10. Mother Training for High School Girls

Mother Training for High School Girls took place for a week in the fall and a week in the spring in the Nursery, where ninth grade Dalton girls, under the watchful eye of a registered nurse, learned how to care for babies and also learned reproductive biology. The Training ran from 1932 to 1956.

“In 1926 I came to the decision that if there was ever an opportunity under the right conditions that The Dalton School should have an infants’ nursery as an integral part of the Secondary school. Years of experience trying to help young mothers understand their babies had led me to believe that many difficulties could be obviated if a training in motherhood could be given to young girls between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.”
—Helen Parkhurst

“I recall the baby nursery with fondness. It was a time of joy for freshmen who spent the school week being moms to babies on loan. The image of Miss Amott, the Nurse, is vivid in my mind with her uniform and crisp white cap. I remember sitting on the patio tending our charges or chatting with each other.”
—Nancy Lang Hamilton ’53

“Schoolwork stopped for a week in the fall and spring while we took turns spending the day picking up the babies from home by bus, feeding, sunning, walking changing and playing, keeping records, supposedly learning to be mothers. I don’t know what we learned, but we loved — at least my own classmates indelibly remember — all the babies. Another purpose of those two weeks in the Nursery for each student was to learn reproductive biology. It seems that even in an all-girls school, it was not considered “seemly” to discuss such matters publicly in a classroom.”
—Anne Tolstoi Wallach ’45