page_title: Euthenics
section_title: Debate, misconceptions and opposition
hierarchical_section_title: Euthenics / Debate, misconceptions and opposition
caption_attribution_description: Margaret Sanger Deutsch: Margaret Sanger (*&#160;1879)
context_page_description: Euthenics is the study of the improvement of human functioning and well-being by improvement of living conditions. "Improvement" is conducted by altering external factors such as education and the controllable environment, including the prevention and removal of contagious disease and parasites, environmentalism, education regarding employment, home economics, sanitation, and housing.
  Rose Field notes of the definition in a May 23, 1926 New York Times article, "the simplest being efficient living". A right to environment.
  The Flynn effect has been often cited as an example of euthenics. Another example is the steady increase in body size in industrialized countries since the beginning of the 20th century.
  Euthenics is not normally interpreted to have anything to do with changing the composition of the human gene pool by definition, although everything that affects society has some effect on who reproduces and who does not.
context_section_description: Debate over misconceptions about the movement started almost from the beginning. In his comparison "Eugenics, Euthenics, And Eudemics", (American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 18, No. 6, May 1913), Lester F. Ward of Brown University opens the second section regarding euthenics lamenting: 
  Is there, then, nothing to do? Are we to accept that modem scientific fatalism known as laissez faire, which enjoins the folding of the arms? Are we to preach a gospel of inaction? I for one certainly am not content to do so, and I believe that nothing I have thus far said [about eugenics] is inconsistent with the most vigorous action, and that in the direction of the betterment of the human race. The end and aim of the eugenists cannot be reproached. The race is far from perfect. Its condition is deplorable. Its improvement is entirely feasible, and in the highest degree desirable. Nor do I refer merely to economic conditions, to the poverty and misery of the disinherited classes. The intellectual state of the world is deplorable, and its improvement is clearly within the reach of society itself. It is therefore a question of method rather than of principle that concerns us.
  Ward later noted about the organic environment that:
  Darwin has taught us that the chief barrier to the advance of any species of plants or animals is its competition with other plants and animals that contest the same ground. And therefore the fiercest opponents of any species are the members of the same species which demand the same elements of subsistence. Hence the chief form of relief in the organic world consists in the thinning-out of competitors. Any species of animals or plants left free to propagate at its normal rate would overrun the earth in a short time and leave no room for any other species. Any species that is sufficiently vigorous to resist its organic environment will crowd out all others and monopolize the earth. If nature permitted this there could be no variety, but only one monotonous aspect devoid of interest or beauty. Whatever we may think of the harsh method by which this is prevented, we cannot regret that it is prevented, and that we have a world of variety, interest, and aesthetic attractiveness.
  
  Vassar historians note that "critics faulted the new program as a weakening of science and a slide into vocationalism.  The influential educator and historian of education, Abraham Flexner—one of the founders of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study—attacked the program, along with other "ad hoc" innovations like intercollegiate athletics and student governments, in Universities, American, English, German (1930)."
  "Well, what is euthenics?  Euthenics is the 'science of efficient living;' and the 'science' is artificially pieced together of bits of mental hygiene, child guidance, nutrition, speech development and correction, family problems, wealth consumption, food preparation, household technology, and horticulture....  The institute is actually justified in an official publication by the profound question of a girl student who is reported as asking, 'What is the connection of Shakespeare with having a baby?'  The Vassar Institute of Euthenics bridges this gap!"
  In the summer of 1926, Margaret Sanger created a stir when she gave a radio address, called "Racial Betterment", in the first Euthenics Institute, where she praised attempts to "close our gates to the so-called 'undesirables'" and proposed efforts to "discourage or cut down on the rapid multiplication of the unfit and undesirable at home", by government-subsidized voluntary sterilization.  (from The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, vol. 1 (2003), Esther Katz, ed.)
  Eugenicist, Charles Benedict Davenport, noted in his article "Euthenics and Eugenics," found reprinted in the Popular Science Monthly of January 1911, page 18, 20:
  Thus the two schools of euthenics and eugenics stand opposed, each viewing the other unkindly.  Against eugenics it is urged that it is a fatalistic doctrine and deprives life of the stimulus toward effort.  Against euthenics the other side urges that it dem
caption: Margaret Sanger, 1922
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