Claiming legitimacy for female expertise in motherhood: The women of the Merrill -Palmer School in Detroit, 1918--1930.

Abstract

The standard explanation of the emergence of the child development and parent education fields in the early twentieth century describes a discipline created by male scholars, primarily psychologists, in response to a female-led movement for modern, scientific methods of motherhood. While broadly accurate, this story fails to take into account the struggle waged by some female scholars based in home economics, biochemistry, psychology, social work, public health, and other disciplines to claim legitimacy for their own particular expertise related to the study of children and families. This study of the founding years of the Merrill-Palmer School in Detroit, 1918 to 1930, provides the first extended analysis of the contributions made by the school and its core faculty---nearly all women---to the foundational research and organizational infrastructure used by the new fields. A free-standing institution with a generous endowment, unaffiliated with any college or university, the Merrill-Palmer School had unusual leeway to chart its own path. Under the direction of Edna Noble White, a leading home economist, the school established one of the first demonstration nursery schools in the country for the sake of providing study subjects for the researchers and students in residence. To an exceptional degree, the school's research agenda emphasized interdisciplinarity, an approach considered necessary for thorough study of the whole child. Female scholars in the 1920s faced limited professional prospects. Major academic women's associations, including the AAUW and the AREA, initially scorned the study of children as insufficiently serious, fearing to reinforce stereotypical expectations of women's interests. Yet White and her core faculty, the psychologist Helen Thompson Woolley and the biochemist Icie Gertrude Macy, saw important opportunities for academic women. Together, they helped reorient the priorities of both associations and facilitated networks sustaining the new fields. Using previously unexamined internal documents from the Merrill-Palmer School, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, and the Committee on Child Development of the National Research Council, along with published materials, I demonstrate that the Merrill-Palmer School, and the female scientists associated with it, played an indispensable, catalytic role in the creation and legitimization of the academic discipline devoted to child development.