Perfect Marriage, Perfect Race: Eugenic Prescriptions in American Marriage Manuals, 1900 – 1945

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: Between 1900 and 1945, marriage manuals, a genre that educated white middle-class Americans about the art of marriage and sex, boomed in popularity. During the same period, eugenic thought peaked in American political, intellectual, and cultural lives. Through an analysis of around seventy-five marriage manuals, I argue that the genre attempted to foster a eugenic conscience by encouraging young Americans to select and reject potential partners through the use of a eugenic framework. The voluntary eugenics encouraged by these manuals reveals much about the widespread nature of eugenics, a topic which has hitherto been studied mainly through the lens of authoritarian governments and intellectual genealogies.

Type of resource	text
Date created	2020

Author	Maldonado, Ben
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Department of History
Primary advisor	Freedman, Estelle
Advisor	Burns, Jennifer

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/gx960zz8144

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred Citation: Maldonado, Ben (2020). Perfect Marriage, Perfect Race: Eugenic Prescriptions in American Marriage Manuals, 1900 – 1945. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/gx960zz8144

Undergraduate Honors Theses, Department of History, Stanford University

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