For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to WomenFrom the bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed and a former editor in chief Mother Jones, this women's history classic brilliantly uncovers the constraints imposed on women in the name of science. Since the nineteenth century, professionals have been invoking scientific expertise to prescribe what women should do for their own good. Among the experts’ diagnoses and remedies: menstruation was an illness requiring seclusion; pregnancy, a disabling condition; and higher education, a threat to long-term health of the uterus. From clitoridectomies to tame women’s behavior in the nineteenth century to the censure of a generation of mothers as castrators in the 1950s, doctors have not hesitated to intervene in women’s sexual, emotional, and maternal lives. Even domesticity, the most popular prescription for a safe environment for women, spawned legions of “scientific” experts. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English has never lost faith in science itself, but insist that we hold those who interpret it to higher standards. Women are entering the medical and scientific professions in greater numbers but as recent research shows, experts continue to use pseudoscience to tell women how to live. For Her Own Good provides today’s readers with an indispensable dose of informed skepticism. |
Contents
ONE In the Ruins of Patriarchy | 3 |
TWO Witches Healers and Gentleman Doctors | 37 |
The Witch Hunts The Conflict over Healing Comes to America | 65 |
Copyright | |
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For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women Barbara Ehrenreich,Deirdre English No preview available - 1979 |
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advice American baby become began behavior Betty Friedan biological Charlotte Perkins Gilman child raising child-raising experts childbirth Christine Frederick clitoris Congress of Mothers course culture disease domestic science domestic scientists early Ellen Richards fact Fanny Wright father female feminine feminism feminist germs girls gynecologists healers healing Home Economics homemaking household housekeeping human husband Ibid ideal ideology industrial infant invalidism Journal labor laboratory Ladies Lake Placid living male Market masculine maternal medical profession menopause ment middle-class midwives moral motherhood natural never nineteen nineteenth century Old Order Olive Schreiner organs ovaries overprotected parents patient patriarchal physician poor popular Popular Health Movement problem professional psychoanalytic psychology Quoted reform regular doctors reproductive Rockefeller role scientific sexual sick sixties social society Spock theory thing Thomsonian tion uterus wife witch Woman Question women workers wrote York young