The Burden of Building a Better Race

“Given birth control, the unfit will voluntarily eliminate their kind.”

- Margaret Sanger in "A Better Race Through Birth Control"

​

Many white feminists embraced eugenic ideologies and distanced themselves from women who were seen as "unfit" due to their race, class, or ability. They advocated for women's rights by prioritizing the needs and desires of white, upper-class women at the expense of Black women, immigrant women, disabled women, and poor women. 

 

In “Motherhood, Morality, and the Moron,” the first chapter of her 2001 book, Building a Better Race, historian Wendy Kline examines the burdens placed on women to assume traditional gender roles and advance white racial progress. She juxtaposes two models of womanhood—“the mother of tomorrow” and the woman adrift (Kline 16). The “mother of tomorrow,” a symbol of positive eugenics, was a statue displayed at the San Francisco Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915. The statue represented the role of womanhood, fertility, and child-rearing in race betterment. The “mother of tomorrow” understood her privilege and social responsibility to raise moral children of good stock. Her counterpart, the woman adrift, represented independent middle-class white women who defied traditional gender stereotypes, ignored sexual behavior norms, and neglected their domestic duties. White middle-class men blamed the "women adrift"—the women who chose to go to college, get jobs, postpone marriage, and give birth to fewer children—for the deterioration of the white race (Kline). Former President Teddy Roosevelt claimed that white women of "good stock" who ignored traditional domestic responsibilities were "race criminals" (qtd. in Kline 11), while a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley went so far as to claim that "women were 'destroying civilization' by turning away 'from their natural modes of expression in the home and family'" (qtd. in Kline 12). 

 

Feminists reinforced the gender norms associated with motherhood by placing the eugenic burden of “producing superior offspring” (Lamp & Cleigh 177) on women. Feminists Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Margaret Sanger claimed that when women voluntarily chose motherhood, they would become eugenic enforcers with the ability to solve social problems like poverty, crime, and overpopulation. Namely, eugenically "fit" women would recognize their responsibility as the "mothers of tomorrow" to raise moral children of "good stock", while eugenically "unfit" women would understand their duty not to burden society with "defective children." As explained by historians Sharon Lamp and Carol Cleigh, "Gilman and Sanger saw women’s liberation from involuntary domestic and maternal roles as key to equality and progress” (Lamp & Cleigh 177). Women must choose to assume social roles as superior mothers. Consequently, feminists used eugenics as a platform to argue for birth control. 

 

Feminists like Margaret Sanger argued that birth control could limit the birth of "defectives" by serving as a form of negative eugenics. Women could control their bodies in support of bettering the human race. Sanger—a leader of the American birth control movement and the founder of Planned Parenthood—claimed that "'the most urgent problem of [her time was] how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective'" (qtd. in Lamp & Cleigh 178), where "mentally and physically defective" meant anyone who was non-white, poor, or disabled. She described birth control as "the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit or preventing the birth of defective or those who become defective" (qtd. in Lamp & Cleigh 178). This description likens birth control to forced sterilization, and, in many instances, birth control was used for the same oppressive effect as sterilization. As an example, birth control and intrauterine devices were distributed to Black women more than white women at Planned Parenthood clinics in poor, urban areas in the 1960s to reduce their fertility (Washington, 198). 

 

Problematically, Gilman and Sanger justified their support of eugenics for population control despite their personal experiences with disability by distancing themselves from "true defectives." Sanger justified her eugenic fitness—despite her heart condition, tuberculosis, and depression—with her wealth and productivity (Lamp & Cleigh). Sanger asserted that “I am rich, I have brains, I shall do as I please” (qtd. in Lamp & Cleigh 185). In comparison, Gilman separated herself from her mental health challenges by blaming her disability on the oppressive conditions of being a woman without equal rights. Gilman and Sanger's justifications highlight the privilege of these two prominent feminist figures to pass as non-disabled. Both women could have been grouped with the people they thought should be eliminated from society, but their wealth, status, and whiteness allowed them to escape additional discrimination and oppress others. 

​

Questions to Consider

1. Do you think it was effective for white feminists to incorporate eugenics into their arguments for birth control? Why?

2. Can you think of a present-day example of how women are blamed for how their children behave or if their children have a disability? 

​

References

Kline, Wendy. Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom. University of California Press, 2001, pp. 7-31. 

​

Lamp, Sharon, and W. Carol Cleigh. “A Heritage of Ableist Rhetoric in American Feminism From the Eugenics Period.” Feminist Disability Studies, edited by Kim Q. Hall, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2011, pp. 175–189. 

​

Washington, Harriet A. “The Black Stork: The Eugenic Control of African American Reproduction.” Medical Apartheid the Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, Anchor Books, 2007, pp. 189–215.