Measured love: Regulating infantile bodies, the Plunket Society and modern architecture

Abstract

The Plunket Society in New Zealand has been involved in regulating infantile bodies since its foundation in 1907. The first aim and object of the Society was, however, directed to a detached and genderless body, with the stated aim being: “To uphold the Sacredness of the Body and the Duty to Health”.[1]

Plunket's representation of the relations between mother and child implicates architecture not only through notions of foundation, inception and the control of space and time but also calls for the regulation of babies' bodies that can be seen to parallel the ideals of architectural modernity. In both cases, fresh air and sunlight are advocated for—advocacy dense in gendered implications, as this paper will explore. Architecture in New Zealand in the 1940s also called on the notion of health and training to describe its modernisations.[2] The paper will build on Erik Olssen’s proposition that the history of New Zealand modernisation is closely tied to the Plunket Society as a key actor.[3] Consequently, the paper looks at representations of modern architecture in relation to the Plunket Society in the 1940s. It seeks to discern the connections and disconnections between these seemingly separate worlds, with images from both fields being examined through the notions of control, discipline, and the regulation of time and space. Plunket's strategies to ensure a separation between mother and baby through processes of control such as weighing, measuring, sampling and regulation can be seen to have recalibrated what affection, care and love looked like, a recalibration inseparable from places of care where such affection was enacted.

[1] The Work of the Plunket Society in New Zealand for the Mother and Baby and Pre-School Child. Dunedin: The Royal New Zealand society for the health of women and children, 1944.

[2] ‘…good design of modern industrial products can only come from trained designers, and the only designers in New Zealand trained in the discipline of function and in the understanding of many different materials are the architects. The first sign of good health, there will be an upsurge of vitality in architecture.’ Howard Wadman, “This Is Beginning to Happen," in Yearbook of the Arts in New Zealand edited by Howard Wadman, (Wellington, N.Z.: Wingfield Press, 1948).

[3] Erik Olssen, "Truby King and the Plunket Society: An Analysis of a Prescriptive Ideology," New Zealand Journal of History 15, no. 1 (April 1981): 3-23.