Perfect Motherhood: Science and Childrearing in America

Perfect Motherhood, Rima Apple argues, meant twentieth-century women would quickly abandon essentialist understandings of mothering and tradition and come to rely on scientific authority that filtered not only through the advice of medical practitioners but also their publications. Child-rearing books, medical pamphlets, advertisements as well as word of mouth praised the wonders of modern medicine. Based on a rich array of sources that nevertheless tend to privilege the voices of literate women, Perfect Motherhood traces this growing partnership between science and childrearing that gave birth to what Apple defines as “scientific motherhood.” Whether it was feeding and bathing rituals or the proper amounts of love and affection, the modern mother sought some kind of medical expertise. Apple begins her study, however, in the late nineteenth century, where she finds women turned to their neighbors' and grandmothers' advice, but also reached out to nurses and physicians. No single authority seemed elevated above another until the early twentieth century when the professionalization of motherhood meant complete deference to the latest scientific discovery or developmental theory. The doctor, who represented the epitome of medical authority, now it seemed had the final word. Letters and diaries reveal mothers' growing dependence on physicians as they distanced themselves from childrearing practices that seem increasingly archaic or undisciplined. Contributing to this turn-of-the-century transformation, Apple argues, was a decline in family size that not only made childhood seem more precious, but coupled with decreasing mortality and morbidity rates, lent credence to medical research. The early discovery of germs and vaccines, the dramatic rise in the number of hospital births in the 1950s, and the most recent emphasis on prenatal care suggests the degree to which a mother's increasing reliance on medical discourse and its practitioners appeared almost inevitable.