author
Florence Powdermaker
1894–1966
A physician and psychiatrist, she wrote for parents and worked to help children feel more secure in family and social life. Her best-known book, coauthored with Louise Ireland Grimes, brought psychological ideas to a broad audience in the 1940s.
1 Audiobook
Food Guide for War Service at Home Prepared under the direction of the United States Food Administration in co-operation with the United States Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Education, with a preface by Herbert Hoover
by United States Food Administration, Katharine Blunt, Florence Powdermaker, Frances Lucy Swain
About the author
Born in 1894 and dying in 1966, Florence Powdermaker built her career in medicine and psychiatry. Reliable catalog records identify her as the author of Children in the Family: A Psychological Guide for Parents and date her life as 1894–1966.
That book, published in 1940 with Louise Ireland Grimes, seems to be the work for which she is best remembered. Contemporary references and later memorial notes describe her as especially concerned with children's emotional security and with helping parents understand family life in practical, humane ways.
She is also remembered as the older sister of anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker, another notable scholar from the same family. While detailed biographical information about her is harder to confirm online than her sister's, the available sources consistently present Florence Powdermaker as a respected doctor whose writing connected psychiatry with everyday family concerns.