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Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America
First edition, Winner of the Arthur J. Viseltear Prize, American Public Health Association With an emphasis on the American West, Eugenic Nation explores the long and unsettled history of eugenics in the United States. This expanded second edition includes shocking details demonstrating that eugenics continues to inform institutional and reproductive injustice. Alexandra Minna Stern draws on recently uncovered historical records to reveal patterns of racial bias in California’s sterilization program and documents compelling individual experiences. With the addition of radically new and relevant research, this edition connects the eugenic past to the genomic present with attention to the ethical and social implications of emerging genetic technologies.
423 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2005
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April 17, 2021
In the 1920s eugenicist Paul Popenoe brought marriage counseling to the US. Despite having no formal psychological training, he called himself Dr. Popenoe. In his previous work Applied Eugenics (1918) Popenoe argued that Black people were “eugenically inferior” and that interracial intimacy was “biologically wrong.” Concerned with declining white birth rates, in 1930 he set up a counseling center known as the American Institute of Family Relations (AIFR). Racial eugenics became widely condemned after the atrocities against Jewish and Roma people during the Holocaust. Popenoe rebranded as a “marriage counselor,” protecting “family values” (seeking to ensure that the “right” couples reproduced). AIFR popularized pseudoscientific “biological” understandings of human sexual difference to the masses. By the 1960s, AIFR gave thousands of consultations a year and Popenoe wrote one of the most read columns in Ladies Home Journal (only addressing marital issues faced by white Christian women).
Popenoe’s story is the story of post-war “reform” eugenics in the US. In the early 20th century eugenicists focused on sterilizing “feeble-minded” people. While these practices continued discretely after the war, more attention was allocated to married white heterosexual couples to maximize procreation. Eugenicist Samuel Holmes advocated for monetary incentives for white female students to produce more children, as a way to stave off the “perils of Mexican invasion” (90). As race became increasingly understood as social phenomenon, sex and gender became more “tightly wedded to biology” in response (154).
Popenoe argued that the male-female difference transcended all other human differences and was the “greatest than can exist between two normal human beings.” He felt that this sex binary was essential to the survival of family, nation, and western civilization – and therefore must be protected from the decadence of modern society. Postwar eugenicists were threatened by the higher education of women which they felt “decreased birthrates of the fit” (167). They called for a return to traditional marriage with defined sex-gender roles, arguing that “men and women were made for marriage, biologically and psychologically” (167).
AIFR argued that it was women’s responsibility to make marriages work. Women who refused to accept their “biological destiny” as housewives were “deluded into thinking they were on par with men” (168). AIFR diagnosed women’s disenchantment with marriage as “masculine protest,” accusing educated white women of being “ashamed of her sex” (168). Feminists were seen as women who were ashamed of their “biological role” as caretakers. Women and men who strayed away from their reproductive roles were seen as needing to be re-conditioned. Women were advised to embark on a self-transformation course and/or feign enjoyment of sex for the purpose of marriage. In 1954 Dr. Arnold Kegel joined the AIFR as a consultant and developed Kegel vaginal exercises for wives experiencing “frigidity” to undergo “even while engaged in some of her housework.”
Prominent eugenicist Lewis Terman also collaborated with AIFR. Now that the racial assumptions of previous IQ tests had been debunked, Terman turned to sex and gender, designing a Male-Female test to pinpoint fundamental determinants of personality. Working with AIFR on Marital Happiness Survey, Terman concluded that successful marriages required well-defined gender norms. Using this “data,” AIFR counselors argued that the reason marriages weren’t working out was because people weren’t subscribing to traditional gender roles.
Eugenics help us understand how race, gender, ability, and sex are interconnected. In response to explicit biological racism being shunned after WWII, the idea that “sex” was the real biological truth to rank humans became increasingly popularized. Rather than focusing exclusively on restricting the reproduction of “undesirable” groups (Black people, Indigenous people, people with disabilities, and more), postwar eugenicists devised “family values” specifically to promote the reproduction of white Christians in the face of increasing racial justice and feminist empowerment. In this way, to a great extent the racism of the 1920s became reinforced through the sexism of the 1950s.
Popenoe’s story is the story of post-war “reform” eugenics in the US. In the early 20th century eugenicists focused on sterilizing “feeble-minded” people. While these practices continued discretely after the war, more attention was allocated to married white heterosexual couples to maximize procreation. Eugenicist Samuel Holmes advocated for monetary incentives for white female students to produce more children, as a way to stave off the “perils of Mexican invasion” (90). As race became increasingly understood as social phenomenon, sex and gender became more “tightly wedded to biology” in response (154).
Popenoe argued that the male-female difference transcended all other human differences and was the “greatest than can exist between two normal human beings.” He felt that this sex binary was essential to the survival of family, nation, and western civilization – and therefore must be protected from the decadence of modern society. Postwar eugenicists were threatened by the higher education of women which they felt “decreased birthrates of the fit” (167). They called for a return to traditional marriage with defined sex-gender roles, arguing that “men and women were made for marriage, biologically and psychologically” (167).
