Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Before we
Speaker 1: start today's episode proper, we have kind of a I
Speaker 1: think special thing coming up. It's unlikely at this point
Speaker 1: that we are going to do any touring this year.
Speaker 1: That we had some things on the calendar that had
Speaker 1: been scheduled that we're you know, one off appearances in
Speaker 1: places those have been canceled. I think the only one
Speaker 1: that we actually announced on the show was we were
Speaker 1: planning in July five show at the Adams National Historical
Speaker 1: Park in Quincy, Massachusetts, UM that has been canceled. One
Speaker 1: of our favorite things about these appearances is getting to
Speaker 1: talk to people who listen to the show and answer
Speaker 1: questions about the show. So we were thinking, since we're
Speaker 1: not getting to do any kind of touring this year UM,
Speaker 1: that we would have a Q and A episode with
Speaker 1: with questions submitted by listeners. So we are going to
Speaker 1: be taking questions specifically for a Q and A episode
Speaker 1: up until June twelve, UM, and then we will record
Speaker 1: an episode based on those questions shortly after that. And
Speaker 1: put it out as an episode of the show. So
Speaker 1: if you have questions for us about episodes that you've heard,
Speaker 1: or about how we do the show, or just random
Speaker 1: things that you're curious about, send them along. We're at
Speaker 1: History Podcast at I heart radio dot com. Um. We
Speaker 1: of course we'll still be having questions for listener mail
Speaker 1: parts of the episodes and stuff like that. This week
Speaker 1: a special thing that will put out as an episode
Speaker 1: of the show. Uh So I kind of excited about that.
Speaker 1: And now on to to today's actual episode. I learned
Speaker 1: about these practice babies when researching the episode that we
Speaker 1: just had about home economics, and my response was, like,
Speaker 1: what practice babies? When I was in school, home at
Speaker 1: classes had parenting lessons that I'm putting in quotation marks
Speaker 1: that were about looking after a decorated egg or a
Speaker 1: sack of flour. At my school, this was not really
Speaker 1: about parenting, though. It was more about trying to discourage
Speaker 1: teen pregnancy by trying to simulate the stresses of having
Speaker 1: an infant using an egg with a face drawn on it.
Speaker 1: Um practice babies, though we're not eggs. They were living,
Speaker 1: breathing babies cared for by college seniors who were temporarily
Speaker 1: living in home ec practice houses, and in most cases
Speaker 1: the babies came from orphanages or child welfare agencies, and
Speaker 1: then after their time as a practice baby was over,
Speaker 1: in most cases, they were usually adopted. This whole idea
Speaker 1: tends to elicit pretty strong emotional reactions, especially from folks
Speaker 1: who are part of the adoption triad or people who
Speaker 1: have some experience with foster care or institutions for children,
Speaker 1: and the reasons why most of these babies were in
Speaker 1: institutions in the first place are definitely bubbling. But as
Speaker 1: with the incubator side shows that we talked about on
Speaker 1: the show late last year, this is a case where
Speaker 1: something that seems just clearly unethical and bizarre by today's
Speaker 1: standards at the time was actually probably doing more help
Speaker 1: than harm, and something we should note before we get
Speaker 1: started in talking about this. The history of adoption in
Speaker 1: North America includes a long established pattern of placing Native
Speaker 1: American First Nations and other indigenous children with white families
Speaker 1: as a tool for assimilation and cultural eradication, and it
Speaker 1: is possible that this happened in practice baby programs at
Speaker 1: some point, but that is also not really documented. If
Speaker 1: that was part of this story, at least not in
Speaker 1: the material that we had access to. Another important thing
Speaker 1: to note is that throughout the decades that we're talking
Speaker 1: about today, children of color were removed from their families,
Speaker 1: in place and institutions more often than white children were.
Speaker 1: And there were definitely hull MAK and I mixed programs
Speaker 1: that had practice houses at schools for black students, as
Speaker 1: well as home programs that were racially integrated, But overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: the documentation that's available to us is centered on programs
Speaker 1: where the babies and their caregivers were or appeared to
Speaker 1: be white. So since we're going to be talking about
Speaker 1: some social issues related to adoption, we would be remiss
Speaker 1: to not mention all this and kind of pretend that
Speaker 1: it didn't exist. But based on the information that we
Speaker 1: have issues that are specific to indigenous communities and to
Speaker 1: transracial adoption seemed to be outside the scope of today's episode.
Speaker 1: The trend of practice babies as part of a home
Speaker 1: economics practicum ran alongside the development of home economics as
Speaker 1: a field. It was something we just covered in our
Speaker 1: earlier episode on the Bureau of Home Economics, but it
Speaker 1: also ran alongside changes to orphanages and to adoption and
Speaker 1: foster care. In the United States, most of the nation's
Speaker 1: orphanages were built in the nineteenth century as immigration in
Speaker 1: an urbanization, and other social and economic factors led to
Speaker 1: a huge increase and how many children were experiencing homelessness.
