Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 74-11(E), Section: A.

Adviser: John Harley Warner.

The Whole Nine Months traces changes in attitudes toward married couples' pregnancy from the 1920s until the 1960s, a period that began with a rapid decline in birth rates and continued with a baby boom. In the early twentieth century, pregnancy was not part of polite public discourse. Women had often hid their condition, did not prepare in advance for the arrival of a baby, and did not consult a physician. Doctors paid little attention to the prenatal period. The concept of prenatal care did not exist. In the 1920s and 1930s, clinicians as well as lay people began to change their understandings of pregnancy. Although doctors and nurses held different views of the pregnant body, ranging from the pathological to the healthy, they nonetheless demanded that all pregnant bodies undergo medical supervision to prevent mortality and make maternity more fulfilling. This transition was interlinked with a seismic shift in popular attitudes toward pregnancy, as middle-class couples adopted an identity of "modern" parents and publicly performed pregnancy as a "happy" event. With experts' guidance, expectant women and men embraced new prenatal rituals like choosing .a doctor, enrolling in pregnancy courses, and practicing medically supervised maternity care regimens.

This project treats pregnancy not only as a biological process with universally familiar features, but also as a dynamic cultural, social, and discursive construction. I highlight people and historical forces that have shaped changing perceptions of gestation, and travels through different sites of knowledge production---clinics, hospitals, pregnancy course classrooms, professional conferences, print and visual media, public exhibits, and private homes---where Americans from diverse socioeconomic, regional, and professional backgrounds created, challenged, negotiated, and advanced new ideas about women's bodies, reproductive health, medical care, gender norms, and family life. In particular, I draw attention to the Maternity Center Association. Originally created to provide prenatal care services to women in New York City, this private organization quickly built itself a reputation as one of the country's most trusted sources of pregnancy knowledge. Through its prenatal education programs and media campaigns, the MCA helped change the ways in which many clinicians and lay people understood pregnancy, practiced maternity care, and formed families.