Key’s biological framework enabled eugenic misappropriations she never advocated

Evidence

Key herself did not advocate eugenics in the explicit sense. But her biological framework — her Spencerian evolutionary language about “healthy” children and “degenerate” lineages — provided intellectual materials that others deployed in eugenic directions. The International Child Welfare Movement of the 1920s, which cited Key’s influence, included participants who held explicitly eugenic views and who understood the “century of the child” as a project of racial improvement. Key cannot be held responsible for how others used her ideas. She can be held responsible for the biological framework that made those uses possible. — , The Rod and the Child, 8804

Categorization

• XREF: The familiar problem of liberatory and regressive impulses coexisting — connects to similar patterns in other progressive-era thinkers.