Speaker 1: Orphanages were attempts to move these children out of poor
Speaker 1: houses and prisons and other facilities that were really designed
Speaker 1: for adults. Many of these children did have at least
Speaker 1: one living parent, but for a variety of reasons, the
Speaker 1: family couldn't or didn't care for them at home. Poverty
Speaker 1: was also seen as a valid reason to remove children
Speaker 1: from their parents custody conditions. In nineteenth century orphanages often
Speaker 1: were not much better than the prisons and workhouses that
Speaker 1: they were replacing. At best, they tended to offer very
Speaker 1: little in the way of care, education, entertainment, and stimulation.
Speaker 1: By the early twentieth century, the United States was trying
Speaker 1: to move away from orphanages and to focus more on
Speaker 1: placing children with foster families. The nation also started to
Speaker 1: move away from using poverty alone as a reason to
Speaker 1: institutionalized children, but it wasn't until the nineteen forties that
Speaker 1: the number of children living in orphanages really started to
Speaker 1: drop in terms of changes to the foster care and
Speaker 1: adoption systems. Really, for all of human history there have
Speaker 1: been babies and children who were raised by somebody other
Speaker 1: than their birth parents, So fostering and adoption have always
Speaker 1: been part of the human experience, but in terms of
Speaker 1: formal laws and processes, these didn't really start to develop
Speaker 1: in the United States until the middle of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: The first modern adoption law in the United States was
Speaker 1: passed in Massachusetts in eighteen fifty one. Other states followed,
Speaker 1: with the details of these laws really varying from state
Speaker 1: to state. Research into outcomes for children who had been
Speaker 1: fostered or adopted didn't really start until after the first
Speaker 1: practice baby programs were established. The first major outcome study,
Speaker 1: titled How Foster Children Turned Out, was published in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty four, and it wasn't really until the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: that people started doing major research into connections between adoption
Speaker 1: and foster care and mental and emotional health. And by
Speaker 1: the time that work was being done, the last practice
Speaker 1: baby programs were already ending. There was some research into
Speaker 1: how being a practice baby affected children's emotional and mental
Speaker 1: health and development, and we'll talk about the specifics of
Speaker 1: that research later on in the show, But especially in
Speaker 1: the later years of these programs, those kinds of studies
Speaker 1: became a lot harder to carry out, in part because
Speaker 1: of an increasing focus on keeping adoption records completely sealed,
Speaker 1: So a lot of practice baby programs didn't fall up
Speaker 1: on children's later lives, not because they just didn't care
Speaker 1: about the children's future well being, but because that information
Speaker 1: about the families they had been placed with and where
Speaker 1: they were now that was sealed. A lot of this
Speaker 1: has to do with stigma, especially within the white middle class.
Speaker 1: Becoming pregnant out of wedlock was increasingly stigmatized from the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties through the nineteen fifties and six teas. By
Speaker 1: the middle of the twentieth century. If someone was pregnant
Speaker 1: and unmarried, they were likely to spend their last months
Speaker 1: of pregnancy somewhere out of sight, like in a maternity
Speaker 1: home or living with a relative from out of town,
Speaker 1: and then to be pressured, coerced, or outright forced into
Speaker 1: an adoption. Infertility was also stigmatized, so sealed adoption records,
Speaker 1: which were often inaccessible even to the children involved, allowed
Speaker 1: everyone involved in the whole process to keep all of
Speaker 1: this secret. Of course, this is not at all how
Speaker 1: it's recommended to handle adoptions today, and this practice made
Speaker 1: it incredibly hard for people who were adopted as babies
Speaker 1: to get any information at all about their birth family
Speaker 1: or their health history. So the babies who were part
Speaker 1: of these home economics programs generally had some kind of
Speaker 1: trauma in their backgrounds before becoming a practice baby. Maybe
Speaker 1: their parents had died and they were placed in an orphanage,
Speaker 1: or their parents were alive but just financially could not
Speaker 1: care for them. Many were born to unmarried parents who
Speaker 1: had little to no say in the adoption decision. In
Speaker 1: article in the Journal of Home Economics, Catherine h Read,
Speaker 1: head of the Department of Family Life in the School
Speaker 1: of Home Economics at Oregon State College, stressed that babies
Speaker 1: should be placed in practice houses only if these kinds
Speaker 1: of circumstances suggested that it would be in their best interests.
Speaker 1: College programs generally kept these babies identities confidential. Students generally
Speaker 1: knew them by first names only, although they often gave
Speaker 1: them temporary last names that varied from school to school.
Speaker 1: So for example, babies at Cornell University were giving the
Speaker 1: last name Domicon, which was short for Domestic Economy. Eastern
Speaker 1: Illinois State Teachers College had two teaching houses, and babies
Speaker 1: were given last names for which house they were living
Speaker 1: in north or South. Since everything was confidential, students didn't
Speaker 1: generally meet the babies families or follow up with them
Speaker 1: later on in their life. And we're going to talk
Speaker 1: more about these practice houses and the babies in them
Speaker 1: after we first have a sponsor break. Broadly speaking, home
Speaker 1: economics programs in the United States had two types of
Speaker 1: houses that were part of their instruction and practice. At
Speaker 1: the high school level, there were cottages where students could
Speaker 1: learn and practice, but where they did not generally live
Speaker 1: full time. These were everything from converted classroom spaces inside
Speaker 1: the school building which had been made to look like
Speaker 1: little homes, or a standalone cottage that the school either
Speaker 1: owned or rented. Colleges, on the other hand, had houses
Speaker 1: or apartments where upper level students actually lived for a time.
