This collection consists of pamphlets giving advice to expectant and new mothers on prenatal care, care of infants, breastfeeding, etc., most issued by federal or state governments or by the Better Babies Bureau of the Woman's Home Companion or the Russell Sage Foundation.

The Boston Association for Childbirth Education (BACE) was incorporated in 1958, although its founders had begun meeting as early as 1953 to discuss how best to reform obstetrical and maternity care and to disseminate information about natural childbirth. Some of the early educators were Justine Kelliher, Abigail Avery, and Sylvia D. Sawin. In seeking to further the acquisition and application of information concerning family-centered maternity care and breastfeeding, BACE sponsored studies, held workshops and classes, published newsletters and other printed material, and collaborated with the International Childbirth Education Association.

The Boston Women's Health Book Collective began in 1969 when a small group of women gathered after a workshop on women and their bodies at a Boston-area female liberation conference to talk about some crucial health issues and to confront a medical establishment viewed as paternalistic and condescending. Perhaps best known for their pioneering handbook Our Bodies, Ourselves (originally published in 1971 with subsequent editions and international adaptations), the Collective helped to create worldwide networks of women involved in health education and advocacy. See also Additional records of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective

Brown attended the Horace Mann School, in New York City, and Barnard College. She worked for the U.S. Children's Bureau and the League of Women Voters, specializing in issues relating to maternal and child welfare. She and her husband, Herman LaRue Brown, were active in the Democratic Party, particularly in Boston and Massachusetts, where they lived. Dorothy Kirchwey Brown served on a number of Massachusetts state boards relating to children's welfare and juvenile delinquency. The collection includes Freda Kirchwey’s letters to her sister Dorothy Kirchwey Brown between 1906 and 1922, including some concerning pregnancy, nursing, and caring for a newborn.

Ruth Ulam Clark trained as a nurse and worked as a laboratory technician at Millard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo, New York. Following a short stint working in a "gadget factory" in East Palestine, Ohio, Clark worked as a technician in the hematology division of the Youngstown Hospital Association in Youngstown, Ohio, and as a technician at a tuberculosis sanitarium in Warren, Ohio. This collection includes a 1946 account of childbirth, including inducement and administration of ether, from Ruth's sister, Verda Wally.

C/Sec (Cesareans/Support Education and Concern) was formed in March 1973 by Nancy Wainer Cohen and Jini Duffy Fairley in Massachusetts. A nonprofit organization that provided information on cesarean childbirth, cesarean prevention, and vaginal birth after cesarean, C/Sec sought to provide emotional support and to change attitudes and policies affecting cesarean childbirth. C/Sec conducted research, developed educational programs (including a slide presentation), and published a newsletter. See also Papers of Nancy Wainer, one of the founders of C/Sec.

Muriel Violet d'Arcy married businessman John d'Arcy shortly after her arrival in the United States from England. The couple lived for short periods of time in the greater Boston area before buying a house in Lynnfield Center in 1904. They had three children. This collection consists of five diaries, from 1902, 1904, 1906, 1908, and 1909, recording details of d'Arcy's daily life and health; social activities, including theater and music performances; and travel in Eastern Massachusetts, New York, and Canada. Accounts of d'Arcy's pregnancies and the births of her children are also recorded.

This collection contains the correspondence of five generations of the Dreier family. It includes correspondence between single members of the Dreier family and correspondence with related families and other persons, as well as the private papers of single family members and handwritten poems (most written on the occasion of family celebrations). Particularly interesting is the correspondence of women of the third and fourth generation with their mothers or daughters, in which pregnancy, birth, the loss of children, and children’s education play an important role.

This collection consists of thirteen letters written in the 1790s from Flagg in Charleston, SC, Bethlehem, PA, and New York, to her aunt, Lydia Nightingale, with news of family, friends, and her courtship, as well as observations on her mother's death in childbirth.

Foote was a writer and professor. She and her husband, Timothy Foote, had five children; their first child died in infancy. Foote taught English and literature at a number of institutions, including Washington, Columbia, American, and George Washington universities. In 1986 Audrey Foote earned a doctorate at Columbia. She was the author of many book reviews for the Washington Post, the translator of Le Radeau de la Meduse (1970), and contributor to The Atlantic. The collection includes diaries detailing her college years, her courtship with her future husband, difficulties in her marriage, her feelings about pregnancy, life in Paris, etc.; as well as letters to her husband-to-be.

