Forty-one cases of neonatal mastitis seen at Children's Hospital, Boston since 1947 have been analyzed and the literature since 1950 reviewed. All 41, like those in the literature, occurred in full-term infants 1-5 weeks of age, with a sex ratio of 2:1 (females:males). Bilaterality was rare (3) cases in this series, one in the literature review) and systemic spread or extramammary foci even rarer. The incidence has changed little in the past 35 years except for the larger number of cases in the 1950s. In the present series, all but a few cases have been caused by Staphylococcus aureus, and gram-negative enteric bacilli have not been seen. Therapy is surgical incision and drainage when fluctuance is present, but early treatment with appropriate intravenous antibiotics has apparently obviated the need for surgery in many recent cases. The prognosis for cure of the infection is excellent.

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This article examines women's relationship with car driving in the United States. The growth of American 'automobility' increased throughout the twentieth century, but most historians have ignored its relationship with women. They have assumed that the motor car was a masculine vehicle in terms of both its technology and use. Even those who recognized the motor car as a machine for changing lifestyles and interpersonal relationships considered that the male head of household had authority over choosing and driving the family vehicle. Some women, however, always drove. Though their numbers were relatively small in the years before the Second World War, they quickly seized the opportunity to get behind the wheel in succeeding years as more and more cars were produced in the United States and imported vehicles became popular. Women needed to drive to manage their unpaid work in the home efficiently and, when they entered the paid labour force in increasing numbers, they needed to run their households and to travel to their paid work. By the end of the twentieth century American women were as likely to drive as their male counterparts, though their patterns of driving were different. In the process, the automobile had become a sex neutral vehicle.

This essay examines the marketing of automobiles to women in the United States after World War II when mass consumption was established. Remarkably, little attention has been paid to the segmentation of the American car market by gender. Drawing on textual and pictorial archival sources from the National Automotive History Collection, the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson and the Benson Ford Research Center, as well as on statistical materials and reports generated by the federal government, it discusses how and when American women were recognized as significant, if not equal consumers of automobiles. Emphasis is given to the years 1945—1980. Two socioeconomic developments were significant in altering the status of female car consumers. In the boom years between 1945 and the early 1960s, the new suburban lifestyle required most women to drive as modern housewives. Then, they wanted greater say in the purchase of the family car or even their own car. Subsequently, in the late 1960s and 1970s, civil rights legislation and the surge in women’s labor force participation allowed more women to buy their own vehicles as well as to drive more often. There was a cultural lag before auto manufacturers in the 1980s acknowledged women’s importance in the car market. Women still, however, faced difficulties negotiating with auto dealers.

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