The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeblemindedness
The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeblemindedness was published in 1912. Written by a eugenicist named Henry Goddard it was based on a case study of a patient under his care. The patient, Emma Wolverton, was presented in the book as Deborah Kallikak. The institution was the New Jersey Home for the Education and Care of Feebleminded Children. Goddard was a psychologist by training who ran the Institution. In the book, which was popular at its release and for several years following, he presented what he claimed to be the family tree for the patient under his care.
In the book, two separate family trees descend from one man, Martin Kalikak, who was returning home from the Revolutionary war when he met a barmaid during a brief stay at an inn. A short relationship with the barmaid led to her becoming pregnant, but Kallikak had already left her behind and later married a good Quaker wife and raised a family. The child of the barmaid, who was feebleminded, was born likewise. Thus Kallikak started two family lines, one producing several generations of feebleminded children, doomed to lives of social failure and poverty. The other of course led to generations of successful and morally upright individuals.
Because Goddard claimed to have traced both family trees instigated by Martin Kallikak the book became a standard of sorts establishing the claims of the eugenicist as scientific fact. One family line contained a history of a family of social outcasts, with a recurring pattern of drunkenness, promiscuity, and criminal behavior. The other produced pillars of their community, lawyers, ministers, doctors, all successful financially. The book compares the cost to the community for one and the benefits to the community for the other.
Goddard included carefully prepared family trees for both lines and numerous photographs which supported his thesis. From the book, it is clear that allowing the feebleminded to reproduce burdens the community as a whole for generation after generation, and the burden grows with each child produced with defective characteristics. The book could still be cited today by those espousing eugenics except for one problem, revealed in 2001. Goddard made most of it up.
There were two branches traced to John Wolverton, the basis for Martin Kallikak. The so-called bad side did include several farmers in poverty, but also included successful businessmen and military members. Far from being a scientific study, the book was instead an argument for eugenics, and it was a successful one for its time. The book’s popularity helped the public accept the arguments for eugenics and sterilization as being based in real science, rather than in pseudoscience. It also helped sway political opinion in state legislatures that the act of forced sterilization would help them save money.