My first books, Raising a Baby the Government Way: Mothers’ Letters to the Children’s Bureau, 1915-32, and Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890-1930, explored “mother-work” in the dual meaning of the term: the social history of female caregiving and the politics of “maternalist” organizing. You can listen to a National Public Radio documentary about mothers and the baby-saving campaign of maternalists in the federal Children’s Bureau here:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/27/611683175/parenting-advice-from-uncle-sam
I have also written about “bad” mothers, eugenics, and the idea that some women are unfit to rear or even bear the nation’s citizens. My latest book, Fixing the Poor: Eugenic Sterilization and Child Welfare in the Twentieth Century (Johns Hopkins, 2017), traces the routine operation of one state’s sterilization program to show how fiscal politics and control of institutionalized people and “the poor” were at the heart of sterilization practice. Fixing the Poor received Honorable Mention in the Disability History Association Outstanding Book Award for 2018.
You can read my blog about Fixing the Poor Here: https://www.press.jhu.edu/news/blog/tragedy-eugenic-sterilization-molly-ladd-taylor
Reviews
Marius Turda, Reviews in History: https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/2283
Holly Caldwell, H-Disability: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=51679
Patricia J. Williams, “Bad Blood: The History of Eugenics in the Progressive Age,” Times Literary Supplement: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/bad-blood-eugenics/
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Fixing the Poor: Eugenic Sterilization and Child Welfare in the Twentieth Century
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017). Honorable Mention, Disability History Association Outstanding Book Award |
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| Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare and the State 1890-1930
(University of Illinois Press, 1994) |
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Women, Health and Nation: Canada and the United States since 1945. Co-edited with Georgina Feldberg, Alison Li & Kathryn McPherson
(Mc-Gill-Queen’s University Press, 2003) |
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| 'Bad' Mothers: The Politics of Blame in 20th-Century America. Co-edited with Lauri Umansky
(New York University Press, 1998) |
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Root of Bitterness: Documents of the Social History of American Women, 2nd rev. ed. Co-edited with Nancy F. Cott, Jeanne Boydston, Ann Braude and Lori Ginzberg
(Northeastern University Press, 1996) |
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| Raising a Baby the Government Way: Mothers' Letters to the Children's Bureau, 1915 1932, edited with introduction
(Rutgers University Press, 1986) |
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