Paul Popenoe 982090 224079042 2008-07-07T05:40:19Z Lightbot 7178666 Units/dates/other [[Image:Paul-Bowman-Popenoe-1915.jpg|right|thumb|Paul B. Popenoe in 1915.]] '''Paul Bowman Popenoe''' ([[October 16]], [[1888]] - [[June 19]], [[1979]]) was an [[United States|American]] [[agricultural explorer]], [[Eugenics|eugenicist]], influential advocate of the [[compulsory sterilization]] of the mentally ill and the mentally disabled, and the father of [[marriage counseling]] in the United States. == Biography == Popenoe was born in [[Kansas]] in 1888 and grew up in [[California]], the son of a pioneer of the [[avocado]] industry. After spending some time at a university, Popenoe became an [[agricultural explorer]], collecting [[date palm|date]] specimens for his father's nursery along with his younger [[botany|botanist]] brother [[Wilson Popenoe]], and published his first book ''Date Growing in the Old World and the New'' in 1913. In 1929 he received an honorary degree from [[Occidental College]] (after which he commonly referred to himself as "Dr. Popenoe"). In the mid-1910s Popenoe became interested in human breeding, editing the ''Journal of Heredity'' from 1913 until 1917, with a special attention to [[eugenics]] and [[social hygiene]]. During [[World War I]] he left the journal, joined the staff of the [[United States Army Sanitary Corps]], and while overseas was exposed to [[Germany|German]] marriage-consultation centers established by the [[Prussian Social Welfare Ministry]] for the purpose of promoting procreation. After the war, Popenoe returned to the United States and began working with [[E.S. Gosney]], a wealthy California financier, and the [[Human Betterment Foundation]] to promote eugenic policies in the state of California. In 1909, California had enacted its first [[compulsory sterilization]] law which allowed for sterilization of the [[mental illness|mentally ill]] and [[mental retardation|mentally retarded]] in its state [[psychiatric hospital]]s. With Popenoe as his scientific workhorse, Gosney intended to study the sterilization work being done in California and use it to advocate sterilization in other parts of the country and in the world at large. This would culminate in a number of works, most prominently their joint-authored ''Sterilization for Human Betterment: A Summary of Results of 6,000 Operations in California, 1909-1929'' in 1929. This work would become a popular text for the advocacy of sterilization, as it purported to be an objective study of the operations in the state and concluded, not surprisingly, that rigorous programs for the sterilization of the "unfit" were beneficial to all involved, including the sterilized patients. The work would later be cited by the [[Racial Hygiene]] theorists in [[Nazi Germany]] to justify Germany's own sterilization program, and was one of the first American books translated into [[German (language)|German]] by the Nazi government. Eventually the Nazis would sterilize over 400,000 people under their sterilization laws; in the USA the total would be around 65,000, about a third in California. By 1918, Popenoe had become well-established enough to co-author a popular college textbook on eugenics (''Applied Eugenics'', with [[Roswell Johnson]]). During the 1930s he served as a member of the [[American Eugenics Society]]'s board of directors along with [[Charles B. Davenport]], [[Henry H. Goddard]], [[Madison Grant]], [[Harry H. Laughlin]], and Gosney, among others). Along with his advocacy of sterilization programs, Popenoe was also interested in using the principles of Prussian marriage-consultation services for eugenic purposes. Aghast at the [[divorce]] rate which boomed during the [[Great Depression]], Popenoe came to the conclusion that "unfit" families would reproduce out of wedlock, but truly "fit" families would need to be married to reproduce. Marriage counseling could keep "fit" families together, and advise them on the importance of "good heredity", and so Popenoe opened the first United States "[[marriage clinic]]" in [[Los Angeles]] in 1930, the [[American Institute of Family Relations]]. {{Rquote|right|One of the greatest dangers in the use of sterilization is that overzealous persons who have not thought through the subject will look at it as a cure-all, and apply it to all sorts of ends for which it is not adapted. It is only one of many measures the state can and must use to protect itself from [[Multiracial|racial deterioration]].<ref>[http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-3reUu-YbicC&pg=PA59&lpg=PA59&dq=one+of+the+greatest+dangers+in+the+use+of+sterilization+is+that+overzealous&source=web&ots=XIhWhzJKF6&sig=Brq752L1DRaN16KWN9IlE9N5p-I&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result Sterilization for Human Betterment]</ref>| Paul Popence, E. S. Gosney|Sterilization for Human Betterment}} For a while, Popenoe's two major interests, sterilization and marriage counseling, ran parallel, and he published extensively on both topics. Over time he became more prominent in the field of counseling, however, reaching his peak when he authored ''[[Ladies Home Journal]]'''s most popular serial of all time, "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" As public interest in eugenics waned, Popenoe focused more of his energies into marriage counseling, and by the time of the public rejection of eugenics at the end of [[World War II]], with the revelation of the Nazi [[the Holocaust|Holocaust]] atrocities, Popenoe had thoroughly redefined himself as primarily a marriage counselor (which by that time had lost most of its explicit eugenic overtones). However his family focuses -- primarily concerned with preserving traditional roles of [[masculinity]], [[heterosexuality]], and arguing for preserving of strict racial and class boundaries in reproduction -- can be interpreted as being veiled extensions of his original eugenic ideas. Popenoe's approach to marriage counseling fell out of favor in the 1960s with the popularity of [[feminism]] and the [[sexual revolution]]. Popenoe died in 1979, convinced that civilization was still on the verge of collapse due to poor breeding and poor social mores. The archives of the Human Betterment Foundation are in Special Collections at [[Caltech]] in [[Pasadena, California|Pasadena]]. == See also == *[[Eugenics]] *[[Compulsory sterilization]] *[[Marriage counseling]] == References == *Anton, Mike, "Forced Sterilization Once Seen as Path to a Better World" ''Los Angeles Times'' (16 July 2003). *Gosney, E.S. and Paul Popenoe, ''Sterilization for Human Betterment: A Summary of Results of 6,000 Operations in California, 1909-1929'' (New York: Macmillan, 1929). *Kline, Wendy, ''Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom'' (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). *Popenoe, Paul Bowman and Roswell Hill Johnson, ''Applied Eugenics'' (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1918). *Ladd-Taylor, Molly, "Eugenics, Sterilisation, and Modern Marriage in the USA: The Strange Career of Paul Popenoe," in ''Gender and History'', vol. 13, no. 2 (August 2001), 298-327. ==External links== *[http://www.archive.org/details/dategrowinginold00poperich ''Date Growing in the Old World and the New''] (1913), by Popenoe, courtesy of [[Internet Archive]]. *[http://www.archive.org/details/appliedeugenics00popeuoft ''Applied Eugenics''] (1918), by Popenoe and Roswell Johnson, courtesy of [[Internet Archive]]. *[http://www.archive.org/details/CanThisMarrageBeSaved ''Can This Marriage Be Saved''] (1953), by Popenoe, courtesy of [[Internet Archive]]. {{DEFAULTSORT:Popenoe, Paul}} [[Category:1888 births]] [[Category:1979 deaths]] [[Category:California activists]] [[Category:American eugenicists]] [[es:Paul Popenoe]]