Public health officials and social reformers grew concerned over the prevalence of gonorrhea and syphilis following World War I. The initiatives put in place by authorities to control the spread of venereal disease lacked any concern for women’s health and sought to control their newly found independence and mobility. This thesis examines public health policies related to venereal disease control from 1920-1945 and how these regulations affected women in the United States. Laws and social reform measures such as pre-marital blood tests, the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act, and the use of quarantining prostitutes during World War I and World War II were passed by government officials to ensure the future of America as a fit fighting force of men, placing women’s health concerns last in its race for domination. Women essentially were marked as the diseased dangers to America’s health.

This study examines major American maternal and children’s healthcare initiatives in the backdrop of international and national crises from 1917 to 1969. During these crises, maternal and child welfare reformers used the rhetoric of citizenship and democracy to garner support for new maternal and child healthcare policies at the national level. While the dissertation focuses on national policies, it also explores how state public health officials from Alabama, Mississippi, and New York implemented these programs and laws locally. The dissertation chapters study regional similarities and differences in maternal and child healthcare by highlighting how economy, culture, and politics influenced how national programs operated in different states. By utilizing White House Conference on Children and Youth Series sources, state public health records, and newspapers, this dissertation argues that by using rhetoric about protecting mothers, children, and American democracy, the Children’s Bureau (CB) members claimed and maintained control of maternal and child health care for over fifty years. CB leaders used World War I draft anxieties as a rallying call to reduce infant mortality and improve children’s health. In the following decades, maternal and children’s healthcare advocates met at the White House Conference on Children and Youth Series to discuss policies and influence legislation relating to maternal and child hygiene. The Sheppard-Towner Program, Title V or the Maternal and Children’s Health Section of the Social Security Act, and the Emergency Maternity and Infancy Care Program reflect policies debated at these White House conferences. By the 1950s, child welfare advocates associated mental health with a child’s overall health and the CB leaders and other child welfare reformers linked happy personalities to winning the Cold War. In the 1960s, the CB members and child welfare advocates’ attention shifted to focusing on low socio-economic mothers and children or children with intellectual disabilities. By 1969, the Children’s Bureau no longer managed national maternal and child healthcare programs and could not “safeguard the health of mothers and children.”