: Houghton Library, American Birth Control League Papers; Richard Gamble
and Countway Library, Clarence J. Gamble Papers; Dorothy Dickinson Barbour and
Countway Library, Robert L. Dickinson Papers; Sophia Smith Collection, Margaret
Sanger Papers and Dorothy Brush Papers; Countway Library, Norman Himes
Papers; the Schlesinger Library, Transcript of Interviews with Emily H. Mudd;
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., Emma Goldman, Living My Life © 1934; Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, Inc., Mary McCarthy, The Group © 1954; T. S. Eliot, "Difficulties of a
Statesman" in Collected Poems, 1909-1962, © 1936 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.;
© 1963, 1964 by T. S. Eliot. Reprinted with permission of the publishers.
Qothbound editions of Princeton University Press books
are printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials
are chosen for strength and durability.
Paperbacks, while satisfactory for personal collections,
are not usually suitable for library rebinding.
Printed in the United States of America by
Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
TEXT DESIGNED BY VINCENT TORRE
Original title: From Private Vice to Public Virtue:
The Birth Control Movement and American Society Since 1830
Contents
Preface ix
Preface to the Princeton Edition xv
Acknowledgments xxiv
PART I
BIRTH CONTROL BEFORE MARGARET SANGER
ι Contraceptive Technology in the Nineteenth Century 3
2 The Rise of the Companionate Family 19
3 The Suppression of Contraceptive Information 34
4 The Anarchists 46
5 Permissiveness with Affection: A Sexual Standard for
an Affluent Society 54
PART II
THE WOMAN REBEL: MARGARET SANGER AND THE
STRUGGLE FOR CLINICS
6 The Burden of Domesticity 67
7 European Models 89
8 Competition for Leadership 97
9 Providing Clinics 106
10 Woman and the New Race 129
PART III
ROBERT L. DICKINSON AND THE COMMITTEE ON
MATERNAL HEALTH
11 The Medical Man as Sex Researcher 143
12 Clinical Studies 167
13 Publisher and Clearing House 181
ν
PART IV
THE PROSPECT OF DEPOPULATION
14 Birth Control in American Social Science: 1870-1940 197
15 Birth Control Stalled 211
16 The Parents' Information Bureau 218
PART V
BIRTH CONTROL ENTREPRENEUR: THE
PHILANTHROPIC PATHFINDING OF
CLARENCE J. GAMBLE
17 A Recruit for Birth Control 225
18 Policing the Marketplace 239
19 Experiments in Population Control: Logan County,
West Virginia, and the North Carolina Public Health
Department 247
20 Conflict and Isolation 257
PART VI
PROPAGANDISTS TURNED TO PROPHETS: BIRTH
CONTROL IN A CROWDED WORLD
21 The Population Explosion 281
22 Margaret Sanger from Exile: The Founding of the
International Planned Parenthood Federation 289
23 The Failure of Simple Methods: The IUD Justified 294
PART VII
THE PILL
24 The Prospects for Hormonal Sterilization 311
25 A Life in Experimental Biology 317
26 The Lady Bountiful 334
27 The Product Champion 346
PART VIII
THE TROUBLE WITH FAMILY PLANNING
Abbreviations Used in the Notes 3^3
Notes 385
Bibliographical Essay 439
Index 448

Preface
I set out to write a history of the birth control movement in the
United States but had to make hard choices about what should
be included. From Private Vice to Public Virtue describes the ef­
forts of a small group of Americans to spread the practice of
contraception, first in the United States, then in the rest of the
world. Given the complexity of the problem of changing
human reproductive behavior, birth controllers inevitably dis­
agreed over strategy. This study focuses on those individuals
who at any given time represented innovation or change in the
birth control movement. I have neglected the internal history
of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and of state
and local birth control leagues in order to concentrate on the
role of key individuals and their relationship to American soci­
ety. They worked through a variety of institutions, ranging
from the anarchist journal Mother Earth to the relatively con­
servative Population Council. They ranged in political values
from socialists to capitalists, but for all of them the separation
of sex from procreation had revolutionary implications. Birth
control was a metaphor for individual responsibility, an essen­
tial first step in the effort to achieve self-direction.
The desire to control fertility, as old as human society, has
found expression in a startling variety of means. The Egyptian
recipe for a contraceptive suppository of crocodile dung (1850
B.C.), described by Norman Himes in Medical History of Con­
traception (1936), was but one of many such devices which
could be culled from the literature of ancient cultures. Anthro­
pologists studying human reproduction in premodern cultures
have found that the desire for children is not an innate human
drive but an acquired motive which must be reinforced by
social rewards and punishments sufficient to overcome the
wish to avoid the pain of childbirth and the burdens of parent­
hood. There have never been any happy savages reproducing
with ease. Rather, conflict between the social need to preserve