I met Pinkie just as I was nearing the end of my M. Louise Carpenter Gloeckner, M.D. Summer Research Fellowship at the Drexel University College of Medicine’s Legacy Center. I had already spent several weeks combing through the archives of Hahnemann University and Woman’s Medical College, looking for details about the history of doctors’ wives,… Read more →
Tag: Children
“What Must That Sound Like?”: The Trauma of Family Separation
On June 22, 2018, US Representative Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California’s 33rd District, stood on the floor of the House of Representatives to demand action regarding the children in “Tender Age” detention shelters as a result of the Trump Administration’s new immigration policy of separating children from their parents at the US/Mexican border. In… Read more →
Climate Calamity: Lice, Typhus, and Gender in Mexico
By tucking themselves away in the corners of beds and the folds of clothes, insects have long evolved alongside humans. Mites, ticks, fleas, bedbugs, lice—they all feast happily on blood, leaving humans with the itchy, irritating aftermath. In the first half of the twentieth century, rural parasitic insects gained a foothold in the largely agriculture-based… Read more →
Pornography on the Playground
When I was 19, I had a summer job supervising a playground. It was a pretty lame job. It paid $5 an hour, and it was outside in the sticky summer heat. The hours alternated between utter boredom and the kind of excitement I’d rather avoid – breaking up shouting matches, figuring out whether the… Read more →
Me, Me, Me: Millennials, Midwives, and the Ongoing History of Female Self-Care
Several articles from reputable sources such as NPR and The Guardian have recently focused on the millennial generation’s supposed obsession with self-care. On the surface, this trend seems to fit nicely with the stereotypes that millennials are entitled and narcissistic. Looking closer, however, reveals that instead of seeing self-care as a generational issue, we should… Read more →
The Baby as Scientist and the Parent as Gardener: Alison Gopnik’s Inspiring Views on Childhood
There’s nothing better than kicking back with a light read in the warm months of the year. Summer is a great time to catch up on new books and reread old favorites. So this summer, Nursing Clio is bringing you a Beach Read series! Lighter than monographs, we’ve got a mix of fiction, pop culture,… Read more →
Kids and Science: An Interview with Rebecca Onion
Rebecca Onion is perhaps best known to our readers as a staff writer at Slate, where she started The Vault blog in November 2012 and co-hosted a podcast called “The History of American Slavery” for Slate Academy. Rebecca holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, and her first book… Read more →
Learning to Love Science: Rebecca Onion’s Innocent Experiments and the History of an American Cultural Tradition
As a child, did your parents encourage you to participate in a science fair? Perhaps you received a chemistry set or model of the solar system for your birthday. Were you, like me, completely and utterly obsessed with dinosaurs to the point that you begged your parents for books on paleontology and tried to plow… Read more →
More Than Sponges: Children’s Letters to Presidents and “Go Back to Africa”
Standing Rock. #BlackLivesMatter. Periods for Pence. Women’s March on Washington. Political demonstrations have dominated the headlines this year. With the startling outcome of this year’s presidential election, many scholars and activists believe that political protests will define the next four years under the Trump administration. The act of protest has a long and complicated history,… Read more →
A Childless Historian of Children: The Choice Not to Parent
I am a historian of women, sexuality, medicine, and childhood. As I write my dissertation on the history of sex education in Progressive Era America, I am constantly thinking about parenthood, family formation, and how adults try to teach children about sex and reproduction. And I do this work as someone who never plans to… Read more →