“Fitter Families for Future Firesides”: Florence Sherbon and Popular Eugenics

Abstract

In the 1920s, eugenicists adapted public health contests to create "Fitter Family for Future Firesides" contests. Designed by Mary T. Watts and Dr. Florence Sherbon, these contests were deliberately staged at agricultural fairs. These contests encouraged families to re-imagine their histories as pedigrees subject to scientific analysis and control, while appealing to a deeply rooted sense of nostalgia for the rural family as the nation became increasingly urban, as rural children left farms, and as the culture of the Roaring Twenties challenged "traditional values". As such, the fitter family contests fused nostalgia for the farm family with a modernist promise of scientific control.

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