Behind many of the 20th-century revolutions in medicine, social welfare, and consumer culture were … babies.

In a discussion of her new book Babies Made Us Modern: How Infants Brought Americans into the Twentieth Century, Rutgers University historian Janet Golden examines how America’s modern era was propelled, in part, by a quest to keep its youngest and smallest citizens alive, disease-free, well fed, and happy. As babies’ lives were transformed, families became more
accepting of scientific medicine and new theories of psychological development and more open to government advice and programs.

Golden is a professor at Rutgers who specializes in the history of medicine, childhood, and women and in American social history. Her presentation is co-sponsored by the University of Kansas Medical Center and its Department of History and Philosophy of Medicine.