Leta S. Hollingworth on Coercive Pronatalism

Abstract

Population and Development ReviewVolume 26, Issue 2 p. 353-363 Leta S. Hollingworth on Coercive Pronatalism First published: 27 January 2004 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2000.00353.xCitations: 2AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract In the late 1960s, with the decisive ending of the baby boom not fully apparent, the US Commission on Population Growth and the American Future was pondering whether America needed to adopt an antinatalist policy. Judith Blake, in a background paper for the Commission, argued that such a debate was premature: US society, she asserted, was pervaded by time-honored pronatalist pressures; free choice infertility did not exist. “People make their ‘voluntary’ reproductive choices in an institutional context that severely constrains them not to remain single, not to choose childlessness, not to bear only one child, and even not to limit themselves to two children.” Her term for that situation was coercive pronatalism. A first step toward reducing population growth, if that was sought, should entail eliminating those constraints, making possible “a fuller expression of human individuality and diversity.” (See Volume VI of the Commission's research reports, Washington DC, 1972.) The article reprinted below, by Leta Stetter Hollingworth, is in many respects an anticipation of such arguments. It is titled “Social devices for impelling women to bear and rear children,” and appeared in American Journal of Sociology, Volume 22, No. 1, July 1916. The author sets out to illustrate “just how the various social institutions have been brought to bear on women” so as to sustain a birth rate sufficient “to offset the wastage of war and disease.” The perceived fertility problem then, much like now but unlike the 1960s, was how to maintain population replacement in the face of individual interests preferring small families or even childlessness. US total fertility early in the twentieth century was around 3, and had been slowly declining for decades; Europe was experiencing the decimation of its youth in World War I. A separate, familial role for women found popular justification in the idea of a maternal instinct. Hollingworth gives scant credence to such an instinct. To her it is a doctrine used in the service of social control, though she concedes a “natural desire for children” that may put a low-level floor under fertility. For most subsequent researchers, biology has played almost no part in reproductive motivation. In this issue of PDR, however, Caroline Foster argues for a partial restoration of biological influence in the form of a non-sex-specific nurturing instinct. Hollingworth was a major figure in American psychology and education in the 1920s and 1930s and a scholar with broad feminist interests. She was born Leta Stetter near Chadron, Nebraska, in 1886. After studying English literature at the University of Nebraska, she moved to New York with her husband, Harry L. Hollingworth, then a graduate student. When finances permitted, she pursued part-time graduate work at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she received her Ph.D. in educational psychology in 1916 and where, after a short period as a clinical psychologist, she remained as a faculty member for the rest of her life. Her early research challenged prevailing beliefs about the biological bases of gender differences in achievement—for example, the theory that women's abilities were more narrowly distributed than men's. Later, her research interests turned to child development—in particular, adolescence and the development and education of gifted and exceptionally gifted (IQ>180) children. In these areas she had strong and lasting influence, her books being regarded as classics. She died of cancer in 1939, aged 53. She was survived by her husband, also a psychologist, who wrote a memoir of her: Leta Stetter Hollingworth: A Biography (University of Nebraska Press, 1943; Anker, Boston, 1990). The article reprinted here was among her earliest publications, appearing the year she received her Ph.D. It is an almost casual piece, exhibiting her easy, limpid style and light touch, backed by a very sharp mind. She takes a textbook treatment of social control and a passing remark by its author and elaborates them into a cogent and witty analysis of the sociology of fertility. Citing Literature Volume26, Issue2June 2000Pages 353-363 RelatedInformation