Kate Clifford Larson > Quotes

“(Frances Ellen Watkins Harper) "In closing, Harper challenged the white women in the audience to stand by their black sisters, to look beyond their own white privilege. “You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs,” she reminded them. “Talk of giving women the ballot-box? … While there exists this brutal element in society which tramples upon the feeble and treads down the weak, I tell you that if there is any class of people who need to be lifted out of their airy nothings and selfishness, it is the white women of America.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero

“It’s really that simple: love gave me confidence and adversity gave me purpose.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“Treatment for people with disabilities and mental illness in prewar America reveals a profoundly ignorant medical establishment and educational community.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“disorder, chronic pain, and bipolar and other mood disorders. The procedure was also used to treat perceived defective personality traits that included homosexuality, nymphomania, criminal behavior, and marijuana and drug addiction. Freeman would later describe potential patients as society’s “misfits.” Women, in particular, made up the largest group of lobotomy patients. Women who were depressed, had bipolar illness, or were sexually active outside the range of socially and culturally acceptable limits of the day—including single women exhibiting typical sexual desire—were considered candidates.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“Women were most frequently institutionalized by the order of husbands and fathers, whose will and opinion superseded the women’s.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“ROSEMARY AND EUNICE’S brother Ted, a senator from Massachusetts for more than forty-seven years, would take over as legislative champion for the cause of the disabled by initiating, sponsoring, and supporting hundreds of pieces of legislation. He believed that Rosemary “taught us the worth of every human being.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“The stigma of mental illness is still alive and well.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“When holding Rose’s legs together failed to keep the baby from coming, the nurse resorted to another, more dangerous practice: holding the baby’s head and forcing it back into the birth canal for two excruciating hours. The”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“Tens of thousands of patients would be forced to undergo lobotomies in the United States over the next two decades, and not until antipsychotic and antidepressant medications appeared in the 1950s was the surgery slowly replaced.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“If Dr. Good missed the birth of the baby, he could not charge his extremely high fee of $125 for prenatal care and delivery. When holding Rose’s legs together failed to keep the baby from coming, the nurse resorted to another, more dangerous practice: holding the baby’s head and forcing it back into the birth canal for two excruciating hours.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“At McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, one of the premier psychiatric hospitals in the nation, women represented eighty-two percent of the total number of lobotomy patients from 1938 to 1954. In hospitals across the country, women constituted between sixty and eighty percent of all lobotomy recipients, in spite of the fact that men comprised the majority of institutionalized patients.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“It has been suggested that Joe Sr. spoke with doctors about a very experimental brain operation for the treatment of serious mental-health conditions, leucotomy—popularly known as prefrontal lobotomy—while he was still in England.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“The surgery involved cutting the white fibrous connective tissue linking the frontal lobes to the rest of the brain, relieving the violent rages and psychological and physical pain some severely mentally ill patients suffered. White told Kick that the results were “just not good”; he had seen for himself that after the surgery patients “don’t worry so much, but they’re gone as a person, just gone.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“During Rosemary’s childhood, the distinction between the intellectually disabled and the mentally ill was rarely made. Instead, according to psychological definitions of the day, “idiots” were the most severely disabled, classified as those with the intellectual capacity of a two-year-old or younger; “imbeciles” as those with a three- to eight-year-old mental capacity; and “morons” as those with an eight- to twelve-year-old capacity. These labels limited society’s understanding of people with intellectual and physical disabilities, and lacked nuanced interpretation of the causes and conditions of various disabilities, including the many types of simple and complex learning disorders.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“Montessori believed that if children were exposed to a safe, experiential learning environment (as opposed to a structured classroom), with access to specific learning materials and supplies, and if they were supervised by a gentle and attentive teacher, they would become self-motivated to learn. She discovered that, in this environment, older children readily worked with younger children, helping them to learn from, and cooperate with, each other. Montessori advocated teaching practical skills, like cooking, carpentry, and domestic arts, as an integrated part of a classical education in literature, science, and math. To her surprise, teenagers seemed to benefit from this approach the most; it built confidence, and the students became less resistant to traditional educational goals. Through this method, each child could reach his or her potential, regardless of age and intellectual ability.