In the United States, the social hygiene movement was an attempt by Progressive Era reformers in the late 19th and early 20th century to control venereal disease , regulate prostitution and vice , and disseminate sexual education through the use of scientific research methods and modern media techniques. Social hygiene as a profession grew alongside social work and other public health movements of the era.
Social hygienists emphasized sexual continence and strict self-discipline as a solution to societal ills, tracing prostitution, drug use and illegitimacy to rapid urbanization. The movement remained alive throughout much of the 20th century and found its way into American schools, where it was transmitted in the form of classroom films about menstruation , sexually transmitted disease, drug abuse and acceptable sexual behavior in addition to an array of pamphlets , posters , textbooks and films.
The social hygiene movement of the late 19th and early 20th was rooted in the reformist zeal of the Progressive Era. Its aims were the diminishment if not elimination of vice, including prostitution, and venereal disease via educating the public about sex. A mental hygiene movement also developed, partly separately and now generally known as mental health , although the older term is still in use, e. Many reformers, such as Marie Stopes , were also proponents of eugenics.
Inspired by Charles Darwin 's theory of natural selection , they argued for the sterilisation of certain groups, even racial groups, in society. Indeed, by the s thousands of forced sterilizations of people deemed undesirable took place in America and other countries each year. This continued for several more decades in some countries, though after , the movement was largely discredited.
The social hygiene movement began to gain momentum and in making the movement part of publishings such as the American Journal of Public Health. The Social hygiene approach was adopted in medical schools in the Soviet Union in the s and was supported by the Commissariat of Public Health.
