Condom Nation: The U.S. Government's Sex Education Campaign from World War I to the Internet

by Alexandra M. Lord

Overview

Award for the Public Understanding of Science, 2010, British Medical Association's Board of ScienceFirst Prize, Popular Medicine, British Medical Association 2010 Book Awards

This history of the U.S. Public Health Service's efforts to educate Americans about sex makes clear why federally funded sex education has been haphazard, ad hoc, and often ineffectual.

Since launching its first sex ed program during World War I, the Public Health Service has dominated federal sex education efforts. Alexandra M. Lord draws on medical research, news reports, the expansive records of the Public Health Service, and interviews with former surgeons general to examine these efforts, from early initiatives through the administration of George W. Bush.

Giving equal voice to many groups in America—middle class, working class, black, white, urban, rural, Christian and non-Christian, scientist and theologian—Lord explores how federal officials struggled to create sex education programs that balanced cultural and public health concerns. She details how the Public Health Service left an indelible mark on federally and privately funded sex education programs through partnerships and initiatives with community organizations, public schools, foundations, corporations, and religious groups. In the process, Lord explains how tensions among these organizations and local, state, and federal officials often exacerbated existing controversies about sexual behavior. She also discusses why the Public Health Service's promotional tactics sometimes inadvertently fueled public fears about the federal government’s goals in promoting, or not promoting, sex education.

This thoroughly documented and compelling history of the U.S. Public Health Service's involvement in sex education provides new insights into one of the most contested subjects in America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801893803
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	01/01/2010
Edition description:	20
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Alexandra M. Lord received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She previously served as a historian with the U.S. Public Health Service.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
A Word on Terminology
1. In Bed with the Fed
2. The People's War, 1918–1926
3. Battling the Mad Dog, 1927–1940
4. Lifting the Shadow from the Land, 1941–1945
5. A False Sense of Security, 1946–1959
6. Making Love, Not Babies or Disease, 1960–1980
7. Telling It Like It Is, 1981–1988
8. Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder, 1989–2008
Epilogue
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

Lord, a public health historian, argues that the U.S. government has spent the past 90 years trying to give Americans frank sex education, but the power of religious groups and Americans’ own squeamishness in admitting to having premarital sex has thwarted public health officials for nearly all of that time.
—Publishers Weekly

Lively historical account . . . Lord is particularly enlightening about the ways in which race, religion and geography have produced an inconsistent approach to sex education.
—Susan Jacoby, Washington Post Book World

This fascinating history of the past hundred years of sex education in America explores public and private efforts to eradicate sexually transmitted disease and promote healthy sexual behavior: It also reveals our hang-up, Alexandra Lord observes: 'Americans' uneasiness with sexual behavior.'
—Youth Today

Americans have a split on the issue: using a condom is a responsible action, but having the sex that makes using a condom a responsible action, well, that’s irresponsible and immoral. Lord, a former historian for the Public Health Service, has documented this ambivalent stance throughout her fascinating book, which surprises throughout in showing just how little sex education changed through the twentieth century, even though we profited from an increase in scientific knowledge and from improved contraceptive and prophylactic technologies.
—Erotica Readers and Writers Association

An informative and enjoyable read.
—James Wagoner, Conscience

This is a highly readable study about a hot-button issue . . . Condom Nation contextualizes federal policies within the changing sexual mores of the twentieth century and shows how important it is to look at the story behind sex education campaigns.
—Tamara Myers, H-Education, H-Net Reviews

From the Publisher

Americans have a split on the issue: using a condom is a responsible action, but having the sex that makes using a condom a responsible action, well, that’s irresponsible and immoral. Lord, a former historian for the Public Health Service, has documented this ambivalent stance throughout her fascinating book, which surprises throughout in showing just how little sex education changed through the twentieth century, even though we profited from an increase in scientific knowledge and from improved contraceptive and prophylactic technologies.

Erotica Readers and Writers Association

This fascinating history of the past hundred years of sex education in America explores public and private efforts to eradicate sexually transmitted disease and promote healthy sexual behavior: It also reveals our hang-up, Alexandra Lord observes: 'Americans' uneasiness with sexual behavior.'

Youth Today

An informative and enjoyable read.

Conscience - James Wagoner

Lively historical account . . . Lord is particularly enlightening about the ways in which race, religion and geography have produced an inconsistent approach to sex education.

Washington Post Book World - Susan Jacoby

This is a highly readable study about a hot-button issue . . . Condom Nation contextualizes federal policies within the changing sexual mores of the twentieth century and shows how important it is to look at the story behind sex education campaigns.

H-Education, H-Net Reviews - Tamara Myers

An informative and enjoyable read.

— James Wagoner

Conscience

Lively historical account... Lord is particularly enlightening about the ways in which race, religion and geography have produced an inconsistent approach to sex education.

— Susan Jacoby

Washington Post Book World

This is a highly readable study about a hot-button issue... Condom Nation contextualizes federal policies within the changing sexual mores of the twentieth century and shows how important it is to look at the story behind sex education campaigns.

— Tamara Myers

H-Net Reviews

…this lively historical account of the U.S. Public Health Service's earnest but ineffectual sex education efforts…is a sobering tale of the ways in which racial and religious biases, unmoored from scientific evidence, can derail a public mission that ought to be dedicated to improving the health of all citizens. Whether the lesson has been learned, or whether unreason will return in future government-funded attempts to teach a particular version of sexual morality, remains an open question.
—The Washington Post

Susan Jacoby

Lord, a public health historian, argues that the U.S. government has spent the past 90 years trying to give Americans frank sex education, but the power of religious groups and Americans’ own squeamishness in admitting to having premarital sex has thwarted public health officials for nearly all of that time. After an informative, pithy explanation of the origins of the modern Health and Human Services Department and the surgeon general post, Lord documents the government’s sex education efforts, successes and failures decade by decade, in chronological, rather than thematic order. By slogging through a chronological account of sex education, she skips over the opportunity to consider why Americans have had such trouble talking not just about sex education, but about sex itself, and how that unease is at the core of this country’s ambivalence over “aggressive and candid programs promoting sex education” for teenagers. The book functions, at best, as a desk reference, a year by year catalogue of government policy, rather than a substantive discussion of the modern history of American sex education. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

The subtitle of this well-written, well-researched book makes its intentions known right away. Lord (acting historian, U.S. Public Health Service), an independent scholar and creator of Beyond Academe, a web site that helps historians find nonacademic jobs, moves easily between and among her themes, showing how the desire to "conflate" medicine and morality "or to set them up in opposition to one another" has "caused incalculable and often irreparable damage to both privately and federally funded sex education programs." Lord's plentiful sources include government documents and a judicious balance of scholarly and popular articles and books. Even her notes, which provide contextual information and suggestions for additional readings, are worth perusing. VERDICT Readers may puzzle over the punny-sounding title, lurid cover, and somewhat glib chapter titles ("Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder"), but this is a serious, substantial contribution to the social history of American sexual values that anyone who reads deeply in the subject should appreciate. It will appeal to sociologists, educators, policymakers, and historians alike.—Ellen D. Gilbert, Princeton, NJ

Library Journal