Eugenic Nation

by Stern, Alexandra Minna

  203. Interview of Bryant and Drury, p. 8 (transcription).

  204. Goethe, Seeking to Serve, 163.

  CHAPTER 5. CENTERING EUGENICS ON THE FAMILY

  1. Autobiographical Statement by Mrs. C, Box 148, Papers of Paul Bowman Popenoe (PBP), Accession no. 4681, American Heritage Center (AHC), University of Wyoming (UW). I have withheld names for reasons of confidentiality. Since I conducted my research at the American Heritage Center, the Popenoe papers have been recatalogued. Working with the new finding aid, I have been able to deduce the location of some of my sources; when that was not possible with accuracy, I have omitted unverifiable information, such as the box or folder title or number. Between my reconstructed citations and the new finding aid, which is organized chronologically and thematically, researchers should be able to locate all of my references. For example, this case history is now most likely in Box 148 of Series V (AIFR Case Histories).

  2. Ibid.

  3. The initial Johnson Temperament Analysis (JTA) had 182 questions; the Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis Test (T-JTA) has 180. These categories are from first version of the test; they have changed in subtle but important ways since 1941.

  4. Intake Form on Mr. and Mrs. C, Apr. 18, 1945, Box 148, PBP, AHC, UW.

  5. Ibid.

  6. On psychology in the Cold War era and the cult of expertise, see Ellen Herman, The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995).

  7. Frederick Osborn, “Eugenics and Modern Life: Retrospect and Prospect,” Eugenical News 31, no. 3 (1946): 33.

  8. See Elof Axel Carlson, The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2001); and Diane B. Paul, Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1995).

  9. For an excellent analysis of population control as the antidote to under-development, see Laura Briggs, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), chap. 4.

  10. Guy Irving Burch and Elmer Pendell, Human Breeding and Survival: Population Roads to Peace or War (New York: Penguin, 1945).

  11. See Briggs, Reproducing Empire; and Johanna Schoen, Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), chap. 4.

  12. See William B. Provine, “Geneticists and Race,” American Zoologist 26 (1986): 857–87; and L. C. Dunn and Th. Dobzhansky, Heredity, Race, and Society (New York: Mentor Books, 1946). On the transition from race to population, see Donna Haraway, Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan@_Meets_OncoMouse™: Feminism and Technoscience (New York: Routledge, 1997).

  13. See Linda Gordon, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: Birth Control in America, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), chap. 13; and Thomas M. Shapiro, Population Control Politics: Women, Sterilization, and Reproductive Choice (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985).

  14. On the shift from pyramid to continuum, see Hamilton Cravens, The Triumph of Evolution: The Heredity-Environment Controversy, 1900–1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). On biotypology and constitutional medicine, see Sarah W. Tracy, “An Evolving Science of Man: The Transformation and Demise of American Constitutional Medicine, 1920–1950,” in Greater than the Parts: Holism in Biomedicine, 1920–1950, ed. Christopher Lawrence and George Weisz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 161–88; Sarah W. Tracy, “George Draper and American Constitutional Medicine, 1916–1946: Reinventing the Sick Man,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 66, no. 1 (1992): 53–89; and Heather Munro Prescott, “I Was a Teenage Dwarf: The Social Construction of ‘Normal’ Adolescent Growth and Development in the United States,” in Formative Years: Children’s Health in the United States, 1880–2000, ed. Alexandra Minna Stern, and Howard Markel (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 153–82. On biotypology in Germany, see Michael Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History, 1890–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). On biotypology in Latin America, see Nancy Leys Stepan, “The Hour of Eugenics”: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991); and Alexandra Minna Stern, “From Mestizophilia to Biotypology: Racialization and Science in Mexico, 1920–1960,” in Race and Nation in Modern Latin America, ed. Nancy Applebaum, Anne S. MacPherson, and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 187–210.

  15. See David Theo Goldberg, Racial Subjects: Writing on Race in America (New York: Routledge, 1997); Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994); and Briggs, Reproducing Empire.

  16. See Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995); and Wendy Kline, Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001).

  17. See Schoen, Choice and Coercion.

  18. Molly Ladd-Taylor has persuasively challenged the usefulness of the “reform” descriptor and perceptively analyzed Popenoe and the AIFR in this regard; see Ladd-Taylor, “Eugenics, Sterilisation and Modern Marriage in the USA: The Strange Career of Paul Popenoe,” Gender and History 13, no. 2 (2001): 298–327.

