"With skill and imagination, Rima Apple tracks the evolution of scientific advice to mothers through a prodigious array of sources. The book honors the rich particularity of women's experiences and thoughtfully examines the relationships between mothers and medical experts."-Barbara Melosh, author of Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption

Parenting today is virtually synonymous with worry. We want to ensure that our children are healthy, that they get a good education, and that they grow up to be able to cope with the challenges of modern life. In our anxiety, we are keenly aware of our inability to know what is best for our children. When should we toilet train? What is the best way to encourage a fussy child to eat? How should we protect our children from disease and injury?

Before the nineteenth century, maternal instinct-a mother's "natural know-how"-was considered the only tool necessary for effective childrearing. Over the past two hundred years, however, science has entered the realm of motherhood in increasingly significant ways. With each generation, psychologists, health experts, and physicians introduce new theories about the most appropriate way to raise children. These ideas are circulated through a wealth of public health pamphlets, books, popular magazines, and even films.

In Perfect Motherhood, Rima D. Apple shows how the growing belief that mothers need to be savvy about the latest scientific directives has shifted the role of childrearer away from the mother and toward the professional establishment. Apple, however, does not argue that mothers' increasing reliance on expert advice has changed childrearing for the worse. Instead, she shows how most women today are finding ways to negotiate among the abundance of scientific recommendations, their own knowledge, and the reality of their daily lives.

Rima D. Apple is Vilas Life Cycle Professor in the school of human ecology and the women's studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Redefining Motherhood
Chapter 1: "Follow the lead of physicians"
Motherhood in the late nineteenth century
Chapter 2: "Mamma's scientific--she knows all the laws"
Motherhood in the early twentieth century
Chapter 3: "Follow my instructions exactly"
Experts to mothers in the interwar period and during World War II
Chapter 4: "The modern way"
Mothers, c. 1920-1945
Chapter 5: "Now I know that an authority has the same opinion as mine."
Motherhood in the post-war period
Chapter 6: "Use it to guide, not to dictate"
Motherhood in the late twentieth century
Conclusion: "I wanted to do it right"
Notes
Index