Raising the Dionne Quintuplets: Lessons for Modern Mothers

Abstract

When the Dionne Quintuplets were born on 28 May 1934, Canada was in the grips of the most severe economic depression in its history. Nearly a million Canadians were out of work, and hundreds of thousands more struggled to survive on drastically reduced incomes. The miracle of the Quintuplets' birth provided a welcome distraction from the harsh realities of the day. North Americans, and indeed people around the world, hungered for news of their activities and development. By 1943, an estimated three million people had made the pilgrimage north to Callander to view the girls at play.(f.1) For those not fortunate enough to see the girls in person, there was no shortage of information available. North Americans were bombarded with countless visual images of the girls. By 1936, some 672 American dailies with a total circulation of nearly 13 million carried photos of the girls taken by Fred Davis, their exclusive photographer. A Time magazine article called them "the world's greatest newspicture story."(f.2) Full - page advertisements carried their endorsement of products ranging from Lysol Disinfectant to corn syrup, as products bearing their famous image spread across the department stores of the land.(f.3) Feature films were preceded by Pathe newsreel footage of their latest antics. In short, as Pierre Berton has noted, "It was impossible to escape the Dionnes."(f.4) The public longed for any scrap of information, while advertisers, magazine editors and manufacturers were eager to take advantage of a sure - fire seller in a dismal economy.It was not just commercial enterprises that hoped to capitalize on the tremendous popularity of the Dionne Quintuplets. Medical and child - care experts also recognized the opportunity which they provided to promote the goals and methods of "scientific child rearing." For the Quintuplets were born into a world not only hard - hit by economic catastrophe, but also ravaged by high rates of infant and maternal mortality. Efforts to combat the problem of infant mortality had begun in the early decades of the twentieth century, as recruitment for the armed forces had revealed the poor quality of the nation's health.(f.5) By 1919, the devastation caused by the First World War and by the Spanish influenza epidemic had elevated concerns about the health of the Canadian population to an issue of national importance.(f.6) Studies conducted on the twin problems of infant and maternal mortality all pointed in the same direction: "maternal incompetence." Babies were dying because, apparently, their mothers did not know how to care for them properly. Dr. B. Atlee, a prominent obstetrician, reflected the attitude of leading medical experts of the day when, in a 1932 article in the Canadian Home Journal, he complained that "The trouble is that the home today is the poorest run, most mismanaged and bungled of all human industries.... Many women running homes haven't even the fundamentals of house management and dietetics. They raise children in the average, by a rule of thumb that hasn't altered since Abraham was a child."(f.7)While experts debated whether women could fairly be blamed for their ignorance, they were unanimous in their solution: women must be educated for motherhood.(f.8) Thus, during the interwar years, men and women in the fields of medicine, child psychology and social work intervened in an increasingly aggressive manner in the traditionally maternal domain of raising children. Through the production of an enormous body of advice literature, through feature articles and columns in women's magazines and newspapers, and through lectures and consultations at child health clinics, experts sought to educate women in the rules and practices of scientific motherhood. Despite their efforts, however, maternal and infant mortality rates remained high. Ignoring the crucial role of poverty in the equation, experts attributed these high rates to women's failure to follow the advice given in the prescriptive literature of the day. …