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“In subject files labeled as correspondence related to Rosemary Kennedy, withdrawal sheets indicate the removal of hundreds of documents dating between 1923 and the 1970s. This leaves significant gaps in the historical record. A large amount of the withdrawn material is associated with Rosemary’s treatment and care after her lobotomy.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“Women were most frequently institutionalized by the order of husbands and fathers, whose will and opinion superseded the women’s. A doctor’s legal and medical responsibility to fully inform a patient of the potential risks of treatment did not become a requirement until the 1960s and was still contested ground well into the 1970s and 1980s.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“Instead, according to psychological definitions of the day, “idiots” were the most severely disabled, classified as those with the intellectual capacity of a two-year-old or younger; “imbeciles” as those with a three- to eight-year-old mental capacity; and “morons” as those with an eight- to twelve-year-old capacity.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“At that time the Roman Catholic Church routinely refused the sacraments of Holy Communion and Confirmation to intellectually disabled children, especially those with Down syndrome. Even today some local churches still refuse the sacrament to those with intellectual impairments, in spite of a directive from the church during the latter part of the twentieth century that clergy should offer the sacraments to them.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“idiots' were the most severely disabled, classified as those with the intellectual capacity of a two-year-old or younger; 'imbeciles' as those with a three- to eight-year-old mental capacity; and 'morons' as those with and eight- to twelve-year-old capacity. These labels limited society’s understanding of people with intellectual and physical disabilities.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“At that time the Roman Catholic Church routinely refused the sacraments of Holy Communion and Confirmation to intellectually disabled children, especially those with Down syndrome.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“it was with a great deal of help and supervision that Rosemary was able to perform. Newton observed that Rosemary could not concentrate on her studies for more than two and a half hours. Her limited attention span thwarted attempts to educate her,”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“Newton found that breaking up Rosemary’s day between academic lessons and craft activities helped with her concentration and gave Rosemary opportunities to talk about her academic work with Adeline: “I received this idea from visiting several schools for retarded children when they found this plan of procedure gives the best results, as 9–11:30 or longer is too long for her to concentrate on school subjects.” Helen spent lunchtime showing Rosemary how to use her lessons as launching points for polite conversation. Adeline monitored Rosemary when she did her homework, and Helen noted, “She gets a great deal from my mother’s personality.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“Ted helped pass major social and civil rights legislation. His efforts include the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Child Care Act (both passed in 1990), and the Ryan White AIDS Care Act of 1990; he increased funding for the National Institutes of Health and many more educational, housing, medical, and support-services programs. The ADA specifically prohibited discrimination on the basis of disability, forcing the inclusion of millions of people with disabilities in education, housing, employment, sports, and more. Hatch said that even though he and Kennedy differed much on policy and philosophy, he “never doubted for a minute [Ted’s] commitment to help the elderly, the ill, and those Americans who have been on the outside looking in for far too long.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“Freeman and a handful of colleagues around the world were convinced that lobotomies were the much-longed-for cure for deep depression, mental illness, and violent, erratic, and hyperactive behavior. But the procedure was never meant to be used on intellectually disabled individuals.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“There is no record of Rose visiting her eldest daughter for more than twenty years. Certainly, there is no record of visits in the early postsurgery years.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“ADA, he said, “Many of us have been touched by others with disabilities. My sister Rosemary is retarded; my son lost his leg to cancer. And others who support the legislation believe in it for similar special reasons. I cannot be unmindful of the extraordinary contributions of those who have been lucky enough to have members of their families or children who are facing the same challenges and know what this legislation means.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“sentence.” More changes”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“She had a tendency to write from right to left, rather than left to right—often called mirror writing—a clear indicator of developmental disorders.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

“Twenty years after women had finally gained the right to vote, society’s lingering nineteenth-century ideas played heavily on social, religious, and scientific attempts to control women’s more public and expressive sexuality.”
― Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter