In Memory of Mary Steichen Calderone.

Mary Steichen Calderone (1904-1998), a pioneering leader in the fields of human sexuality, sex education, and contraception, died October 24, 1998. Her persistent efforts as the medical director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (1953-1964) led to the acceptance of responsible family planning as a health practice by the American Public Health Association in 1959 and by the American Medical Association in 1964. In 1964 Calderone cofounded SIECUS, the Sex and Information Education Council of the United States, to assist teachers, therapists, and other professionals in the integration of information about human sexuality into health care and public health education.

Calderone was born in New York City on July 1, 1904. Her father, Edward Steichen, was a painter and a master photographer. He was very close to and supportive of Calderone, and together they published two picture books for children; The First Picture Book: Everyday Things for Babies (1930), and The Second Picture Book (1958). After spending her early childhood years in France, Calderone and her family returned to the United States shortly after the beginning of World War I. Calderone attended school in Connecticut and New York City, and in 1921 entered Vassar. She chose to enroll in the premedical curriculum but found the classes to be uninteresting, and consequently changed her course of study to theatre, music, and English. After graduating in 1925, Calderone studied acting at the American Laboratory Theater; however, after three years she abandoned all hopes of an acting career upon realizing that she would never be "the tops."

In 1933 Calderone met with further disappointment and tragedy when her marriage to actor Lon Martin, with whom she had two daughters, ended. Shortly thereafter her eldest daughter died of pneumonia at the age of eight. Finding herself adrift, Calderone underwent psychoanalysis and a series of tests, the results of which indicated a strong aptitude for science. This stimulated her to resume her medical education, this time at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, at the age of 30. She graduated with an M.D. in 1939 and went on to a pediatric internship with Children's Medical Service at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. Following the internship, Calderone undertook further graduate work at Columbia University's School of Public Health, obtaining a Master's of Public Health in 1942. While at Columbia, Calderone met and married her second husband, Frank Calderone, a district health officer, and together they had two children. During the early years of her second marriage, Calderone worked part-time as a physician in the public schools in their hometown of Great Neck, New York.

In 1953 Calderone became the medical director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA). During her eleven years in this position, Calderone was instrumental in ushering contraception away from its stigma as a societal and medical taboo, and toward its integration into mainstream medicine. When Calderone began her tenure at the PPFA the agency had been distributing a pamphlet discussing ineffective methods of contraception, including vaginal douches containing vinegar, lemon juice, or salt. The pamphlet failed to mention diaphragms and condoms, the most medically effective birth control methods available at the time. Calderone's goals for the PPFA were to ensure both the provision and the acceptance of medically sound contraceptive information. To achieve these ends she established the PPFA as a clearinghouse for ongoing clinical testing of novel birth control techniques. Under Calderone's administration several Planned Parenthood affiliates across the United States served as the testing grounds for Emko Foam, the IUD, and the Pill. The data collected from the PPFA's clinical trials led the medical establishment to finally accept, and endorse as common medical practice, the dissemination of information on reproduction and birth control, as well as the prescription of birth control devices to all patients requiring them.

Calderone is also credited with instituting the study of contraception and family planning into the medical school curriculum in the United States. In 1956 she pointed out the disturbing lack of birth control information in four of the major obstetrical textbooks. Several authors subsequently agreed to include family planning and contraception in the next edition of their works. In 1960 Calderone, serving as editor, drew together the current medical, sociological, and psychological information about contraception in the Manual of Family Planning and Contraceptive Practice (1964). The Manual became an important reference textbook for family planning and contraceptive techniques, and was updated in 1970.

During her years with the PPFA, Calderone received numerous requests for guidance about sex and sexuality. She did not believe she was equipped to deal with these questions, as her years of experience advocating birth control as a public health issue with the PPFA had not directly addressed the issue of human sexuality. Calderone recognized that the PPFA's efforts were limited to reproduction, and that there remained a great need for educators and the public alike to understand the human interactions that make family planning necessary. Therefore, following three years of deliberation and discussion with fellow public health colleagues, Calderone left the PPFA to cofound the voluntary, nonprofit, educational health organization, SIECUS, specifically for the dissemination of information about human sexuality.

