A Help One Another Club: Teaching Motherhood and Citizenship Through the Sheppard–Towner Act

“A Help One Another Club: Teaching Motherhood and Citizenship,” focuses on the educational programs that the Children’s Bureau and state bureaus ran with Sheppard-Towner funding. I argue that Sheppard-Towner programs aimed to standardize American “mothercraft” through educational initiatives – little mothers’ leagues, mothers’ courses, educational films, and instructional material mailed to mothers. Much of this educational information came directly from the Children’s Bureau and reflected federal and state agent’s belief that there was one “correct” method of childrearing which, could and should be taught to all American mothers. Moreover, much of this educational work sought to circumvent actual mothers and focused instead on shaping the next generation of “potential mothers” – young girls. Through these educational programs, both state and national bureaus gained greater access to the intimate lives of their constituents and tried their best to shape familial relations nationwide. Moreover, they taught mothers and children how to engage with state and federal agencies and how to exchange personal data for state services.

When viewed through the lens of American political development, the history of the Sheppard-Towner Act bears out Michel Foucault’s theory that collecting and collating vital statistics is a significant aspect of modern state-building or “bio-politics” and James Scott’s argument that states have a vested interest in making citizens “legible”. Legibility through vital statistic collection was certainly one of the Children’s Bureau’s primary goals with Sheppard-Towner programs. By visiting homes, registering births, and logging the health and illness of particularly rural mothers and children, state and federal health and welfare bureaus gained a more nuanced understanding of their citizenry. However, legibility is a two-way street. As this paper will illustrate, the administration of the Sheppard-Towner Act shows that citizens learn to see states as states learned to see citizens.