Proper Parents: Poverty, Disability, Race, and Reproductive Control after the Eugenics Era

This panel examines how eugenic ideas endured beyond the mid-twentieth century, long after eugenic theories of biological heritability had been disproven. During the early to mid-twentieth century, eugenicists popularized the idea that inheritable traits caused large-scale social issues like poverty and crime. As a result, individuals and groups believed to be carriers of these traits–namely low-income people, racialized groups, and people with disabilities–were targeted for eugenic policies, including state-mandated sterilization. Panelists will interrogate mid-to-late 20th-century shifts from eugenic rhetorics of heritability and genetics to rhetorics of unfit parenthood. Specifically, we examine whether and how eugenics informed mid-to-late 20th-century policies and practices of sterilization, federally funded family planning programs, population control efforts, and incarceration. We ask how race, disability, and poverty were reconstituted as markers for poor parenting in ways that echoed eugenic logics and continued to justify reproductive oppression.

Authors: Natalie Lira, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign; Jim Tabery, University of Utah; Marie Kaniecki, University of California, Los Angeles; Jennifer James, University of California, San Francisco