| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Perfect Motherhood: Science and Childrearing in America. By Rima D. Apple. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006. xiv, 209 pp. Cloth, $65.00, ISBN 978-0-8135-3793-1. Paper, $22.95, ISBN 978-0-8135-3843-3.)
Today's mothers, seeking child-rearing advice, draw from many sources: books written by physicians, academics, and experienced parents; parenting message boards; academic, epidemiological, and corporate health care Web sites; and advice nurses and pediatricians available online or by phone—provided the mother is insured. The historian Rima D. Apple explains how the educated mother, aware of the latest scientific research, came to view physicians and experts as her partners and the ultimate authorities.	1
"Scientific motherhood" arose in the mid-nineteenth century as Catharine Beecher and others encouraged women to embrace the technological changes of industrialization to assist in rearing children. Soon, the ideal mother transitioned from being an intelligent evaluator of scientific advice to a more passive conduit of medical instructions. The 1930s were the apex of pediatrician-centered child-rearing. With little direct child care experience, accustomed to turning to doctors and nurses in the hospital, and aware of the strides that modern medicine had made in infant mortality, urban middle-class mothers eagerly embraced science and followed doctors' orders.	. . .

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