Table of Contents

Introduction 1
Part 1
Mother-Work at Home
1. The Work of Mothering 17
Part Two
Mother-Work in the Community
2. "When the Birds Have Flown the Nest, the Mother-Work May Still Go On", Sentimental Maternalim and the National Congress of Mothers 43
3. "The Welfare of Mothers and Babies Is a Dignified Subject of Political Discussion", Progressive Materinalism and the Children's Bureau 74
4. "How Cruelly Unjust to Handicap All Women", Feminism and the Abandonment of Motherhood Rhetoric 104
Part Three
Mothers and the State
5. "Every Mother Has a Right", The Movement for Mothers' Pensions 135
6. "We Mothers Are So Glad the Day Has Come", Mothers' Work and the Sheppard-Towner Act 167
Conclusion 197
Index 207

About the Author

Molly Ladd-Taylor is a professor of history at York University, Toronto. She is the author of Fixing the Poor: Eugenic Sterilization and Child Welfare in the Twentieth Century and a coeditor of Women, Health and Nation: Canada and the United States Since 1945.

Reviews

"The essential guide to the politics of motherhood during a crucial period in the history of American women and the incipient welfare state."--Sonya Michel, editor of Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States