Molly Ladd-Taylor: Fixing the Poor: Eugenic Sterilization and Child Welfare in the Twentieth Century

In Fixing the Poor: Eugenic Sterilization and Child Welfare in the Twentieth Century, Molly Ladd-Taylor argues that eugenic sterilization programs reflected cultural attitudes about welfare dependency, disability, and sexuality, attitudes assumed as much by social workers, doctors, and average citizens as eugenics experts and government forces. Ladd-Taylor founds her argument in scholarly research of eugenic sterilization as part of Minnesota’s public welfare system. Rather than examining the worst of eugenic sterilization, the author focuses on a state where sterilization operated within a progressive child welfare system, effectively denouncing any false ideals readers previously held about how society has historically cared for and regarded dependent children. Her research draws from the accounts of those who imposed sterilization and those who experienced it to analyze how the prejudicial process developed and became routine in Minnesota. Ladd-Taylor’s analysis is as shocking and disturbing as it is legitimate and critical to understanding the history of eugenic sterilization and child welfare in the twentieth century. …