  19. Paul Popenoe, “Heredity and Education,” Oct. 29, 1948, PBP, AHC, UW.

  20. On “sexual liberalism” and its contradictions, see John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); on homosexuality, see Jennifer Terry, An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

  21. See Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988); Jane Gerhard, Desiring Revolution: Second-Wave Feminism and the Rewriting of American Sexual Thought, 1920 to 1982 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); and Wini Breines, Young, White, and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

  22. See Kline, Building a Better Race, for an analysis of eugenic pronatalism and the baby boom.

  23. See Untitled Manuscript (Autobiographical) #1, Box 174, PBP, AHC, UW.

  24. Popenoe, “The Racial Effects of Alcohol,” Bionomics 8, Thesis, May 1, 1908, PBP, AHC, UW.

  25. See Barbara Kimmelman, “The American Breeders’ Association: Genetics and Eugenics in an Agricultural Context, 1903–13,” Social Studies of Science 13 (1983): 163–204.

  26. See Untitled Manuscript (Autobiographical) #2, PBP, AHC, UW.

  27. Paul Popenoe, Date Growing in the Old World and the New (Altadena, Calif.: West India Gardens, 1913); “Date Growing in California and Arizona,” in Date Culture in Southern California, by George Wharton James, Paul Popenoe, and Ralph D. Cornell (Los Angeles: Out West, 1912), 13–33.

  28. Paul Popenoe (PP) to parents, Oct. 9, 1913, Box 2, PBP, AHC, UW.

  29. See PP’s correspondence with his parents for the years 1913–1917, in which he regularly discussed date cultivation, Boxes 2–5, PBP, AHC, UW.

  30. See correspondence between Paul and Wilson during 1914–1917, Boxes 3–5, PBP, AHC, UW.

  31. PP to parents, Apr. 7, 1914, Box 3, PBP, AHC, UW.

  32. PP to parents, Nov. 18, 1914, Box 3, PBP, AHC, UW.

  33. See PP, “Natural Selection in Man,” in Official Proceedings of the Second National Conference on Race Betterment (Battle Creek, Mich.: Race Betterment Foundation, 1915), 60–61; and Kathy J. Cooke, “The Limits of Heredity: Nature and Nurture in American Eugenics before 1915,” Journal of the History of Biology 31, no. 2 (1998): 263–78.

  34. See Paul Popenoe and Roswell H. Johnson, Applied Eugenics (New York: Macmillan, 1918; 2nd ed.
1933).

  35. Herbert also participated in California eugenics, through psychometric work at the California Bureau of Juvenile Research.

  36. On the history of venereal disease control on the border during World War I, see Allan M. Brandt, No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States since 1880 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).

  37. PP to parents, July 31, 1920, Box 8, PBP, AHC, UW.

  38. David Popenoe, “Remembering My Father: An Intellectual Portrait of ‘The Man Who Saved Marriages,’ ” Box 174, PBP, AHC, UW.

  39. PP to Betty Popenoe (BP), July 13, 1920, Box 8, PBP, AHC, UW.

  40. PP to BP, May 3, 1920, Box 7, PBP, AHC, UW.

  41. Untitled Manuscript (Autobiographical) #2, Box 174, PBP, AHC, UW.

  42. Ibid.

  43. David Popenoe, “Remembering My Father.”

  44. See Paul Popenoe, The Conservation of the Family (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1926); Problems of Human Reproduction (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1926); and Modern Marriage: A Handbook for Men (New York: Macmillan, 1925).

  45. PP to parents, Mar. 24, 1924, Box 9, PBP, AHC, UW.

  46. See Ezra S. Gosney and Paul Popenoe, Sterilization for Human Betterment: A Summary of Results of 6,000 Operations in California, 1909–1929 (New York: Macmillan, 1929). See chapter 3 for a discussion of the HBF.

  47. PP to Leon Whitney (LW), Feb. 2, 1929, PP to LW, Feb. 11, 1929; Folders: Southern California Branch (SCB), Papers of the American Eugenics Society (AES), 575.06 Am3, American Philosophical Society (APS).

