The Orphans of Davenport

April 19, 2021
Psychologist Brookwood debuts with a lucid and immersive history of how researchers in 1930s Iowa refuted prevailing notions about childhood development. She focuses on Iowa Child Welfare Research Station psychologists Harold Skeels and Marie Skodak and their studies comparing children who had “barren, affectionless, detached childhoods” at a state orphanage in Davenport, Iowa, with those who received individual attention, play, and encouragement as temporary wards at institutions for the “feeble-minded.” The latter group of children showed a remarkable improvement in their IQ scores, buttressing the Iowa researchers’ argument that genetics was not the sole factor in intelligence. Brookwood provides insight into the Iowa researchers’ methods, and skillfully draws from primary sources to explain how racist and classist attitudes and fierce criticism from the era’s eugenicists prevented the station’s groundbreaking studies from initially gaining traction. It wasn’t until the 1960s that findings by Skeels, Skodak, and other station researchers entered the mainstream, helping to launch learning programs such as Head Start. Brookwood’s well-paced, character-driven account is a worthy tribute to these optimistic and determined researchers, and a reminder that scientific breakthroughs can come from the unlikeliest of places. This spirited history soars. Agent: Ayesha Pande, Pande Literary.

May 14, 2021

With this riveting history of an unsung scientific breakthrough in the 1930s, psychologist Brookwood tells how U.S. state and federal governments, backed by mainstream psychologists, had for decades enforced eugenicist policies. Authorities had institutionalized and even sterilized tens of thousands of people, mostly women and children deemed "feeble-minded" on the basis of specious intelligence tests. But in 1934, psychologists Harold Skeels and Marie Skodak disproved the core eugenicist belief that intelligence was fixed and hereditary. They chanced upon this discovery at the Davenport Home, Iowa's overcrowded state orphanage. Bereft of stimulation and caregiver attention, children at Davenport saw their intelligence quotient (IQ) test scores plummet after admission to the facility. Once placed with families, however, the children's test scores rose and remained in what's called the "average" IQ range for life. Skeels and Skodak determined that children who were placed with intellectually disabled, institutionalized women gained up to 56 points on their IQ tests. But most psychologists, including the formidable Lewis Terman of Stanford University, denounced and suppressed these discoveries. Not until the 1960s did a new generation of psychologists accept what seems obvious today: caregiving and education have an outsize role in child development. VERDICT A remarkable unsung history, told with empathy, nuance, and a knack for character-driven storytelling.--Michael Rodriguez, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs

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June 1, 2021
A psychologist with experience in public education limns the 20th-century conflict over intelligence that raged for decades. Brookwood makes her book debut with a revealing and thoroughly researched history of the long and fierce controversy about whether intelligence is inherited or influenced by environment, a debate in which eugenicists played a prominent role. Convinced that intelligence is hereditary and that people of low intelligence--particularly Blacks, immigrants, and the poor--should be barred from procreating, they advocated for sterilization of women who scored low on IQ tests, showed evidence of mental illness, suffered from alcoholism, or engaged in prostitution. By the 1920s, all states had laws permitting involuntary sterilization. Brookwood centers her attention on two groundbreaking psychologists: Howard Skeels and Marie Skodak, based at the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station, who, in the 1930s, compared the IQ's of children raised in overcrowded orphanages, where they were isolated and ignored, with children either adopted or sent to live in an institution for women diagnosed as mentally deficient, where they received loving attention by the inmates. In contrast to the prevailing assumption that IQ was innate, Skeels and Skodak found remarkable improvement among children placed in a nurturing, stimulating environment. As soon as their findings were publicized, they were viciously attacked by the influential psychologist Lewis Terman, who insisted that intelligence was an "innate, unmodifiable entity." Threatening his reputation, Skeels and Skodak remained in his crosshairs until his death in the 1950s. Drawing on a dozen rich archives, Brookwood meticulously documents the scholarly dispute, which played out in journals and at conferences, and she reports many intriguing case histories of individual children, including those involved in a longitudinal study that Skeels and Skodak conducted, under the auspices of the National Institute of Mental Health, when the subjects were adults. That study confirmed their findings; other studies, too, testified to the benefit of preschool movements and lay the groundwork for efforts such as Head Start. A substantive contribution to the history of psychology.

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July 1, 2021
This engrossing account of the history of child psychology starts in 1930s Iowa with two psychologists who would go unrecognized for years. Marie Skodek and Harold Skeels were psychologists during a time when eugenics was a core belief of many prominent institutions. They challenged this through controlled testing of orphan children. One study included low-IQ children who received little attention, who were then adopted and given better educational opportunities. Another study included low-IQ children who were housed with adult women that were considered "feeble-minded" and who doted on them. In both, the children showed an increase in their IQs. The at-the-time highly regarded eugenicist Lewis Terman, the originator of the Stanford-Binet IQ test that is still in use today, fervently disparaged their work. It took years of continuous study by Skodek and Skeel and then others in the 1960s to have the work taken seriously by the mainstream and to get the recognition they deserved. This is a thoroughly researched, character-driven piece of history.

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