Speaker 1: In the words of Dr Louise Stanley, chief of the
Speaker 1: Bureau of Home Economics, quote, it is a house in
Speaker 1: which groups of students organized as a family group live
Speaker 1: for varying periods and apply their home economic training to
Speaker 1: the solution of the different housekeeping and homemaking problems as
Speaker 1: they arise. Stanley recommended that each state college have at
Speaker 1: least two practice houses, one outfitted like a home in
Speaker 1: a city or town and the other replicating a house
Speaker 1: in a rural district. The first documented practice houses were
Speaker 1: built in nineteen o four. One was at Stout Institute
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin, and the other was at the Tuskegee Institute
Speaker 1: in Alabama. By nine twenty, there were seventies seven practice
Speaker 1: houses at colleges and universities around the United States, as
Speaker 1: well as some number of apartments that served the same purpose.
Speaker 1: Some schools bought or rented an existing property, and others
Speaker 1: had a practice house custom built. For example, at the
Speaker 1: Hampton Institute, the funding for the house came from a
Speaker 1: gift for the school, and the structure itself was built
Speaker 1: by the school's trade school students. The exact details of
Speaker 1: a student's time in a practice house could vary, but
Speaker 1: in general it tended to involve six to eight senior
Speaker 1: who usually lived in the house for six to ten weeks.
Speaker 1: Faculty or sometimes graduate students were on hand to instruct, supervise,
Speaker 1: and evaluate the students who were expected to cook, clean,
Speaker 1: serve meals, make budgets, and just generally manage the household.
Speaker 1: And in the words of Alba Bates, head of the
Speaker 1: School of Home Economics at North Dakota Agricultural College, quote,
Speaker 1: the big thing which we expect of the students and
Speaker 1: upon which we check them is their family relationships, such
Speaker 1: as the spirit of cooperation, helpfulness, generosity, kindness, and tolerance
Speaker 1: of the mistakes of others. At some schools, these family
Speaker 1: relationships practiced in the house involved caring for a baby.
Speaker 1: This infant care was usually described as mothercraft, and mothercraft
Speaker 1: as a specialization was something that was introduced into American
Speaker 1: home economics programs following the establishment of the first mothercraft
Speaker 1: schools in England that happened in nineteen fourteen. As had
Speaker 1: been the case with homemaking in general, the home economics
Speaker 1: movement can that her child rearing to be a worthy
Speaker 1: vocation that deserved study and refinement. Home economics approached homemaking
Speaker 1: through science and mothercraft did the same with parenting. The
Speaker 1: mothercraft approach was very precise and regulated, with parents trying
Speaker 1: to establish set schedules for babies with regular times for meals,
Speaker 1: bass play, and sleep, and a diet that was carefully
Speaker 1: measured and managed. By the late nineteen teens, it was
Speaker 1: generally agreed that practical study of mothercraft was critical to
Speaker 1: a home economics degree. Raising children was a huge part
Speaker 1: of a typical homemaker's work, so home economics programs that
Speaker 1: had no hands on experience with childcare were just incomplete.
Speaker 1: This wasn't just about completeness for its own sake, though.
Speaker 1: A ninety article in the Journal of Home Economics noted
Speaker 1: that under the Smith Hughes Act, vocational contact was required
Speaker 1: for people who were going to teach home economics, So
Speaker 1: if you were going to teach mothercraft, you had to
Speaker 1: have some vocational contact in childcare in your own education
Speaker 1: in order to be able to do so. Schools approached
Speaker 1: this hands on component in several ways. Some had daycare
Speaker 1: centers and preschools on or near campus, which were staffed
Speaker 1: partly or entirely by home economics students. Others brought infants
Speaker 1: and older children from the community to campus for supervised
Speaker 1: play and workshops, or they arranged for groups of students
Speaker 1: to observe and interact with babies and children in their
Speaker 1: own homes out in the community, and some, as we've said,
Speaker 1: brought babies to live full time in their practice houses.
Speaker 1: The same nineteen twenty article outlined the first documented practice
Speaker 1: baby program in the United States, which took place at
Speaker 1: the University of Minnesota in nineteen eighteen and nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: The university's to home management houses each had one child
Speaker 1: in residence in the spring and summer quarters, and although
Speaker 1: it became common to place children in practice houses as
Speaker 1: young as possible, and this pilot program the babies were
Speaker 1: Russell aged thirteen months and Earl aged twenty one months,
Speaker 1: both of whom had been living in baby homes since
Speaker 1: they were born. In this program, each student in the
Speaker 1: practice houses acted as a so called baby manager. For
Speaker 1: one week. She was on duty with the baby's care
Speaker 1: between six and eight each morning and four thirty to
Speaker 1: six each night. The baby manager was generally in charge
Speaker 1: and was responsible for the baby's laundry and for keeping
Speaker 1: up with documentation, including recording all of the day's tasks
Speaker 1: and monitoring the baby's progress. The other three or four
Speaker 1: students rotated through the rest of the day's childcare tasks,
Speaker 1: depending on how their own class schedules and commitments worked out.
