Scientific Advice on Parenting II: The Remarkable Mrs. West

Jan Armstrong, University of New Mexico

I recently encountered an author (Weiss, 1985) who helped me better understand the historical context in which the harsh advice of 1914 was given. The Infant Care Bulletin was a publication of the Children's Bureau, a federal agency in Washington, DC. When Julia Lathrop became the head of the Children's Bureau she hired a woman named Mary Mills West to write a prenatal care pamphlet for mothers. The Prenatal Care pamphlet was distributed free of charge and was exceptionally popular. It was written in a way that was simple and clear, but not patronizing. The following year, Mrs. West wrote the Infant Care Bulletin of 1914.

Mary Mills West was a professional writer, a widow and mother of five children. Analysis of letters women sent to the Bureau (Weiss, 1985) indicates that women often shared their copies of the Infant Care Bulletin with other women and wrote the Bureau asking for another copy. The Bureau typically received as many as 125,000 letters a year. As I understand it, all were answered by the five women who ran the Bureau: Julia Lathrop, Mary West, Dr. Grace Meigs, Dr. Anna Rude and Dr. Dorothy Mendenthal. Often, the letters began "Dear Friend...". When the women who ran the Bureau replied to these letters, they often wrote in a friendly tone of voice. Their letters didn't sound as though they were written by Washington bureaucrats!

This is an era when thousands of immigrants poured into the United States each year, often settling in urban centers like New York City. Little girls read the pamphlet (the Infant Care Bulletin) to their mothers, who could not read English. Weiss reports that many of the letters were clearly written by young girls, writing on behalf of their mothers, who might not have been able to speak or write in English. Government officials, social workers and educators were concerned about how to teach women about infant care and parenting. Imagine how hard it must have been for young mothers who immigrated to the United States, leaving behind their own mothers and grandmothers. Who could answer their questions about how to care for their children? Government tried to help. There were, for example, Little Mothers' Leagues in schools. They taught little girls various rules for infant and childcare ("Don't let the baby eat things dropped on the floor," and "Don't leave the baby on the stove (for bathing)." The girls were encouraged to share these ideas with their mothers.

Analysis of the letters women sent to the Bureau shows that the pamphlet circulated among poor and working class women. Working class women often wrote to ask for more advice about particular problems. The Bureau members acted like a group of caring individuals (not an agency). They sometimes sent emissaries to visit the women; they sent money, layettes (baby supplies), and sometimes arranged for the women to get medical care.

Women of many backgrounds found the letters meaningful. Weiss thinks there are two reasons for this. First, the agency letters and the Infant Care Bulletin show concern for women, for maternal well being. The mother has responsibilities, but SO DOES THE BABY! (This attitude changes with Benjamin Spock's texts.)

Mrs. West offered advice grounded not in psychological theory, but in the new pediatrics (medical science). In 1914, medical experts believed that irregular feeding schedules and over-feeding infants, in addition to spoiled milk, caused serious intestinal infections. Such infections were a primary cause of infant deaths. This concern seemed to lead experts to express psychological disapproval of practices that might result in overindulgence or over-stimulation of the infant.

What I think is even more interesting is the idea that Mrs. West and the other women who worked in the Bureau were deeply concerned about the welfare of the mother. The Infant Care Bulletin provided a kind of "do it yourself" advice manual for women who didn't have access to medical care. Lack of medical care was believed to be one reason for high maternal and child mortality. Thus, strict feeding schedules, minimal rocking and playing, early toilet training, establishing a system for infant care were tactics intended to help mothers cope with the nearly overwhelming challenges associated with childcare in the early decades of the 20th century. For mothers living in isolated rural areas, with no medical care and no money, who might also be caring for older toddlers and young children, and for whom housekeeping involved very hard labor - self-preservation was clearly an issue we can scarcely comprehend today. Mrs. West reassured women that minding a mobile baby is exhausting and that confining a baby to a playpen, for example, was necessary to preserve the mother's health and well-being. Here is what she said: "An older child should be taught to sit on the floor or in his pen or crib during part of his waking hours, or he will be very likely to make too great demands upon his mother's strength" (Weiss, 185, p. 287). Mrs. West knew from her own experience, but also from reading letters sent to the Bureau, that a mother needed to "conserve all her strength and not waste it in useless activity" like chasing a toddler around the home (ibid.).

Here is an excerpt from one of these letters, from "a "busy mother of three dear babies - aged 3 years, 20 months and 3 months."

"I have wanted babies for years, and now, when I'm so tired and with unfinished work everywhere I turn, I could scream at their constant prattle...I love them until it hurts and know that, when they are out of their babyhood, I can never forgive myself for not making more of these precious years. Is there not some way that I can do all these scientific and hygienic duties for babies, keep our house up in proper fashion and still have time to rock and play with my babies? What of all my housework and baby-care could best be left undone. I do not ask time for myself but it would be nice to have a short period during the evening in which to read as I feel that I am growing narrow with no thoughts other than my household.

Thanking you for all the past helps your department has rendered to me."

Mrs. West responds to this woman's letter with sympathy and two pages of helpful advice. She recommended one dishwashing a day, feeding and nap schedules for the children and a bedtime at 6PM. "If you have not tried putting away your children at six o'clock, you have no idea what a relief it will be to you. It can be done; I have done it myself with three boys, and no mother who knows the satisfaction of having the care of her children cease before her own evening meal, and the quiet comfort of a still household in the evening, would fail to immediately begin the training necessary to make it possible." Then, she adds the following remarkable comment: "I hesitated to offer these suggestions, because I know how impossible they might seem to you and to me, if I understood your situation more clearly. I hope you will write me more details of your problem, and let me be of any service in my power." (quoted in Weiss, 1985, 288).

Women were grateful. One wrote "Without your books I would have been like a ship on a strange sea without a compass." Another said, "I feel hoped up by reading the kind words you rote [sic]." Another says that the pamphlet "saved my baby's life." (ibid)

Weiss also suggests another reason why the letters were meaningful for women from all backgrounds. She refers to the "sociopolitical" aims of the Bureau members. They were progressives and were devoted to the cause of using social institutions to promote human welfare and social justice (progress). During the Progressive Era, experts cared deeply about improving conditions for children and families. They focused on collective action and political and institutional change to bring about these ends. This all changes - substantially - with Benjamin Spock's mode of advice for mothers. That is another story, one we may pursue later in this course.

References

Weiss, Nancy Pottisham (1985). Mother, the invention of necessity: Dr. Benjamin Spock's Baby and Childcare. In N.R. Hiner and J. H. Hawes (editors) Growing up in America: Children in historical perspective. (pp. 283-303), Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois.