Data Rituals: Measurement of Height and Weight in Baby Books, 1872-1940

This paper looks at records of baby height and weight in baby books in the US between 1872 and 1940. Baby books, books in which parents record information about their child, are still a familiar object in households with young children. Baby books, this paper shows, are a unique source in which we can follow practices of measuring and quantification from the doctor’s office and the health departments into the household. Although the use of weight and height records by parents might appear to exemplify institutional biopower manifested through internalised self-monitoring, I argue that keeping a record of baby’s growth in a baby book was, in fact, a ritualised version of measurement. Using both work by historians of science on quantification, and anthropological literature on ritual and selfhood, I argue that this ritual of measuring and recording both symbolised and realised the transformation of the baby from newborn status to child and new personality in the family. With the transfer from medical protocol to family practice in baby books, the recording of height and weight thus took on a radically different meaning.