Speaker 1: There was one brief window each weekday when all of
Speaker 1: the students were in the same class, at which point
Speaker 1: a faculty member or a home X student who wasn't
Speaker 1: living in the house would come and fill in. Both
Speaker 1: Russell and Earl arrived at the university with some health
Speaker 1: issues that were associated with their time in the baby home.
Speaker 1: Both of them were described as listless and underweight, with
Speaker 1: anemia and ricketts. Russell also had exema, but at the
Speaker 1: end of their two quarters in the practice houses, they
Speaker 1: had gained weight, they were showing fewer signs of nervousness
Speaker 1: and distress. Students reported that the babies became more active
Speaker 1: and more engaged. Their rickets had been resolved, and Russell's
Speaker 1: exema was also under control. The A doctor who examined
Speaker 1: both babies at the end of their time at the
Speaker 1: university noted quote, the improvement in the condition of these
Speaker 1: children speaks highly for your cooperative motherhood. Other programs followed
Speaker 1: from there pretty quickly. Survey found that of the seventy
Speaker 1: seven practice houses operating in the US, sixteen had a
Speaker 1: child in residence. By the time these programs were phased
Speaker 1: out about fifty colleges had brought babies into their practice houses.
Speaker 1: Although this episode and our earlier one on the Department
Speaker 1: of Home Economics has focused on the United States, there
Speaker 1: were practice houses with practice babies elsewhere as well. For example,
Speaker 1: the University of Manitoba had thirty three practice babies in
Speaker 1: its home economics houses between the years nineteen thirty and
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty. The details of exactly how these programs worked
Speaker 1: varied from school to school. For example, by the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, Iowa State College had six practice houses for
Speaker 1: home economics students. Babies stayed in one of the houses
Speaker 1: for a quarter, and each group of eight students lived
Speaker 1: in the practice house for half of a quarter. Each
Speaker 1: student had primary care of the baby for about four
Speaker 1: to five consecutive days, so by the end of each quarter,
Speaker 1: each baby had been cared for by sixteen women in sequence.
Speaker 1: From the beginning, there was some debate within the home
Speaker 1: economics field about whether this was an effective way to
Speaker 1: teach mothercraft and whether having so many caregivers could harm
Speaker 1: the babies in some way, But in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: public opinions started to shift as well. In nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: Estern Illinois State Teachers College became the focus of a
Speaker 1: huge national controversy surrounding a practice baby known as David North,
Speaker 1: who was only the second baby brought to the school.
Speaker 1: Dr Ruth Schmallhausen had been hired at the college's Home
Speaker 1: Economics department in nineteen fifty and the school's first practice
Speaker 1: houses came into use in nineteen fifty two. They had
Speaker 1: actually been authorized before World War Two, but because of
Speaker 1: the war, they were delayed. When the schools started looking
Speaker 1: for practice babies, Smallhousen went to Dr Roman Haremsky of
Speaker 1: the Illinois State Child Welfare Division for help. However, Harensky
Speaker 1: had some concerns about this program's potential impact on the children,
Speaker 1: and he refused to be involved in this, so Schmallhausen
Speaker 1: worked directly with families in the community. Eastern Illinois State
Speaker 1: Teachers Colleges first practice baby was Margaret Anne North, whose
Speaker 1: mother had been referred to the school by the Salvation
Speaker 1: Army Home in Chicago. Margaret Anne's time as a p
Speaker 1: actus baby seemed to have passed without raising any eyebrows,
Speaker 1: but in nineteen the college brought in David North, who
Speaker 1: had been born pre term and whose mother was unmarried.
Speaker 1: She had arranged for the school to take care of
Speaker 1: him temporarily so that she could return to work, also
Speaker 1: arranging for visitation rights and regular updates about his progress. However,
Speaker 1: after an article about the program ran in a local newspaper,
Speaker 1: Haramsky was livid, both because of his concerns about it
Speaker 1: and because the school had done all this without his involvement.
