産声を記録せよ：アメリカ合衆国における出生登録制度

抄録

This article explains the making of birth registration systems in the United States. In the wake of the twentieth century, the U.S. government had few records on children, whether they were boys or girls, white or non-white, native or foreign-born. Not all local municipalities were collecting, keeping, indexing, and updating vital records such as birth and death certificates and marriage licenses. From 1901 to 1920, the thirty-five states adopted laws requiring the registration of births within their jurisdiction. By the mid-1930s, Americans became accustomed to reporting the birth of a child to a local agent of the state.

I emphasize the role of professionals—physicians, statisticians, and social workers—in the creation and standardization of birth registration systems in the United States. In the mid-nineteenth century, the American Medical Association (AMA) came first to organize a campaign for the introduction of state birth registration laws, followed by the American Public Health Association. The acquisition of vital statistics was the common goal of John Shaw Billings and other male professionals who promoted birth and death registration in the late nineteenth century. However, they encountered resistance from community-based physicians and many others who refused to collect and share vital records for statistical analysis. Vital statistics would not be obtainable without creating a centralized mechanism for civil registration. It would take longer to conform people to the custom of reporting their vital events to local municipalities.

With the rise of the child-saving movement during the 1890s, the predominantly male campaign for birth registration gained broader support. The high infant mortality rates of American cities attracted the attention of reform-minded men and women. In 1909, the AMA held its first national conference on infant health care, which resulted in the formation of the American Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality (AASPIM). From the beginning, the AASPIM was an issue-centered forum of discussion open to men as well as women. Birth registration became increasingly considered as a critical component of child welfare and public health systems.

In 1912, William Howard Taft signed legislation establishing the Children’s Bureau, and appointed Julia C. Lathrop, a social worker and a Hull-House resident, to lead it. Under her direction, the Bureau immediately orchestrated a campaign for the universalization of birth registration, with the help of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. Unlike physicians and statisticians, social workers of the Children’s Bureau did not just promote the development of birth registration laws at the state level but also successfully mobilized club women for the registration campaign across the country. By 1915, the idea of birth registration gained more support among women. Birth registration systems, though created under the lead of professionals, became operative only after they successfully convinced a wider public of its usefulness for keeping infants alive.