AIFR argued that it was women’s responsibility to make marriages work. Women who refused to accept their “biological destiny” as housewives were “deluded into thinking they were on par with men” (168). AIFR diagnosed women’s disenchantment with marriage as “masculine protest,” accusing educated white women of being “ashamed of her sex” (168). Feminists were seen as women who were ashamed of their “biological role” as caretakers. Women and men who strayed away from their reproductive roles were seen as needing to be re-conditioned. Women were advised to embark on a self-transformation course and/or feign enjoyment of sex for the purpose of marriage. In 1954 Dr. Arnold Kegel joined the AIFR as a consultant and developed Kegel vaginal exercises for wives experiencing “frigidity” to undergo “even while engaged in some of her housework.”
Prominent eugenicist Lewis Terman also collaborated with AIFR. Now that the racial assumptions of previous IQ tests had been debunked, Terman turned to sex and gender, designing a Male-Female test to pinpoint fundamental determinants of personality. Working with AIFR on Marital Happiness Survey, Terman concluded that successful marriages required well-defined gender norms. Using this “data,” AIFR counselors argued that the reason marriages weren’t working out was because people weren’t subscribing to traditional gender roles.
Eugenics help us understand how race, gender, ability, and sex are interconnected. In response to explicit biological racism being shunned after WWII, the idea that “sex” was the real biological truth to rank humans became increasingly popularized. Rather than focusing exclusively on restricting the reproduction of “undesirable” groups (Black people, Indigenous people, people with disabilities, and more), postwar eugenicists devised “family values” specifically to promote the reproduction of white Christians in the face of increasing racial justice and feminist empowerment. In this way, to a great extent the racism of the 1920s became reinforced through the sexism of the 1950s.
September 25, 2014
This book is highly significant in shaping and reshaping our understanding of eugenic not only simply as a Nazi phenomenon but also as an elongated trajectory of post-war American, baby-boomer era. It shakes the foundation of eugenic, narrowly conceived as the betterment of race through "better" breeding", to tease out this institutionalized feature of superior racial ideology manifested in a plethora of forms, from colonial medicine in the event of the Panama Canal opening to the establishment of a Californian eugenic landscape, to the rise of marital counseling and the shift to a sex-gender system in the 1960s. Above all, this book is about the body-the social body, imagined body, gendered body, racial body- and how superstructural system attempted to police, manipulate, violate, and inscribe power on it. This Foucauldian "political technology of the body" was elegantly articulated in a captivating phraseology accompanied by a rich amount of primary sources. Highly recommend the chapter on policing the borderland and how ideas of racial cleanliness had been employed to discriminate and embody American exceptionalism through the professionalization of patrolmen and custom-hygiene specialists, as well as the chapter on the disciplining of women's body with regard to the recurring theme of biological determinism and better reproductive capacity.
March 10, 2022
This book mainly speaks about eugenics within the United States, with an emphasis on the West. To learn that up until a few decades ago places such as California had a booming eugenics practice is infuriating. Doctors, politicians, police, schools, and administrators continued to practice this horrible, racist "science" on varying types of people they deemed "unfit" for society.
From individuals with mental or physical disabilities, immigrants, black and brown citizens, the LGBTQAI+ community, and criminals all being forced into unnecessary and permanent experiments, this book will leave you bewildered that such things happened not that long ago and in a place where freedom is supposedly sacracent.
From individuals with mental or physical disabilities, immigrants, black and brown citizens, the LGBTQAI+ community, and criminals all being forced into unnecessary and permanent experiments, this book will leave you bewildered that such things happened not that long ago and in a place where freedom is supposedly sacracent.
August 2, 2013
I finished this book feeling awfully ambivalent about it. On one hand, Stern presents a nuanced, thoughtful, and complicated history of eugenics in CA. She rightly points out the limitations in histories of eugenics that focus only on the east coast, the 1920-30s, and outright coercion. Instead, Stern opts for an approach that emphasizes how eugenic ideas informed everything from conservation to immigration policy. On the other hand, the book felt a little too disjointed. the sprawling g history Stern presents covers a vast array of topics quickly. I was left wanting a little more information about how the pieces for together.
April 6, 2021
A very well researched book that traces the roots, development, and consequences of eugenics in America. It is heavily focused on California and the western half of the United States, which is a bit of a drawback if you’re looking for a more national history of eugenics. Still, very much worth a read and provides plenty of food for thought.
February 12, 2025
Definitely an important book, although I feel like the argument is inconsistently convincing because of passages that read like her getting sidetracked. But what I found most fascinating was the crazy-racist treatment of Mexican Americans in Cali and on the border... and the linkage between eugenics and marriage counseling. Because eugenicists definitely got scared that white middle-class women wouldn't have their perfect children if they divorced their dickhead (and often abusive) husbands
(Gutted for class)
(Gutted for class)
February 27, 2008
This book is very intersting. It goes into the eugenics movement of the early 20th Century. Things like I.Q. Tests and why they were first created. Most people don't understand that they were developed to determin good candidates for sterilization! Provides an interesting look into the science of human genetics.
October 19, 2015
The title seems a bit of a misnomer, it has a very loose conception of eugenics and a specific focus on California. It was an interesting read, but not necessarily what I think of when I think of eugenics.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews