Laura L. Lovett
Conceiving the Future: Pronatalism, Reproduction, and the Family in the United States, 1890-1938
2007
Synopsis: The 1998 UC Berkeley dissertation underlying this book was subtitled Nostalgic modernism, reproduction, and the family in the United States, 1890-1930. This title seems more representative of the whole work. In the new introduction, Lovett says the U.S. “invested heavily in the reproduction of its citizenry during the early twentieth century.” She labels this covert, relatively non-coercive public policy focus “pronatalism” and suggests the subjects of her study “promoted reproduction indirectly.” But the argument seems to circle back on itself, and at times it is unclear whether these reformers promoted families, motherhood, and reproduction for its own sake, or as a means to another end. Setting aside the pronatalist framing argument she introduced in the book, Lovett’s study of five reformers shows how they all used symbols and images of family and rural life, and asks important questions regarding the power these symbols had, over the reformers as well as their audiences.
Idealization of rural family life is complicated by the two distinctly different uses Lovett shows it put to: for Mary Elizabeth Lease, “political decisions had effects on the daily lives of women and children,” (6) whereas for urban reformers like Roosevelt and Ross, family and the rural home are tools for “controlling and directing a changing social order.” (4) In the two other cases (George H. Maxwell’s national irrigation plan and the Arts and Crafts movement that grew around it, and Florence Sherbon’s popular eugenics), the motivations of the principals seems much less straightforward. All the cases are interesting, and seem to scream for more attention. Other attractive ideas for further study include the deployment of a “Jeffersonian” agrarian ideal, and how its definition and use may have changed over time, a broad assessment of Populism in both its positive and negative incarnations, a closer look at Edward A. Ross (especially his relationships with Rita Hollingworth and Charlotte Perkins Gilman), and an investigation of the Craftsman and Back-to-the-Land movements. And, as Lovett says, the use of nostalgia and especially rural nostalgia by reformers.
Racism and fear of white “race suicide” seems to have been an important motivator for some reformers. Lovett and Danbom seem to agree that urban activists had agendas beyond the good of country people, when they advocated “Country Life” improvements. The chapter on Mary Lease extends the story by beginning to look at what country people thought. Lovett enriches this story further by creating continuity from the populist era into the progressive (Danbom begins his study around 1900, and ignores rural agitation in the 1890s, implying that those issues had been resolved and the Country Life issues are new and unprecedented). When Mary Lease sees “the spread of Iowa evictions as a clear omen that English-style landlordism was establishing itself,” and when she further notes that the evictions “coincided with the government giveaway of 300,000 square miles of public domain land to railroad corporations,” the rural critique of the system takes on dimensions of intelligence and sophistication lacking in some depictions of populism. (27, 28) Lease’s charge that Roosevelt’s “Progressive party stole the Populist Platform plank by plank, clause by clause, without casting even the faintest shadow of a word of credit” also suggests a closer look at politics across this transitional period might be a good idea.
Another unexpected idea is that although Frederick Jackson Turner had declared the frontier closed, George Maxwell “spent much of his time arguing that...it was merely underwatered.” (48) The National Irrigation Association and railroad sponsorship of the water projects that reshaped settlement and agriculture deserves more attention. J.J. Hill’s role as “empire builder” might be worth a closer look, as well as the Little Landers, the evolution of the Arts and Crafts movement (especially William Morris’ London “Red House” and the connection to anarchist Peter Kropotkin. 63). Finally, the thinking of E. A. Ross seems to have continued to develop through the years, unlike that of Roosevelt. Ross might be a subject for closer study.
Similarly, the racism of the Country Life movement (and in the idealization of “yeoman” rurality in general?) might be something to look at more closely. If the “Huck” accounts in Shutesbury were actually fabricated, and if classification of Swift River Valley people as “degenerates” helped Boston get the Quabbin Reservoir, there might be a story there. In the popular eugenics chapter, the AES seems to have a grasp on the need to make rural life more “economically and culturally attractive.” Their identification of the automobile’s ability to enhance “access and mate selection in rural communities” goes a long way to explaining the dramatic increase in rural cars in the 1920s noted by Danbom.
Critics: Jennifer Fronc reviewed Conceiving the Future for Reviews in American History (at the time, Fronc was at Virginia Commonwealth University -- they are now colleagues at UMass/Amherst). Fronc says the book’s greatest strengths “rest in Lovett’s perspective on the problems created by urbanization and her analysis of the gendered implications of pronatalist thinking.” (631) I found the argument for pervasive pronatalism less convincing than the argument for pervasive racism, when it came to the motivations or hidden agendas of these people and groups. For example, even accepting the sincerity of Roosevelt’s “indictment of childless women,” (95) his pronatalism was in service to his fear of “race suicide.” For me, the stronger arguments concerned racism and nostalgia.
Interesting References:
Primary:
American Eugenics Society Papers, American Philosophical Society Archives, Philadelphia
Bellamy, Looking Backward
Iyenaga, Japan and the California Problem
Lease, The Problem of Civilization Solved
Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population
Mead, Helping Men Own Farms
Perkins, Herland
Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation
Plunkett, The Rural Life Problem of the United States
Plunkett, Ireland in the New Century
Roosevelt, Rural Life
Ross, Foundations of Sociology
Ross, Principles of Sociology
Ross, The Social Trend
Ross, Social Control
Ross, The Causes of Race Superiority
Smythe, The Conquest of Arid America
Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class
Walker, Immigration and Degradation
Wichita Independent
Secondary:
Boris, Art and Labor: Ruskin, Morris, and the Craftsman Ideal in America
Brady, The Book of the Roycrofters
Bowers, The Country Life Movement
Calhoun, A Social History of the American Family
Conkin, Tomorrow a New World
Cotkin, Reluctant Modernism
Cronon, Nature's Metropolis
Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race
Goldberg, An Army of Women: Gender and Politics in Gilded Age Kansas
Goodwyn, The Populist Moment
Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea
Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism
Hayden, Building Suburbia
Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency
Hicks, Populist Revolt
Hofstadter, The Age of Reform
Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory
Kazin, The Populist Persuasion
LaFeber, The New Empire
Leach, Land of Desire
Levenstein, Revolution at the Table
Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest
Malone, James J. Hill: Empire Builder of the Northwest
Neth, Preserving the Farm Family
Nugent, The Tolerant Populists
Pisani, From the Family Farm
Pisani, Water and American Government
Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt
Rafter, White Trash: The Eugenic Family Studies
Reed, From Private Vice to Public Virtue
Reisner, Cadillac Desert
Stiller, Queen of the Populists
Tindale, The Populist Reader
White, "It's Your Misfortune"
Worster, Rivers of Empire
