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.
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“Modern children were considerably less innocent than parents and the larger society supposed, and postmodern children are less competent than their parents and the society as a whole would like to believe. . . . The perception of childhood competence has shifted much of the responsibility for child protection and security from parents and society to children themselves.”
—David Elkind (20th century)