Molly Ladd-Taylor

Love, Work, and the Meanings of Motherhood

Katherine Arnup. Education for Motherhood: Advice for Mothers in TwentiethCentury Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. xiA1⁄4 + 251 pp.; Ul. ISBN 0-8020-2861-6 (cl); 0-80207361-1 (pb). Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Grace Chang, Linda Rennie Forcey eds. Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency. New York: Routledge, 1994. I‡ + 387 pp. ISBN 0-415-90775-6 (cl); 0-415 90776-4 (pb). Susan Pedersen. Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State, Britain and France, 1914-1945. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xv + 478 pp. ISBN 0-52141989-1 (cl).

Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890-1930.

Early in the twentieth century, maternal and child welfare evolved from a private family responsibility into a matter of national policy. Women played the central role in this development. In Mother-Work, Molly Ladd-Taylor explores both the private and public aspects of childrearing, using the direct relationship between them to shed new light on the histories of motherhood, the welfare state, and womens activism in the United States. Mother-work, defined as womens unpaid work of reproduction and caregiving, was the motivation behind womens public activism and maternalist ideology. Ladd-Taylor emphasizes the connection between mother-work and social welfare politics by showing that their mothering experiences led women to become active in the development of public health, education, and welfare services. In turn, the advent of these services altered mothering experiences in a number of ways, including by reducing the infant mortality rate. By examining womens activism in organizations including the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations, the U.S. Childrens Bureau, and the National Womans Party, Ladd-Taylor dispels the notion of mother-work as a contradictory term and clarifies womens role in the development of the American economic system.