Co-founder and executive director of The Religious Institute, Debra Haffner is a graduate of Wesleyan University, Yale University School of Medicine (MPH), and Union Theological Seminary (MDiv). She is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister and worked for Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington before becoming chief executive officer the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) from 1988 to 2000. In 2001 she co-founded The Religious Institute, a multifaith organization advocating sexual health, education, and justice in faith communities and society. She is the author of several guides for congregations on sexuality as well as a college sexuality education textbook and books for parents on raising sexually healthy children. Her work appears in numerous journals, encyclopedias, and pamphlets, and she has lectured and given workshops around the world. This collection includes material regarding teenage pregnancy.

Denied the opportunity to teach chemistry and physics because she was a woman, Hunkins-Hallinan was inspired to join the National Woman's Party. She became a prominent figure in the suffrage picket lines in front of the White House, which led to her arrest and imprisonment in the Occoquan Workhouse, where she and other suffragists participated in a hunger strike. In 1920, she moved to London, where she worked as a freelance journalist, notably writing a column under the pseudonym Ann Whittingham for the Chicago Tribune about English society, with a focus on Americans in England. Letters in this collection written between 1920 and 1921 contain details about Hunkins-Hallinan's relationship with her future husband Charles, her pregnancy, and details about her daughter Nancy's early childhood development.

A pediatrician and child psychiatrist (Vassar, 1916; Johns Hopkins University, M.D., 1921), Jackson studied at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute, where she was psychoanalyzed by Freud, helped Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham establish an experimental all-day nursery school, and aided Austrian-Jewish refugees. She taught pediatrics and psychiatry at Yale Medical School and the University of Colorado. She also helped establish and directed rooming-in units, where a newborn child stayed with its mother, at the Grace-New Haven Community Hospital and then at Colorado General Hospital. See also Additional papers of Edith Banfield Jackson

Lottie Isabella (Kerr) Tubbs was born in Portsmouth, Ohio, and orphaned while in her teens. She completed high school in Delaware, Ohio, and earned a B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1888. A devout Methodist, she married Frank Dean Tubbs and they spent six years as missionaries in Mexico, primarily at the Theological Seminary in Puebla, where Frank Tubbs was an instructor and Lottie Tubbs taught English and assisted in other activities of the school and church. In 1894 they moved to Mercedes, Argentina, to teach at a recently-established theological school. This collection includes letters written on the birth of Tubbs’s three children, which include detailed descriptions of her experience of childbirth.

Incorporated in 1960, the American Society for Psychoprophylaxis in Obstetrics (ASPO) grew from the beliefs of two women, Marjorie Karmel and Elisabeth Bing, and their personal experiences with "natural childbirth"—methods of delivery which used little or no medical interference and focused upon the joy of childbirth as a natural life process. Both women were influenced by the teachings of French obstetrician Ferdinand Lamaze, who advocated that women be active participants, employing psychosomatic practices, controlled breathing techniques, and mental preparation to cope with pain in labor and facilitate delivery without drugs. Bing and Karmel united to teach the Lamaze method to women in New York City and formed the ASPO, which later changed its name to Lamaze International. See also Audiotape collection of Lamaze International and Moving image collection of Lamaze International

Legal Momentum (formerly NOW Legal Defense & Education Fund), one of the first legal organizations in the United States devoted to working for gender equality, was incorporated in 1970. Dedicated to advancing the rights of women and girls through litigation and public policy advocacy, the organization has focused on precedent-setting suits, raised funds to support legal and educational projects, compiled legal guides, and drafted model legislation relating to women’s issues. This collection contains material regarding teenage pregnancy and pregnancy discrimination.

Gladys Whitney Neil was married to George Neil and lived in Pittsford, Vt. They had two children, a daughter born in Jan. 1921 and a son born in March 1923. The family shared their home with "Gram" and "Gramp." Four diaries (1915, 1921-1923) detail Neil’s life in rural Vermont and include descriptions of her daughter's birth and subsequent care, Gramp's death, family illnesses (such as scarlet fever), social life, chores, cooking, etc.

The NOW Legal Defense & Education Fund (known as Legal Momentum since 2004) was one of the first legal organizations in the United States devoted solely to working for gender equality. It was established in 1970 to further women's rights through litigation and to raise funds to support legal and educational projects relating to women. This collection contains material on teenage pregnancy, parental leave, and other legal issues related to pregnancy.

