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Author Ladd-Taylor, Molly, 1955- author.

Title Fixing the poor : eugenic sterilization and child welfare in the twentieth century / Molly Ladd-Taylor.

Publication Info. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017.
©2017

Copies

Location Call No. OPAC Message Status
 Axe 3rd Floor Stacks  363.97 L121f 2017    ---  Available
1 copy being processed for Axe Acquisitions Order.
Description ix, 275 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
text txt rdacontent
unmediated n rdamedia
volume nc rdacarrier
Occupation/field of study University and college faculty members lcdgt
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents The feebleminded menace and the innocent child -- Two roads to sterilization -- Who was feebleminded? -- The price of freedom -- Sterilization and welfare in depression and war -- From fixing the poor to fixing the system?
Summary Between 1907 and 1937, thirty-two states legalized the sterilization of more than 63,000 Americans. In Fixing the Poor, Molly Ladd-Taylor tells the story of these state-run eugenic sterilization programs. She focuses on one such program in Minnesota, where surgical sterilization was legally voluntary and administered within a progressive child welfare system. Tracing Minnesota's eugenics program from its conceptual origins in the 1880s to its official end in the 1970s, Ladd-Taylor argues that state sterilization policies reflected a wider variety of worldviews and political agendas than previously understood. She describes how, after 1920, people endorsed sterilization and its alternative, institutionalization, as the best way to aid dependent children without helping the "undeserving" poor. She also sheds new light on how the policy gained acceptance and why coerced sterilizations persisted long after eugenics lost its prestige. In Ladd-Taylor's provocative study, eugenic sterilization appears less like a deliberate effort to improve the gene pool than a complicated but sadly familiar tale of troubled families, fiscal and administrative politics, and deep-felt cultural attitudes about disability, dependency, sexuality, and gender. Drawing on institutional and medical records, court cases, newspapers, and professional journals, Ladd-Taylor reconstructs the tragic stories of the welfare-dependent, sexually delinquent, and disabled people who were labeled feebleminded and targeted for sterilization.
Subject Involuntary sterilization -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
Sterilization (Birth control) -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
Eugenics -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
Mentally ill -- Government policy -- United States -- 20th century.
Poor -- Government policy -- United States -- 20th century.
Eugenics. (OCoLC)fst00916432
Involuntary sterilization. (OCoLC)fst01430556
Mentally ill -- Government policy. (OCoLC)fst01016731
Poor -- Government policy. (OCoLC)fst01071075
Sterilization (Birth control) (OCoLC)fst01133207
United States. (OCoLC)fst01204155
Chronological Term 1900-1999
Genre/Form History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
ISBN 9781421423722 (hardcover ; alkaline paper)
1421423723 (hardcover ; alkaline paper)
9781421423739 (electronic book)
1421423731 (electronic book)

 
    
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