Speaker 1: He was also concerned that there was no father figure
Speaker 1: involved in baby David's life. He ordered Child Welfare Services
Speaker 1: to investigate. During all this, David's pediatrician, Dr William Kahite commented, quote,
Speaker 1: the infant boy is in excellent physical condition. He has
Speaker 1: received physical care which is far superior to that given
Speaker 1: in the best Foundling homes and in most American homes. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: he has loved, which is the basic fact in the
Speaker 1: healthy developmental environment. This child has benefited tremendously from the
Speaker 1: good start he is receiving and will show it for
Speaker 1: years to come. On January twelfth, ninety four, this became
Speaker 1: a national news story, with most of the coverage about
Speaker 1: it being pretty negative. Reporting focused on the evolving fields
Speaker 1: of psychiatry and mental health. And on concerns that women
Speaker 1: were abandoning their so called natural role as wives and
Speaker 1: mothers in order to join the workforce. Time magazine ran
Speaker 1: an article about this with a photo of two students
Speaker 1: feeding David, together with the caption quote David North and
Speaker 1: mother's heaven knows how many neuroses. Ultimately, Child Welfare Services
Speaker 1: found that since this had been arranged privately between David's
Speaker 1: mother and the school and there was no adoption involved,
Speaker 1: it wasn't within their jurisdiction to intervene. Eventually, the furor
Speaker 1: died down and David finished his time as a practice baby,
Speaker 1: and then a new practice ba be Amy Norse, arrived
Speaker 1: in the fall of n with no public outcry. The
Speaker 1: furor over David North was tied to an evolving understanding
Speaker 1: of how an infant's early life affected their later mental
Speaker 1: and emotional health and development, which is one part of
Speaker 1: why this practice ended. You will get more into that
Speaker 1: research after a sponsor break. As we noted earlier, opinions
Speaker 1: were divided about how best to teach practical mothercraft in
Speaker 1: American home economics schools. I mean that that debate went
Speaker 1: all the way back to when this subject was first introduced.
Speaker 1: People questioned whether bringing babies into practice houses was the
Speaker 1: most practical or effective way to teach, and they questioned
Speaker 1: whether it was harmful or exploitive. Along with things like
Speaker 1: budgets and logistics and other practical issues. These concerns were
Speaker 1: some of the reasons why not every home economics program
Speaker 1: sought out babies for its practice homes. Articles and primary
Speaker 1: source documents from these programs are full of anecdotes about
Speaker 1: the experience from the students and teachers points of view,
Speaker 1: and not all of them are positive. Some students talked
Speaker 1: about feeling overwhelmed or even terrified when they were expected
Speaker 1: to care for a baby. In articles about her novel
Speaker 1: The Irresistible Henry House, author Lisa Grinwald mentioned getting an
Speaker 1: email from one home economics graduate who quit her program saying, quote,
Speaker 1: you can't treat children this way. But other anecdotes are
Speaker 1: more positive and documents from the time students described the
Speaker 1: programs as beneficial to their education, everything from giving them
Speaker 1: practical mothering experience to strengthening their connection to their own mothers,
Speaker 1: to the baby's presence in the practice house transforming other
Speaker 1: domestic work from a drudgery to a joy. A nine
Speaker 1: article in Successful Farming quotes an instructor from the University
Speaker 1: of Minnesota as observed ring that the program allowed students
Speaker 1: to do kind of a trial run of the often
Speaker 1: frazzled first few weeks of parenthood in a more controlled
Speaker 1: setting with some experienced supervision. Anecdotally, the program could be
Speaker 1: beneficial for the babies as well. Archival documents from programs
Speaker 1: all over North America described babies brought into the programs
Speaker 1: from institutions where they had been deprived, babies who were malnourished,
Speaker 1: with conditions like anemia and ricketts as we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: who just weren't very active or expressive, and who seemed
Speaker 1: disconnected from the people around them, and then after their
Speaker 1: time in the practice house, the babies were placed with
Speaker 1: adoptive families, now apparently happy and healthy. There are numerous
Speaker 1: reports of former practice babies being particularly sought after by
Speaker 1: families who wanted to adopt because they were considered to
Speaker 1: have been treated with the most up to date and
Speaker 1: sophisticated care. In the nineteen fifties, though, the general concerns
Speaker 1: that babies might be harmed by all this started to
Speaker 1: be reflected in some psychological research. Most notably, psychologist Henry
Speaker 1: Harlow did a series of experiments with baby reesless monkeys
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen fifties. He separated the monkeys from
Speaker 1: their mothers and then placed them in enclosures with sort
Speaker 1: of surrogate mothers, one of them made out of wire
Speaker 1: and the other covered in a soft terry cloth. He
Speaker 1: made a lot of observations from this setup, like if
Speaker 1: a monkey was in an enclosure with both types of
Speaker 1: quote mothers and Harlow put a scary wind up toy
Speaker 1: in there, the monkey would go to the soft mother
Speaker 1: for comfort, not the wiry one. This was true even
Speaker 1: if the wire mother dispensed milk and the soft mother didn't.
Speaker 1: And the monkeys that had no soft mother in their
Speaker 1: enclosure behaved differently than the ones who did. They would
Speaker 1: scream or throw themselves on the floor if something scary happened,
Speaker 1: while monkeys with a terry cloth mother seemed more resilient
Speaker 1: and able to soothe themselves. Harlow's work folded into a
Speaker 1: body of research that increasing He suggested that a person's
Speaker 1: experience and infancy, including love, comfort, security, and stability, affected them.