A Boston physician, Ransom founded the first Twilight Sleep Hospital in America. From 1900 she was associated with Boston University, between 1917 and 1918 with the French Baby Fund, and from 1936 with the Boston Evening Clinic. This collection consists of correspondence, articles, scrapbooks, clippings, and photos that reflect her career, especially her work with Twilight Sleep. “Twilight sleep” referred to the mixture of morphine and scopolamine given by a hypodermic injection during childbirth at that time.

Susan M. Smith lived in Boston before marrying Horatio Southgate Smith, a physician. Susan and Horatio lived in Brooklyn, N.Y., and had a son, Henry, in 1850. This collection consists of Smith's correspondence, mostly letters from family members. Her mother, mother-in-law, sisters, husband, et al. write about their mental and physical health, childbirth and children, business problems, etc.

Quaker peace activist and author Edith Reeves Solenberger graduated from Radcliffe College (A.B. 1907, A.M. 1910) and lived for most of her life in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. She married Edwin Solenberger in 1913; a son, Robert, was born in 1916. This collection consists of a manuscript diary detailing her pregnancy, the birth of her son Robert, and his first year or so of life; also included are lists of his first words, his clothing, a lock of his hair, and photographs.

Edna Lamprey Stantial was secretary of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government and archivist of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. This collection contains letters from Florence Blackwell Mayhew discussing her desire to have children, her struggle to become pregnant, and her pregnancy with her son Walter (b. 1885).

This collection contains correspondence, diaries, scrapbooks, financial records, photographs, etc. documenting the lives of Bertha and Frederick Stark, their daughters, Marguerite Stark Bellamy and Natalie Stark Crouter, and other members of the Stark family. Letters from the early twentieth century reference pregnancies.

Beginning in 1978, Ventre worked as a nurse-midwife with Dr. Leo Sorger in Malden, Massachusetts. In 1979 she assisted in the establishment of the North Shore Birth Center at Beverly Hospital in Beverly, Massachusetts, working there as a nurse-midwife and later a senior nurse-midwife until 1984. She subsequently took a position as a midwife at Holy Family Hospital's Birthing Center in Methuen, Massachusetts. Ventre was also very involved in the home birth movement in Massachusetts, giving testimony regarding a number of bills related to midwifery before the Massachusetts Legislature (1977-1984) and serving on the Massachusetts Health Department Commissioner's Taskforce on Birthing Centers (1983-1984) and the Massachusetts Health Systems Project Review Committee (1983-1984), as well as being a founding member of the North America Midwives Alliance and active in the American College of Nurse-Midwives.

Wainer was a midwife and a childbirth writer and speaker. From 1972 until 1982, she was a leader in La Leche League, a nonprofit organization founded in 1956 to promote breastfeeding. In 1973, Wainer and Jini Duffy Fairley founded the nonprofit organization C/Sec Inc. (Cesareans/Support Education and Concern), which provided information on cesarean childbirth, cesarean prevention, and vaginal birth after cesarean, or VBAC, a phrase coined by Wainer. Wainer was instrumental in changing hospital policies regarding cesarean section and VBAC and spoke out forcefully against a growing reliance in the United States on technology and surgery during birth. See also Records of C/Sec, Inc.

Midwife and author Bette L. Waters graduated from Lauder University and South Carolina School of Nurse-Midwifery. She worked as a midwife in Florida, Texas, and New Mexico from 1983 to 2001, when she retired in order to write full time. She is the author of Vaginal Politics: A Midwife's Story, which was adapted as a screenplay by Waters and Barry Dunleavey in 2008. This collection consists of the screenplay of Vaginal Politics along with diaries (1981-2010).

A pioneer in the study of diabetic pregnancy, White graduated from Radcliffe College and Tufts University Medical School. In 1924 she joined the practice of Dr. Elliot P. Joslin, becoming the youngest member of the team that established the Joslin Diabetes Center at Deaconess Hospital in Boston. Her research helped to increase the fetal survival rate at Joslin and other diabetes clinics around the country from 54 percent in the 1920s to 97 percent in the 1970s-1980s. The first woman to receive the Banting Medal, the highest scientific award of the American Diabetes Association, White taught at Harvard and Tufts medical schools.

This collection consists of correspondence between Dorothy Yokum and her husband George, mostly while he was stationed in Europe with the army during WWII. Her letters detail her daily life, including her pregnancy and the ten months following the birth of her daughter, family relationships, and social activities. His letters describe his life in the military, concern for his family, and hopes for their future.