
Author/Contributor(s): | Lovett, Laura L |
Publisher: | University of North Carolina Press |
Date: | 04/23/2007 |
Binding: | Paperback |
Condition: | NEW |
Lovett looks closely at the ideologies of five influential American figures: Mary Lease's maternalist agenda, Florence Sherbon's eugenic fitter families campaign, George Maxwell's homecroft movement of land reclamation and home building, Theodore Roosevelt's campaign for conservation and country life, and Edward Ross's sociological theory of race suicide and social control. Demonstrating the historical circumstances that linked agrarianism, racism, and pronatalism, Lovett shows how reproductive conformity was manufactured, how it was promoted, and why it was coercive. In addition to contributing to scholarship in American history, gender studies, rural studies, and environmental history, Lovett's study sheds light on the rhetoric of family values that has regained currency in recent years.