Serving as both the executive director (1964-1975) and later the president (1975-1982) of SIECUS, Calderone's primary goal was to establish human sexuality as a health concern that is given serious study, consideration, respect, and dignity. To meet this challenge, Calderone led SIECUS in the national distribution of information about birth control, homosexuality, and masturbation. SIECUS's publications, conferences, and consulting services were aimed toward both education professionals and the public. Calderone herself spoke widely on her philosophy of sexual health being the result of the integration of positive and rewarding experiences that encompass the mind, the body, and the spirit. In her lectures Calderone also put forth the concept that sex is not something one does but rather is something one "is," in so much as one's sexuality is a combination of one's particular life experiences and genetic inheritance. Calderone did not promote casual sexual relationships; she believed that sex is a natural and healthy part of life and must be undertaken responsibly and primarily within a marriage.

Calderone also advocated the parent as their children's principle sex educator. The parent's role, according to Calderone, is to even-handedly provide the simple, accurate facts about sex beginning when their children are very young. On this point Calderone spoke not only as a professional sex educator, but also from a personal perspective. Her early childhood sexual explorations of her own body resulted in severe punishment from her mother, and created issues that Calderone believed hampered her individual sexuality. Calderone's books about sex education, The Family Book About Sexuality (1990, with Eric W. Johnson) and Talking with Your Children About Sex (1984, with James W. Ramey), are directed to parents and have been translated into several languages. Other works of interest on reproduction and human sexuality by Calderone include Abortion in the United States (1958, editor) and Release from Sexual Tensions; Toward an Understanding of Their Causes and Effects in Marriage (1968).

Calderone left SIECUS in 1982 to become an adjunct professor in the Program for Human Sexuality at New York University. In the late 1980's Calderone, who had surpassed her single personal ambition "to do something worthwhile, no matter what it was" many times over, retired to a Quaker community in Pennsylvania. Calderone died October 24, 1998 of unknown causes in a nursing home in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania after suffering from Alzheimer's disease for a decade. Left behind is Calderone's legacy of four decades of dauntless work that brought human sexuality and sex education into the mainstream of public health and discourse.

Calderone received many honors, including Distinguished Service Award, the Mental Health Association of Nassau County (1958); Annual Award for Distinguished Services to Humanity, the Albert Einstein Medical Center (1966); Woman of Conscience Award, National Council of Women (1968); Woman of Achievement Award, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University (1969); One of America's 75 Most Important Women, Ladies' Home Journal (1971); Humanist of the Year, American Humanist Association (1974); Elizabeth Blackwell Award for Distinguished Service to Humanity, Hobart and William Smith Colleges (1977); Margaret Sanger Award, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (1980); Edward Browning Award for Prevention of Disease, American Public Health Association (1980); Lifetime Achievement Award, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College (1983); and the Living Legacy Award, Women's International Center, San Diego (1988). Calderone was also awarded several Honorary Doctorates, including the Doctorate of Medical Science, Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (1967); Doctorate of Humane Letters, Newark State College (1971); Doctorate of Science, Adelphi University (1971); Doctorate of Laws, Kenyon College (1972); Doctorate of Science, Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology (1974); Doctorate of Science, Brandeis University (1975); Doctorate of Science, Harvard College (1978); Doctor of Pedagogy, Hofstra University School of Education (1978); and Doctor of Humane Letters, Dickinson College (1981).

REFERENCES

Calderone, M. S. (1970). Manual of family planning and contraceptive practice, (2nd ed.). Baltimore, MD: William & Wilkins.

Calderone, M. S. (1973). Physician and public health educator. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 208, 47-51.

Fox, M. (1987, May). A candid conversation with Dr. Mary Calderone. Health, 75-78.

Gilbert, L., & Moore, G. (1981). Particular passions: Talks with women who have shaped our time. New York: Clarkson N. Potter.

Kass-Simon, G., & Fames, P. (1990). Righting the record. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Naylor, N. A. (1994). Mary Steichen Calderone. In M.S. Seller (Ed.), Women educators in the United States, 1820-1993 (pp. 86-93). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Obituary. (1998, October 25). The New York Times.

Reynolds, M. D. (1994). Women advocates of reproductive rights: Eleven who led the struggle in the United States and Great Britain. Jefferson, NC.: McFarland & Company.

Address correspondence to Cecelia Brown, Ph.D., Assistant Professor and Chemistry-Mathematics Librarian, 207 Physical Sciences Center, 601 Elm Street, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019; e-mail: [e-mail]