Bucking the System: Women in the Health
Sciences at the University of Iowa, 1874 - 1950

Iowa Child Welfare Research Station

The ICWRS: The Nation's Leader in
Growth Studies and Anthropometry

Although Bird T. Baldwin initially oversaw the immense project of compiling, organizing, and analyzing the thousands of measurements taken at the Station in its early years, the Anthropometry Division continued to flourish after his death. Studies were done on Iowa City school children for decades. Measurements of the children were taken each year and their record cards followed them from school to school until their growth was completely charted.

24. Dr. Bird T. Baldwin and Members of the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station Staff circa 1926 The Iowa Child Welfare Research Station was one of the few scientific institutions in the United States operated almost entirely by women during the first half of the century. #196-267

The National Child Health Council at its recent meeting in New York accepted the standards of growth for children presented by Dr. Bird T. Baldwin, director of the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station....

The adoption of the standards by the National Child Health Council means that the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station has become the center for American research work in the physical growth of children. More than a million of the measurement charts prepared by Doctor Baldwin will be sent out within the next year to schools, homes, health organizations and physical education departments. The standard measurements will also be distributed through government publications relating to education and health....

The tables accepted by the National Health Council differ from all other child standard tables that have been compiled in that they consist of consecutive measurements of normal children. They show how the different types of children develop....Dr. Baldwin was assisted by Miss Gladys Fairbanks and the staff.

Daily Iowan March 24, 1922

25. Bird T. Baldwin and Student Nurse Measuring the Length of a Baby, ICWRS circa 1920 #196-27

Weighing and Measuring
circa 1920
In 1936, Research Associate Bernice Boynton, PhD, of the ICWRS published her fourteen-year-long study, The Physical Growth of Girls: A Study of the Rhythm of Physical Growth from Anthropometric Measurements on Girls between Birth and Eighteen Years. Dr. Boynton's study, based on over 55,000 measurements of 1,241 caucasion Iowa City girls, was begun in September 1920 and completed in May 1935. It was published as the companion to a similar study done at the Research Station on the physical growth of boys.

The studies were useful in determining sex differences in physical stature and trends in weight gain. Jointly, the studies demonstrated that "on the average, girls are taller than boys throughout the age range eleven to fourteen years; from thirteen to eighteen years girls show an increase in subcutaneous [(fatty)] tissue, while boys decrease. As with boys, wide variations in the time of onset of adolescence, and its duration, make the prediction of stature precarious. In the case of girls, such prediction is unreliable after the age of nine."

26. Measuring a Child's Lung Capacity with a
Spirometer, ICWRS
circa 1920
The child was instructed to take the deepest
breath possible and then to blow all the air
into the instrument
#196-01