BUILDING THE NATION THROUGH WOMEN'S HEALTH: MODERN ...

missionaries were American or British citizens who brought their training and ideas with them to
the mission field. 61 Slowly, more and more Chinese women came to utilize Western-trained
personnel to assist in births. Medical missionaries created charity hospitals and made house calls
to members of all socioeconomic classes. They sought out patients and patrons from gentry and
officials in order to fund their operations and garner support among the Chinese.
As public health emerged as a major theme in the United States and Europe, Western
medical missionaries and other health professionals established midwife training programs in
China. This development began with “scientific motherhood” movements in the early 1900s that
targeted middle-class and working-class mothers in the United States, teaching them the
“science” of child care and feeding in order to improve maternal and child health. Such efforts
professed a belief – a faith, if you will – that science would solve the world’s most dire health
problems like infectious disease and hunger.
One of the most advanced programs was prompted by high rates of maternal and infant
mortality among the lower socioeconomic groups. In 1912, the United States Children’s Bureau
was created as a division of the United States Department of Commerce and Labor, according to
Ellen More, “chiefly to conduct educational campaigns to improve maternal and child health …
including social, economic, cultural and medical aspects of child health.” 62 One of the most
advanced programs was an infant and maternal mortality survey started in 1913 that showed that
United States maternal and infant mortality rates were almost twice as high among low-income
families as in prosperous ones. Responding to this dilemma, women’s clubs throughout the
country organized child health fairs for baby weighing and measurement and distributed
61 There were a few Catholic missions from North America and Europe, though the majority were Protestant.
62 Ellen S. More, Restoring the Balance: Women Physicians and the Profession of Medicine, 1850-1995
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 76.
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