Edith Banfield Jackson graduated from Vassar College in 1916 and received a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1921.
In 1937 she provided funding for the Jackson Nursery for children under the age of two which, under the directorship of Anna Freud, made observational studies on early child development.
Influenced by her psychiatric training, primarily attachment theory, she worked to eradicate the common practice of separating newborn infants from their mothers and fathers upon birth.
"Rooming-in" allowed newborns to stay in the same hospital room with their mothers, and encouraged parents to care for their infant immediately from birth.
In the decades after Jackson's innovative Rooming-in Project began, her approach to childbirth has become the norm at hospitals across the United States and around the world.