  48. PP to LW, Nov. 7, 1929, SCB, AES, APS.

  49. LW to PP, Nov. 26, 1929, and meeting minutes, which run from 1929 to 1936, SCB, AES, APS.

  50. See California Division newsletters in Folder: Ezra S. Gosney, Papers of Charles B. Davenport, B:D27, APS.

  51. Untitled Manuscript (Autobiographical) #1, Box 174, PBP, AHC, UW. Also see Paul Popenoe, “The Institute of Family Relations,” Journal of Home Economics 22, no. 11 (1930): 906–7; “The Institute of Family Relations” (pamphlet), Folder 8, Box 5, Papers of Ezra S. Gosney and the Human Betterment Foundation (ESGHBF), Institute Archives (IA), California Institute of Technology (CIT).

  52. Untitled Manuscript (Autobiographical) #1, Box 174, PBP, AHC, UW. On the HBF’s funding of the AIFR, at least until the mid-1930s, see PP to Lewis M. Terman (LMT), Dec. 10, 1930, and the 1930–1934 HBF annual reports contained in Folder 13, Box 2, Papers of Lewis M. Terman (LMT), SC38, Special Collections (SC), Stanford University (SU).

  53. Constance Chandler, “Marriage Ills Clinic Formed,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 9, 1930.

  54. Untitled Manuscript (Autobiographical) #1, Box 174, PBP, AHC, UW.

  55. David Popenoe, “Remembering My Father,” 6.

  56. See synopsis of article on Hayward and Popenoe in the tabloid Top Secret (1956) in which Popenoe was ridiculed as a psuedo-psychologist. There are several other relevant case histories of Hollywood stars, all protected by confidentiality stipulations, PBP, AHC, UW.

  57. “Institute of Family Relations” (pamphlet); Ladd-Taylor, “Eugenics, Sterilisation,” 311. On the German context, see Atina Grossman, Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

  58. Paul Popenoe, “The Institute of Family Relations,” Eugenics 3, no. 4 (1930): 134–37.

  59. Popenoe, “What the Marriage Counselor Should Know about Heredity,” PBP, AHC, UW. This message changed little over the forty years of the AIFR and was further informed by knowledge of the work of the country’s dozen genetic counseling centers.

  60. Paul Popenoe, “Eugenics and Family Relations,” Eugenical News 25, no. 1 (1940): 74.

  61. “Chap. XIV. Problems of Heredity,” 14, PBP, AHC, UW.

  62. See, for example, Norman Fenton and Paul Popenoe, “Twenty-Five Years of Eugenic Sterilization,” Journal of Juvenile Research 19, no. 4 (1935): 201–4.

  63. Ibid., 14–16; Paul Popenoe, “Who Should NOT Marry?” Hygeia (1939), offprint, PBP, AHC, UW.

  64. Paul Popenoe, “Marriage Counseling,” General Practitioner 6, no. 4 (1952): 53–60, quotation on p. 55. Popenoe viewed voluntary childlessness among the middle classes as a major eugenic problem. See PP, “Childlessness: Voluntary or Involuntary,” Box 4 (Eugenics Materials), Papers of Paul Popenoe (PP), Special Collections (SC), Occidental College (OC).

  65. “Chap. XIV. Problems of Heredity,” 17.

  66. See Stefan Kühl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

  67. Popenoe, “Eugenics and Family Relations,” 74.

  68. “Chap. XIV. Problems of Heredity,” 14.

  69. For the most part, both marriage and genetic counselors advised against interracial marriage, usually for cultural reasons, although hereditary assumptions were often tacitly implied. As Popenoe told the concerned parents of a teenage girl who was dating a Mexican boy, “She should be told that no writers in the field of dating, courtship, and marriage have any good to say for dating with those whose nationality, moral standards, religious convictions, interests, and family backgrounds are different.” See PP to Mrs. P, Apr. 30, 1956, Box 65, PBP, AHC, UW.

  70. Kline, Building a Better Race, 143.

  71. Popenoe, “What the Marriage Counselor Should Know”; Mrs. Helen G. Hammons to PP, June 15, 1956, Box 27, PBP, AHC, UW.

  72. On the history of genetic counseling, see Diane B. Paul, The Politics of Heredity: Essays on Eugenics, Biomedicine, and the Nature-Nurture Debate (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998); and Molly Ladd-Taylor, “ ‘A Kind of Genetic Social Work’: Sheldon Reed and the Origins of Genetic Counseling,” in Women, Health, and Nation: Canada and the United States since 1945, ed. Georgina Feldberg, Molly Ladd-Taylor, Alison Li, and Kathryn McPherson (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003), 67–83.

  73. Popenoe collected articles on heredity counseling and kept abreast of the activities of the Dight Institute at the University of Minnesota. In 1940, he felt confident enough in his understanding of human genetics and epilepsy to advise a man whose fraternal twin sister was epileptic that, in his case, “the inheritable tendency” was relatively small. See Mr. P to PP, Apr. 17, 1940; PP to Mr. P, Apr. 19, 1940, Box 25, PBP, AHC, UW.

  74. Popenoe, “The American Institute of Family Relations,” PBP, AHC, UW.

  75. See Popenoe, “The Institute of Family Relations,” Eugenics 3, no. 4 (1930): 134–37.

  76. See Paul Popenoe, “A Family Consultation Service,” Journal of Social Hygiene 17, no. 6 (1931): 309–21, PP, SC, OC.

  77. AIFR pamphlets and flyers, Folder 8, Box 5, ESGHBF, IA, CIT; Popenoe, “American Institute of Family Relations.”

  78. Popenoe, “Family Consultation Service.”

  79. “The First Ten Years of the American Institute of Family Relations,” PBP, AHC, UW.

  80. “News and Notes of the American Institute of Family Relations, January 1942,” Folder 8, Box 5, ESGHBF, CIT, IA.

  81. See Paul Popenoe, “Eugenics after the War,” Eugenical News 28 (1943): 19–20.

  82. Paul Popenoe, Be It Ever So Jumbled There’s No Place Like Home (New York: Army and Navy Department of the YMCA, 1945), 9, PBP, AHC, UW.

  83. Popenoe, “Home, America’s Strongest Bulwark” (advertisement), PBP, AHC, UW.

  84. On the connection between federally subsidized housing and the economic consolidation of white America after World War II, see George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998).

  85. Paul Popenoe and Dorothy Cameron Disney, Can This Marriage Be Saved? (New York: Macmillan, 1953), xii.

  86. “The American Institute of Family Relations” (1955 retrospective), PBP, AHC, UW.

  87. Paul Popenoe, “Forty Years of the AIFR,” Family Life 30, no. 2 (1970): 2. Popenoe was first heard on the radio version of Art Linkletter’s H
ouse Party and appeared regularly on radio shows in Southern California. See Kline, Building a Better Race, 143.

  88. “Dr. Popenoe Contributes to Human Understanding through Television,” TV Time 4, no. 14 (1951), “Divorce Hearing,” “The American Institute of Family Relations,” PBP, AHC, UW.

  89. PP to Mr. Dille, Aug. 18, 1936, Box 12, PBP, AHC, UW.

  90. His last syndicated column was part of the series “Your Family and You,” and ran on Sept. 8, 1972. In this good-bye to his readers, he implored Americans to protect family life and asked women, in particular, to shun feminism and ask instead, “What will hold my family together?” PBP, AHC, UW.

  91. Kline, Building a Better Race, 153.

  92. Popenoe and Disney, Can This Marriage Be Saved?

  93. See Mrs. S to PP, Apr. 30, 1958, Box 68, PBP, AHC, UW.

  94. Mrs. T to PP, Jan. 6, 1959, Box 71, PBP, AHC, UW.

  95. Mrs. S to PP, Jan. 21, 1960, Box 73, PBP, AHC, UW.

  96. See May, Homeward Bound; and Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992).

  97. See Paul Popenoe, “Toward an American Population Policy,” Eugenical News 30 (1945): 20–21; Popenoe, “The Practice of Marriage Counseling,” Publication no. 526, AIFR, PBP, AHC, UW.

  98. Popenoe, “Toward an American Population Policy,” 21.

  99. Popenoe, “Human Genetics and Eugenics” (White House Conference on Basal Sciences and Fetal and Maternal Problems), PBP, AHC, UW.

  100. “Chapter IV. The Psychology of the Male Sex,” 4.

  101. Ibid., 11.

  102. Ibid., 11–12.

  103. Ibid., 3–4.

  104. “Foreword, Marriage and You,” PBP, AHC, UW.

  105. Popenoe, “Why Are Women Like That?” 1, PBP, AHC, UW. Also see “Why Are Men Like That?” PBP, AHC, UW.

  106. Popenoe, “Why Are Women Like That?” 2.

  107. Popenoe, “Heredity and Education,” 8.

  108. Popenoe, “Eight Cures for Manhaters” (1939), PBP, AHC, UW.

  109. See Gerhard, Desiring Revolution.