Molly Madeleine Ladd-Taylor (born June 27, 1955) is a Canadian historian. Having moved to Canada during the 1990s, she is a professor of history at

York University York University (), also known as YorkU or simply YU), is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's third-largest university, and it has approximately 53,500 students, 7,000 faculty and staff, ...

and a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Canada The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; , SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities, and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bilingual council of distinguishe ...

. Her research focuses on the histories of women's health, maternal and child welfare policy, and eugenics in the United States.

Early life and education

Ladd-Taylor was born on June 27, 1955. She attended

Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1833, it is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational lib ...

for her

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

degree and enrolled at

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a Private university, private research university in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It was established in 1967 by a merger between Western Reserve University and the Case Institute of Technology. Case ...

for her

Master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional prac ...

in American studies. She remained in the United States until she finished her PhD from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

. As a young adult in the 1980s, her mother suffered from

Granulomatosis with polyangiitis Granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA), formerly known as Wegener's granulomatosis (WG), after Nazi German physician Friedrich Wegener, is a rare, long-term, systemic disorder that involves the formation of granulomas and vasculitis, inflammatio ...

and was treated by

Anthony Fauci Anthony Stephen Fauci ( ; born December 24, 1940) is an American physician-scientist and immunologist who served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022, and the chief medical ...

, who had just become the director of the

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID, ) is one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. NIAID's mis ...

Career

Upon completing her PhD, Ladd-Taylor joined the history faculty at

. While there, she published her first book titled ''Raising a Baby the Government Way: Mothers' Letters to the Children's Bureau, 1915–1932'' through the

Rutgers University Press Rutgers University Press (RUP) is a nonprofit academic publishing house, operating in New Brunswick, New Jersey under the auspices of Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Pub ...

in 1986. The book was a collection of letters from women around the United States detailing motherhood difficulties, including death and diet, between World War I and the end of the 1920s. A few years later, she published another book titled ''Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890-1930'' through the

University of Illinois Press The University of Illinois Press (UIP) is an American university press and is part of the University of Illinois System. Founded in 1918, the press publishes some 120 new books each year, thirty-three scholarly journals, and several electroni ...

. In 2017, Ladd-Taylor published ''Fixing the Poor: Eugenic Sterilization and Child Welfare in the Twentieth Century'' through the

Johns Hopkins University Press Johns Hopkins University Press (also referred to as JHU Press or JHUP) is the publishing division of Johns Hopkins University. It was founded in 1878 and is the oldest continuously running university press in the United States. The press publi ...

. The book focused on the history of

Eugenics in the United States Eugenics, the set of beliefs and practices which aims at improving the Genetics, genetic quality of the human population, played a significant role in the history and culture of the United States from the late 19th century into the mid-20th c ...

as depicted in institutional and medical records, court cases, newspapers and professional journals. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Wallace K. Ferguson Book Award as an "outstanding scholarly book in a field of history other than Canadian history." During this time, she was also promoted to

Full Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a 'person who professes'. Professors ...

in York University's Department of History. During the 2019–20 academic year, Ladd-Taylor won a

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC; , CRSH), often colloquially pronounced 'shirk' (), is a Canadian federal research-funding agency that promotes and supports post-secondary research and training in the humani ...

Insight Grant to fund her research project "Damaged Children, Innocence, Inequality and the Politics of Poverty in the Postwar United States, 1950-90." As a result of her accomplishments, Ladd-Taylor was elected a Fellow of the

in 2020.

Selected publications

*''Raising a Baby the Government Way: Mothers' Letters to the Children's Bureau, 1915-1932'' (1986) *''Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890-1930'' (1994) *''Root of Bitterness: Documents of the Social History of American Women'' (1996) *Bad' Mothers: The Politics of Blame in 20th-Century America'' (1998) *''Women, Health and Nation: Canada and the United States Since 1945'' (2003) *''Becoming a Historian: A Canadian Manual'' (2008) *''Fixing the Poor: Eugenic Sterilization and Child Welfare in the Twentieth Century'' (2017)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ladd-Taylor, Molly Canadian women historians Canadian women non-fiction writers Case Western Reserve University alumni Academic staff of York University Oberlin College alumni Yale University alumni Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada 1955 births Living people