Born in New York City on July 1, 1904, Mary Steichen was the daughter of photographer Edward Steichen. She was educated privately in New York and France and graduated from Vassar College in 1925. For a time she studied acting but did not make a career of it. In 1935, having ended a first marriage, she entered the medical school of the University of Rochester. She graduated in 1939, interned for a year at Bellevue Hospital in New York, and then took further training at the Columbia University School of Public Health, from which she received an M.P.H. degree in 1942. In November 1941 she married Dr. Frank A. Calderone, a noted public health official.
After four years as a school physician in Great Neck, New York, she became medical director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1953. In that post she traveled and spoke widely on the topics of birth control and family planning and directed the federation╒s extensive research activities. She also wrote numerous articles for popular and professional periodicals, edited Abortion in the United States, 1958, and wrote Release from Sexual Tensions, 1960, and Manual of Contraceptive Practice, 1964, a pioneering medical text.
In May 1964 she became executive director of a new organization, the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States, known as SIECUS, which she had led in forming. She resigned from Planned Parenthood two months later. The goal of SIECUS was to promote research, discussion, and education in the wider field of human sexuality and thereby to develop a mature and responsible public attitude toward its various aspects. SIECUS was particularly active in developing sex education materials for young people. She remained executive director until 1975 and served as president of SIECUS from 1975 to 1982.
From 1982 to 1988 she was an adjunct professor of the program in Human Sexuality at New York University. She published two books dealing with children and sexuality, The Family Book About Sexuality, written with Eric W. Johnson, 1981, and Talking with Your Child About Sex: Questions and Answers for Children from Birth to Puberty, with James W. Ramey, 1982. Calderone continued to be a frequent and popular lecturer and was the recipient of numerous professional and humanitarian awards.
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