The social hygiene movement : from middle class reformers to professional prescription 1880-1919

The purpose of this study was to examine the possibility of a connection between the emergence of a twentieth century concept of adolescence and the effort to make sex education widely available. The means used to investigate the question was through the social hygiene movement whose dual purpose was to eradicate prostitution and to place sex education in the public schools. The considered extended from 1880~1919, a period when there was a great deal of reform activity which was middle class in origin and professional in leadership.

Sources were mainly primary materials in the form of advice books, popular magazines, and professional journals, especially Social Hygiene, the official organ of the social hygiene movement, and Pedagogical Seminary, an advocate of sex education dedicated almost exclusively to child study. G. Stanley Hall, Winfield Scott Hall, and Michael Vincent O'Shea, three well-known proponents of sex education, were selected for closer analysis. Their attitudes represent the spectrum of proponents' views, which ranged from radical to a more conservative outlook.

This thesis concludes that there was a link between the emergence of the twentieth century concept of adolescence, similar to the present day definition of adolescence, and the capacity to reproduce. It is clear that the origins of the sex education movement relied upon the emphasis placed on budding sexuality. Sex education became the concern of professionals who combined with other professionals engaged in a war on prostitution under the auspices of the American Social Hygiene Association in 1913. Although the two groups shared both rhetoric and goals, their accomplishments were limited to campaigns to eradicate prostitution while proposals to place sex education in the public schools were defeated. The outbreak of World War I stimulated attempts to eliminate prostitution and diverted the focus of sex education from the public schools to the armed services. As a result, the sex education movement declined precipitously.