Participation Type
Paper
Session Title
Session 1.18 Gender and Sexuality
Presentation #1 Title
“Every Woman Has Got to Have Her Number”: Bringing Birth Control to Eastern Kentucky, 1930-1942
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Female reformers began to emphasize the importance of providing birth control to poor white mothers in Appalachia in the 1930s. This constituted a shift in emphasis from helping mothers make practical improvements to their lives through measures of hygiene and economy in the home toward a fundamental change in the structure of families. This shift was caused by changing theories of poverty, eugenics, and class in the 1930s. The region’s two major birth control organizations, the Kentucky Birth Control League and the Mountain Maternal Health League, emphasized different aspects of popular thought, which affected both the methods they employed in disseminating knowledge of contraception throughout the region, and the success each had with mothers and physicians. Appalachian mothers responded to these birth control activists in many different ways, both positive and negative, which in turn affected the success of birth control campaigns in the mountains. While reformers sought to place constraints on who could receive birth control and the form in which it was distributed, Appalachian mothers sought access to the type of contraceptives they believed would work for them. In contrast to the stereotypes of Appalachian women as helpless victims, and regardless of the ways in which they were approached by reformers, it is apparent that Appalachian mothers pursued and attained control over their reproduction.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
I am a Ph.D candidate in the History Department at the University at Buffalo. My dissertation examines the perceptions and realities of motherhood and reform in early twentieth century Appalachia.
“Every Woman Has Got to Have Her Number”: Bringing Birth Control to Eastern Kentucky, 1930-1942
Harris Hall 302
Female reformers began to emphasize the importance of providing birth control to poor white mothers in Appalachia in the 1930s. This constituted a shift in emphasis from helping mothers make practical improvements to their lives through measures of hygiene and economy in the home toward a fundamental change in the structure of families. This shift was caused by changing theories of poverty, eugenics, and class in the 1930s. The region’s two major birth control organizations, the Kentucky Birth Control League and the Mountain Maternal Health League, emphasized different aspects of popular thought, which affected both the methods they employed in disseminating knowledge of contraception throughout the region, and the success each had with mothers and physicians. Appalachian mothers responded to these birth control activists in many different ways, both positive and negative, which in turn affected the success of birth control campaigns in the mountains. While reformers sought to place constraints on who could receive birth control and the form in which it was distributed, Appalachian mothers sought access to the type of contraceptives they believed would work for them. In contrast to the stereotypes of Appalachian women as helpless victims, and regardless of the ways in which they were approached by reformers, it is apparent that Appalachian mothers pursued and attained control over their reproduction.
