© 2004 by Society for the Social History of Medicine
‘Naturally Clean and Wholesome’: Women, Sex Education, and the United States Public Health Service, 1918–1928
1 Acting Historian for the United States Public Health Service, Office of the Public Health Service Historian, Parklawn Building, Room 695, 5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville MD 20857, USA. E-mail: alord{at}psc.gov
In 1918, the United States Public Health Service (PHS) launched a sex education campaign intended to educate Americans, young and old, male and female, on the perils of venereal disease (VD). As ‘the guardians of the community's health’, women were central to this effort and the PHS aggressively called upon these newly-enfranchised citizens to provide comprehensive sex education in their homes, schools, churches, and community settings. But even as the PHS called upon women to spearhead local and community efforts against VD, they used highly stereotyped images to endorse and advocate passive images of women and female sexuality. An analysis of this campaign and its failure provides insight into the ways in which the federal government attempted to use the forum of public health, both to re-shape the family and transform existing patterns of sexual behaviour during the 1920s. The failure of these attempts also provides a new understanding into the question of why federally-funded sex education programmes have generally been so unsuccessful in the USA.
Keywords: sex education, female sexuality, public health, the United States Public Health Service, adolescence, venereal disease, the General Federation of Women's Clubs, progressivism, gender, prostitution