The Better Babies contests began not as a fringe experiment but as a mainstream public health initiative cloaked in reformist language. The first known contests were held at the Louisiana State Fair in Shreveport in 1908, organized by Mary DeGarmo, a teacher-turned-eugenics advocate. These contests were initially pitched as a maternal education campaign, designed to promote “scientific motherhood”—the belief that proper child-rearing could and should be guided by science, with mothers judged by their ability to produce and raise healthy offspring.

But from the start, Better Babies was not just about better babies—it was about better white babies. And always, lurking behind the data charts and IQ tests, was the larger national goal: the production of a “movement to build better at the very foundation of the race.” Contest materials frequently included references to “racial hygiene” and the value of “pure American stock.” Black children were either excluded or judged in segregated events. Indigenous children were subjected to eugenic scrutiny in boarding schools. Immigrant families—especially those from southern and eastern Europe—were marked as suspect by default. Scientific motherhood was never neutral. It was a gendered, racialized ideology rooted in the belief that the state—and its medical and educational agents—had a right to decide which mothers were fit to reproduce and which babies were fit to live

From there, the contests grew. Backed by medical associations and state boards of health, Better Babies competitions spread quickly across the country, popping up in state fairs, women’s clubs, and agricultural expos from coast to coast. By the 1920s, at least 40 states had hosted contests. At the 1920 Kansas State Fair alone, more than 3,000 babies were entered for inspection.

Framed as a campaign for maternal education, the contests were in fact public performances of eugenics. Babies were examined like livestock—publicly and systematically. They were weighed, measured, and graded against standardized charts.

Their head circumference, bone structure, reflexes, and even “personality” were evaluated by doctors and social workers. Winners received medals, trophies, and ribbons, often emblazoned with slogans like “A Perfect Baby” or “Better Babies Make a Better Nation.” But the real message was aimed at the parents—and more specifically, the mothers: You are responsible for the genetic and social worth of your child.

While some aspects of the campaign did coincide with genuine improvements in child welfare—promoting breastfeeding, sanitation, pasteurized milk, and nutritional awareness—those benefits were inextricably entangled with a eugenic worldview that cast motherhood as a moral proving ground. The contests promoted the idea that a child’s physical “defects” were failures of maternal care—or worse, maternal biology. The underlying logic was clear: women who bore and raised “defective” children were seen as defective themselves.

The pressure on women to produce perfect children was public and punitive. Newspaper coverage often included photos of winners and statistical breakdowns of scores—but rarely, if ever, profiles of those who "failed." Those mothers left in silence, often humiliated. In some contests, doctors distributed “defect cards” to mothers whose babies didn’t make the cut. The feedback may have been medical in tone, but its effect was moral. You had failed—not just as a parent, but as a woman and a citizen.

The Better Babies contests eventually gave way to the Fitter Families movement in the 1920s and ’30s, which made explicit what had previously been mostly coded in maternalistic language. The “fitter family” was not just healthy—it was white, native-born, and genetically “pure.” These contests didn’t just measure babies; they screened entire family lines. They laid the groundwork for sterilization campaigns and race-based immigration quotas. And they helped inspire the Nazis.

Better Babies contests are often dismissed as quirky relics of an earlier time—quaint Americana with a dark twist. But they were something else entirely: early state-sponsored reproductive control masquerading as self-improvement. They trained generations of women to view motherhood as a measurable duty—and to fear the cost of falling short.