Raúl Necochea López's rich, well-researched account of family planning in Peru from the late nineteenth century to the late 1970s sets out to examine why it “has long been a contentious issue in Peru” (p. 1). The “wide cast of actors and organizations” addressed include “physicians, the eugenics movement, feminists, transnational birth control organizations, women and men who sought contraceptives and abortions, pharmaceutical companies, military leaders, and the Catholic Church” (pp. 2–3). The book should interest Latin Americanists, historians of social medicine, and scholars whose thematic interests broadly overlap with family planning.
The first chapter focuses on the discourse of male medical experts who, particularly through French puericulture, sought to improve both the “quality and quantity” of children (p. 5). They created institutions in the 1920s focused on “extra-uterine puericulture,” with ambitious outreach programs staffed by female social workers, to educate women on nutrition, hygiene, and morality (p. 22). The...