Speaker 1: Later on, some of this research involved children who had
Speaker 1: been raised in institutional settings where they were truly deprived
Speaker 1: of care and affection, and it quickly became accepted that
Speaker 1: an infant whose early months were severely deprived would show
Speaker 1: signs like listlessness, poor sleep, and failure to maintain weight,
Speaker 1: even with a diet that seemed like it would be sufficient,
Speaker 1: so just a general failure to thrive. And older children
Speaker 1: issues included an inability to make close friendships or other
Speaker 1: strong relationships, lack of concentration, and a range of mood
Speaker 1: and behavioral disorders that came to be called attachment disorder. Naturally,
Speaker 1: people started to wonder whether these conclusions could also apply
Speaker 1: to practice baby programs. In general, practice babies got plenty
Speaker 1: of care, but that was from multiple people rather than
Speaker 1: one primary caregiver with whom the baby could develop a
Speaker 1: strong attachment. The first formal studies into this question actually
Speaker 1: started before Harlowe's research with monkeys, and December of nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three, a paper was published in the Journal of
Speaker 1: Experimental Education, the Tailing the Welfare of Practice Babies at
Speaker 1: the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts Hall
Speaker 1: Management Houses. Critics had questioned whether the children there could
Speaker 1: quote develop the necessary feeling of security under such circumstances,
Speaker 1: and the American Vocational Association had appointed a committee to investigate.
Speaker 1: This committee carried out an eight month study of the
Speaker 1: three children who had been practiced babies at the college
Speaker 1: between nineteen and nineteen nine, and then the four children
Speaker 1: who were there in nine nineteen thirty. They compared them
Speaker 1: to other children who were within two weeks of the
Speaker 1: same age and the same sex, and had been living
Speaker 1: in a boarding home or an orphanage. They also compared
Speaker 1: all of these children into control groups. These were children
Speaker 1: of the same age and sex who had been raised
Speaker 1: with their birth families in professional and non professional households.
Speaker 1: The assessors conducted a range of physical, mental, and psychological
Speaker 1: assessments and had parents and caregivers fill out questionnaires. They
Speaker 1: concluded that the practice babies as a group excelled in intelligence,
Speaker 1: motor development, language development, adaptive behavior, and personal social behavior.
Speaker 1: They performed slightly better than both control groups in their
Speaker 1: motor development and slightly better than the children from non
Speaker 1: professional homes in their personal social behavior. They were slightly
Speaker 1: behind the control groups and language development and adaptive behavior,
Speaker 1: but they quote compared favorably in physical health and emotional stability.
Speaker 1: The researchers only had seven children to evaluate, and some
Speaker 1: of the measurements involved were really pretty subjective, but overall quote,
Speaker 1: an analysis of the investigator's notes gave no evidence that
Speaker 1: the home management house children suffered emotionally because of their
Speaker 1: apparently complex social situation. They compared very favorably with the
Speaker 1: control groups and emotional stability, they were less timid in
Speaker 1: the presence of strangers, They cried less during the medical examinations.
Speaker 1: There was less thumbsucking and nail biting among them. The
Speaker 1: home management house children were noticeably superior in physical health.
Speaker 1: No ailments of any kind were registered against them. While
Speaker 1: the investigations were in progress, more research was conducted starting
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties. Fully possible there was other research
Speaker 1: in the interim, but the nineteen fifties research was what
Speaker 1: I found doing this. In nineteen fifty five, Iowa State
Speaker 1: College and the Iowa Children's Home Society got a grant
Speaker 1: from the Elizabeth McCormick Memorial Fund to conduct a longitudinal
Speaker 1: study into how quote, non continuous mothering and home management
Speaker 1: houses affected babies personalities. They studied about forty baybies who
Speaker 1: had lived in the Whole Economics houses, following up with
Speaker 1: babies who had already been through the program, and also
Speaker 1: doing baseline assessments of new babies as they came in.
Speaker 1: The practice babies were Group A and had lived in
Speaker 1: the home management house for about twelve weeks during their
Speaker 1: first six months of life. Group B were infants of
Speaker 1: the same agent sex who had spent a comparable amount
Speaker 1: of time in foster care before being adopted. Groups were
Speaker 1: also the same agent sex and had lived with their
Speaker 1: birth families since being born. Because they wanted to study
Speaker 1: only the effects of non continuous mothering and they didn't
Speaker 1: want it to be influenced by other possible contributing factors,
Speaker 1: this team excluded children who had congenital disabilities or who
Speaker 1: had been born prematurely, and then they did a battery
Speaker 1: of tests when the babies were six months, nine months,
Speaker 1: twelve months, eighteen months, and twenty four months old. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one, the team published non Continuous Mothering in
Speaker 1: Infancy and Development in Later Childhood in the journal Child Development.
Speaker 1: Lead author D. Bruce Gardner referenced the ongoing longitudinal study
Speaker 1: as well as efforts to track down older children who
Speaker 1: had been previously living in these management homes. Of sixty
Speaker 1: two children between the ages of nine and seventeen who
Speaker 1: had been through the program, twenty nine were still living
Speaker 1: in Iowa. That was Group A. They compared those twenty
Speaker 1: nine children to children living in the same communities who
Speaker 1: were of the same age and sex but had been
Speaker 1: raised in their birth family Group B. They also factored
Speaker 1: in things like socioeconomic status, parents, education, and the children's
Speaker 1: intelligence when making these comparisons. Then, the researchers administered a
Speaker 1: number of tests, including the California Test of Personality and
Speaker 1: the Iowa Every Pupil Test of Basic Skills, to these
Speaker 1: two groups of children, and they found little to no
Speaker 1: difference between the two groups. The difference between their quote
Speaker 1: personal adjustment scores was close enough to the threshold of
Speaker 1: significant that it was noted as something that should not
Speaker 1: be were looked, but it also was something that they
Speaker 1: couldn't really say was conclusive. They also had a separate
Speaker 1: psychologist conduct a study to evaluate whether the children's responses
Speaker 1: to frustrations were healthy or mature. In the twenty nine
Speaker 1: older children, the response from the child in Group A
Speaker 1: was considered healthier twelve times, and in group B seventeen times.
