Faye Wattleton facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Faye Wattleton
|
|
|---|---|
2009
|
|
| Born |
Alyce Faye Wattleton
8 July 1943 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
|
| Education | Ohio State University (BA) Columbia University (MS) |
| Occupation | Feminist activist Author and news commentator Registered nurse |
Faye Wattleton (born Alyce Faye Wattleton; 8 July 1943) is an American reproductive rights activist who was the first African American and the youngest president ever elected of ... Federation of America, and the first woman since Margaret Sanger to hold the position. She is currently Co-founder & Director at EeroQ, a quantum computing company. She is best known for her contributions to family planning and reproductive health, and the reproductive rights movement.
Early life and childhood
Wattleton was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1943, the only child of a construction worker father and a mother who was a seamstress and a Church of God minister. During her childhood, her mother's calling meant that the family traveled frequently, and Wattleton saw the emotional effect her mother's preaching had on congregation. For eight years Wattleton stayed with family members and friends while her parents traveled for work. Although her mother never approved of her work in reproductive rights, Wattleton considers the principle of nonjudgment espoused by the faith of her upbringing to have had a deep impact on her future work in family planning.
Education and early career
Faye Wattleton attended Ohio State University at the age of 16. She was awarded a bachelor's degree in nursing in 1964, and went on to teach at a nursing school in Dayton, Ohio for two years. While in nursing school, Wattleton worked at the Children's Hospital in Columbus. There she cared for children who were abused, neglected, and sick with diseases.
Wattleton graduated from Columbia University in New York with her Master's of Science degree in maternal and infant care, with certification as a nurse-midwife, in 1967.
After graduation, Wattleton accepted a position as deputy chief of the Dayton Ohio Health Department's visiting nurse association's maternal and child health programs. For two years she also served as the nursing instructor at the Miami Valley Hospital School of Nursing in Dayton
While working in Dayton facilities, Wattleton kept track of the numbers of mothers receiving prenatal care and realized that about 30 percent of them received none. Based on her view of neighborhood health clinics helping pregnant women in New York, Wattleton pushed for a similar system in Dayton. Her efforts were rewarded with the establishment of one such clinic where Wattleton and another nurse would treat patients for minor issues and refer them to participating area hospitals for major issues and for childbirth.
