A eugenics society is a society formed to promote the idea of eugenics. In particular, the two best-known were the British Eugenics Society and the American Eugenics Society, though smaller ones were also at universities such as the Cambridge Eugenics Society. Many prominent people were members of these societies, though with the decline in the popularity of the idea of eugenics, most of them disbanded or at least shrank in size.
Such societies generally worked to lobby for eugenic policies or to fund eugenics research projects or publications. The Human Betterment Foundation in Pasadena, California, for example, distributed materials on compulsory sterilization in the state, with the hope of encouraging other states and countries to adopt similar laws.
Famous quotes containing the word society:
“In today’s world parents find themselves at the mercy of a society which imposes pressures and priorities that allow neither time nor place for meaningful activities and relations between children and adults, which downgrade the role of parents and the functions of parenthood, and which prevent the parent from doing things he wants to do as a guide, friend, and companion to his children.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)