Constructing the Pediatric Nurse: Eugenics and the Gendering of Infant Hygiene in Early Twentieth Century Berlin

Abstract

This article explores the connections between infant mortality, eugenic thinking, and the professional development of pediatricians and pediatric nurses in the early twentieth century. It argues that the goal of the physicians affiliated with Germany's National Hospital to Combat Infant Mortality was to create and disseminate a centrallycontrolled message about infant hygiene, and to transform infant care into a medicallymanaged event. The deeply gendered ways in which both the hygienic program, and the medical division of labor were constructed, had the ambiguous result of expanding training opportunities for pediatric nurses, while at the same time, severely limiting their professional autonomy.