Speaker 1: So there was a slight difference in favor of the
Speaker 1: children who had been raised in their birth families, but
Speaker 1: again not one that met the threshold of significance the
Speaker 1: overall conclusion quote In none of these variables could differences
Speaker 1: be attributed to the factor of discontinuity of mothering in
Speaker 1: early childhood. Tracking down the final results of that longitudinal
Speaker 1: study proved to be a little trickier. I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time going through old journals um looking for
Speaker 1: like a final comprehensive result. In nineteen sixty four, Physical
Speaker 1: Status and Non Continuous Mothering was published in the Journal
Speaker 1: of Home Economics, and that discussed only of the children's
Speaker 1: physical measurements. That particular paper found no differences between the
Speaker 1: two groups that could be attributed to their their time
Speaker 1: in a in a Practice baby program, but other papers
Speaker 1: summarizing the work characterized it as showing no meaningful differences
Speaker 1: that would suggest that the non continuous mothering was harmful
Speaker 1: to the babies. So again, these are small studies looking
Speaker 1: only at children who lived at Iowa State College, usually
Speaker 1: for twelve weeks, usually in their first six months of life.
Speaker 1: So you can't necessarily apply these findings to other programs,
Speaker 1: which may have kept children for longer or shorter periods,
Speaker 1: or earlier or later in their life. At the same time,
Speaker 1: all this research and the general concerns about whether these
Speaker 1: babies would have been better off in a home with
Speaker 1: just one mother were informed by perceptions of how families
Speaker 1: and motherhood should work and specifically what women should be.
Speaker 1: The idea that children should live in a small family
Speaker 1: unit with one parent being their primary caregiver, and that
Speaker 1: parents specifically being their mother was seen as the normal
Speaker 1: standard that families should aspire to, but that is definitely
Speaker 1: not universal. For example, research into societies that are more
Speaker 1: communal or more likely to have large, extended families with
Speaker 1: many family members all contributing to a baby's care, that
Speaker 1: research doesn't suggest that those other types of families cause
Speaker 1: attachment disorders. As this research was happening the same societal
Speaker 1: changes that were shifting the field of home economics, we're
Speaker 1: also leading to the end of practice houses and practice babies.
Speaker 1: In addition to changing expectations related to gender and work,
Speaker 1: ideas around parenting were also changing. There was a move
Speaker 1: away from the strictly measured, scheduled, very scientific idea of
Speaker 1: mothercraft to a more relaxed and intuitive model illustrated by
Speaker 1: Benjamin's Box. The Common Sense Book of Baby and Childcare,
Speaker 1: which was first published in eight It's first chapter, which
Speaker 1: is called Trust Yourself, starts off quote you know more
Speaker 1: than you think you do. So we know very little
Speaker 1: about the adult lives of people who spent part of
Speaker 1: their infancy in a practice house. Because of confidentiality rules
Speaker 1: and sealed adoption records and attitudes about adoption in previous decades.
Speaker 1: It's possible that there are people living today who were
Speaker 1: in these practice baby programs and don't actually know about it. However,
Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties, the stories of two different former
Speaker 1: practice babies made headlines. One was Donald Aldinger, whose reunion
Speaker 1: with at least four home X students at Cedarcrest College
Speaker 1: in Allentown, Pennsylvania was covered in The Morning Call in
Speaker 1: nineteen three. Aldinger had been declared abandoned shortly after his
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six births because his mother was incarcerated for
Speaker 1: vagrancy at the time. He was known as Donnie. At
Speaker 1: the cedar Crest practice house, Aldinger was placed with a
Speaker 1: foster family at the age of thirteen months and raised
Speaker 1: on a dairy farm with many many other foster children
Speaker 1: who came and win Aldinger was there until the age
Speaker 1: of seventeen. After meeting some of his practice mothers, he
Speaker 1: was quoted as saying, for the first time in my life,
Speaker 1: I feel like everybody else who had a family. Articles
Speaker 1: about his experience, framens is like having reconnected with somebody
Speaker 1: in a generally positive experience. Shirley Kirkman's story, published in
Speaker 1: Oregon in is almost the opposite. Kirkman had been a
Speaker 1: practice baby in the nineteen thirties at Oregon State College
Speaker 1: before being adopted. She described this home as a lonely
Speaker 1: one with her mother quote chili and her father addicted
Speaker 1: to alcohol. In terms of her time in the practice house,
Speaker 1: she was quoted as saying, quote, I'm sure I got
Speaker 1: excellent care. That's not the hurtful part. It's that I
Speaker 1: was used. Kirkman had thirty four students involved in her care,
Speaker 1: and she described her experiences as an infant as leaving
Speaker 1: her una to love and quote dead inside. In addition
Speaker 1: to the book The Irresistible Henry House, which we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: there's another work of fiction about this that's related, which
Speaker 1: is Carol Shields The Republic of Love. And if you're
Speaker 1: still interested in more, there is also a play which
Speaker 1: is called Borrowed Babies, and that was written by Jennifer Blackmer.
