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Susan K. Freeman, What Adolescents Ought to Know: Sexual Health Texts in Early Twentieth-Century America, Journal of American History, Volume 99, Issue 1, June 2012, Pages 330–331, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas122
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That Americans became consumers of sex education literature—willing to spend money to purchase texts on sexual health—is a historical development well illuminated by Jennifer Burek Pierce’s new book. It adds to the literature on the history of sex education an emphasis on the significance of print: How and why did those pamphlets and books emerge? What made them commercially viable? How did print culture alter the transmission of information about sexual health? What were its local origins and transnational dimensions? Answers to these questions unfold as the author traces the contributions of key figures to sex education in the first half of the twentieth century.
The book begins with turn-of-the-century texts about syphilis by the French reformer Alfred Fournier, tracing his influence on the developing U.S. social hygiene movement. Pierce then analyzes networks spanning from Europe to the United States and across the globe, demonstrating how medical doctors and purity advocates advanced health advice—in ways shaped by nationalism, culture, and religion—through pamphlets for youth as well other means. The contrast between French and American culture is developed in a chapter that focuses centrally on a play by the French author Eugène Brieux (Les avariés, 1901), translated into English by George Bernard Shaw, performed as Damaged Goods in the United States, and later transformed into a novel of the same name by Upton Sinclair (1913). Pierce uses those works to contrast the nationalist concern with reducing the declining birth rate in France with the U.S. project of eugenics, agendas that were embedded in such narratives. She also touches on the translation and distribution of texts in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, an intriguing development that warrants further analysis.
