A Good, Dangerous, and Ugly Historical past of Parenting Devices

Menstrual cups, contraception tablet packs, IUDs, pessaries, nursing bras, child bottles, strollers, and snot suckers are among the many objects that take the highlight in Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births. These and different objects that assist reproductive well being and childrearing, displayed on the partitions and vitrines on the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), could also be acquainted to you. They may even be tucked in your drugs cupboard, underwear drawer, or bag proper now, or entangled with reminiscences out of your childhood or tales out of your mother and father or grandparents. Every client product, societal system, and architectural house within the full-floor exhibition — that includes greater than 250 examples spanning the previous 150 years or so — illuminates how design shapes various experiences of parenthood, from navigating fertility and conception to being pregnant, beginning, and postpartum life.

MAD is the most recent cease for the touring exhibition, which kicked off in 2021. It was orchestrated by Designing Motherhood, a collaborative undertaking with a mission to deepen consciousness concerning the “arc of human reproduction.” This endeavor has taken a number of kinds: a book, an open-source curriculum, public packages, a portrait series, partnerships with maternity-care organizations, and the Instagram account that began all of it in 2019. For every cease of the Designing Motherhood museum tour, the present will get refreshed to satisfy the second and faucet into each the host establishment’s collections and nuances of the native tradition. Now in its sixth iteration, it features a new part dedicated to product design as a nod to New York City’s historical past as a design hub and its resident mother and father; as an illustration, a wall of strollers constructed for city life speaks to these in search of merchandise suited to metropolis streets and subway stairs.

The present opens with a piece on labor and beginning, and a trio of “baby boxes” — kits stocked with important provides for newborns and their caregivers. An Äitiyspakkaus (maternity bundle) from Finland presents a glimpse at a up to date model of the unique child containers, which launched within the nation in 1938. The Finnish authorities offers these starter kits to new mother and father freed from cost. This idea finally unfold to different nations, solely just lately making its technique to the United States. A pattern NYC Baby Box — obtainable to those that give beginning at 4 NYC Health + Hospitals places as of October 2025 — shows its contents: diapers, clothes, and rash cream, to call just a few. (Recently, mayor-elect Mamdani introduced plans for NYC Baby Baskets stocked with related provides and sources for brand new mother and father.)

Other New York City-centric designs make appearances, too, together with the once-ubiquitous NYC Condoms (2007) and posters with data in 14 languages concerning the New York City Abortion Access Hub. The present continues with sections dedicated to menstruation, conception and being pregnant, group care and data sharing, instruments for being pregnant and postpartum care, and child gear. Throughout, the shows spotlight the challenges of navigating the healthcare system, boundaries to accessing care, and the alarmingly high rates of maternal deaths within the US, a crisis that disproportionately impacts Black girls.

During your go to, take note of the polka dots: Each merchandise is paired with a quantity on a silver dot that corresponds with a blurb within the gallery guide, a printed paper booklet filled with historic particulars, design backstories, and notes on the inventors. Few labels seem all through the exhibition, so this e book, together with 10 audio tour stops, are the primary methods to be taught concerning the designs. If you skip the information, you’ll miss out on all method of fascinating information. For instance, do you know that the famed Lindbergh baby kidnapping in 1932 impressed the president of the Zenith Radio Corporation to create a prototype for the first baby monitor? Or {that a} kind of surgical cotton (known as Cellucotton) and expertise for recognizing submarines — each World War I improvements — later turned the premise for mainstays for reproductive healthcare: ultrasound machines and menstrual pads and tampons?

There’s one thing quietly highly effective about seeing these innovations obtain the museum remedy. A tampon hidden in a closed fist in the course of the stroll to the workplace rest room, say, has a distinct aura than one displayed in a well-lit exhibition case in a significant establishment. Gone are the shadows and sense of concealment and secrecy. By discussing physique processes and subjects typically shrouded in disgrace and euphemism in simple and knowledgeable methods, this taboo-busting present invitations open dialog and data sharing, whereas giving credit score to the innovators behind life-improving merchandise and units.

From the oldest objects (a Nineteenth-century breast pump and copy of a speculum from c. 79 CE) to essentially the most of-the-moment merchandise from 2025 (a donut pillow, a Mamava breastfeeding bench), Designing Motherhood provides element and dimension to even essentially the most acquainted objects. With its huge and diversified assortment, it chronicles the promise of design to enhance lives, in addition to its failings. A memorable presentation of commercials reveals merchandise that appear wildly unsafe by immediately’s requirements (together with a “portable baby cage” and an “auto strap for front-seat tots”). All have been produced previous to 1972, when the US Consumer Product Safety Commission established federal security rules and techniques for recalling harmful merchandise and lowering danger of harm. As the wall label notes, staffing and funding for this authorities company stays unsure.

In a second saturated with related uncertainty, because the Trump administration threatens Americans’ entry to important healthcare, companies, and analysis, Designing Motherhood presents a clear-eyed antidote to despair and inertia. Practical sources and examples plucked from historical past function real-life fashions — for activism and motion, for community-led care, for innovating, fixing issues, and designing instruments for higher residing.

Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births continues on the Museum of Arts and Design (2 Columbus Circle, Columbus Circle, Manhattan) via March 15, 2026. The exhibition was organized by Juliana Rowen Barton, Michelle Millar Fisher, Zoë Greggs, Gabriella Nelson, Amber Winick, Elizabeth Koehn, and Alexandra Schwartz.