Speaker 1: In a weird twist of googling, UM, I learned about
Speaker 1: this play by trying to figure out whether my grandmother's
Speaker 1: home mech program had a practice house, which it did.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it did while she was in
Speaker 1: school there because the article that I found talking about
Speaker 1: the practice out there was from the forties and she graduated.
Speaker 1: UM and the uh that uh that college had put
Speaker 1: on a performance of this show, and like that was
Speaker 1: how I wound up finding it by about them by
Speaker 1: coincidence doing a performance of this show. So that is
Speaker 1: the practice Babies, I uh. I. A lot of articles,
Speaker 1: like just popular articles, not necessarily academic articles that have
Speaker 1: been written about it in the last ten years have
Speaker 1: a just a horrified tone and describe it with words
Speaker 1: like dystopian um. And there's a lot of reason to
Speaker 1: be upset about conditions during a lot of this period,
Speaker 1: like so many of these children were living in experiences
Speaker 1: that that were truly deprived and that there's so many
Speaker 1: stories of people being forced into adoption because they were
Speaker 1: not married, um, and all of that to me is
Speaker 1: a lot more troubling than the practice house component of it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I also have a listener mail. Fabulous listener mail is
Speaker 1: from Jess. Jess says, Hi, Holly and Tracy, thank you
Speaker 1: for doing an episode about bees and beekeeping. I'm headed
Speaker 1: into my second season of beekeeping and I'm up to
Speaker 1: four hives this year, all of which are the Langstroth type.
Speaker 1: I'm working with a couple of low goal farmers to
Speaker 1: place hives as the years go on to better help
Speaker 1: their crops out. I'm anticipating getting upwards of a hundred
Speaker 1: pounds of honey this year. Once we all have offices
Speaker 1: to go to again, I'll have to send you some honey.
Speaker 1: I did have one possible correction in relation to the
Speaker 1: use of smokers and hives. While they may have been
Speaker 1: intended to disburse the bees initially, it's not that effective
Speaker 1: in doing so. Primarily, using smoking hives interrupts their ability
Speaker 1: to communicate since they use pheromones to do that. Basically,
Speaker 1: if one bee is anxious about a keeper being in
Speaker 1: the hive, it prevents that from spreading through the hive,
Speaker 1: keeping the bees calm and easy to work with and around.
Speaker 1: I laughed about the privacy wall the bees made, but
Speaker 1: it is possible that they may have done that. Bees
Speaker 1: create a product called properis, which is basically be glue.
Speaker 1: It is a sticky, water resistant residue that bees can
Speaker 1: and do cote the inside of their hive with to
Speaker 1: help prevent water from getting in. Thanks again for keeping
Speaker 1: me entertained. I've attached some pictures and a video of
Speaker 1: dropping a new hive this year after a split, which
Speaker 1: is the manual version of a swarm. Thanks Jess, Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for sending this note, Jess. UM. One
Speaker 1: of the things that I did not get into detail
Speaker 1: about in that episode was that while today most of
Speaker 1: the things that are used in smokers are not considered
Speaker 1: to be harmful to bees and it does have a
Speaker 1: pacifying effect UM, earlier in history some of the things
Speaker 1: that people have burned when dealing with bees UM have
Speaker 1: been things that were a lot more harmful UM, and
Speaker 1: in some cases we're were things that when burned, would
Speaker 1: like really irritate or even kill the bees, which is
Speaker 1: of course not done today. UM. And as I as
Speaker 1: I was trying to UH to like narrow down the
Speaker 1: immense history of beekeeping. That was one of the things
Speaker 1: that I did not really get into you as much.
Speaker 1: I could not specifically say whether when I was talking
Speaker 1: about using smoke to drive the bees out, UM, whether
Speaker 1: that was correct or not. Because I've rented that textbook
Speaker 1: and it has gone back, it is no longer something
Speaker 1: I can go back to to check the deals without
Speaker 1: renting it again. UM. If physical libraries were open, I
Speaker 1: could have gotten a physical copy from UH from a
Speaker 1: fancy university library, but couldnt anyway. So UH, that is
Speaker 1: a little tidbit about the smoking and the beeves. UM.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to write to us, whether it's just
Speaker 1: for basic listener or mail, or if if you're interested
Speaker 1: in having a question in a in a Q and
Speaker 1: a episode that we're planning in the relatively near future.
Speaker 1: So just a note. We're a history podcast at I
Speaker 1: heart radio dot com and then we're also all over
Speaker 1: social media at missed in History. That is where you'll
Speaker 1: find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you can
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Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
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