Modern Motherhood

GENDER IN HISTORY Series editors: Lynn Abrams, Cordelia Beattie, Pam Sharpe and Penny Summerfield The expansion of research into the history of women and gender since the 1970s has changed the face of history. Using the insights of feminist theory and of historians of women, gender historians have explored the configuration in the past of gender identities and relations between the sexes. They have also investigated the history of sexuality and family relations, and analysed ideas and ideals of masculinity and femininity. Yet gender history has not abandoned the original, inspirational project of women’s history: to recover and reveal the lived experience of women in the past and the present. The series Gender in History provides a forum for these developments. Its historical coverage extends from the medieval to the modern periods, and its geographical scope encompasses not only Europe and North America but all corners of the globe. The series aims to investigate the social and cultural constructions of gender in historical sources, as well as the gendering of historical discourse itself. It embraces both detailed case studies of specific regions or periods and broader treatments of major themes. Gender in History books are designed to meet the needs of both scholars and students working in this dynamic area of historical research. Modern motherhood Davis_ModernMotherhood.indd 1 05/12/2011 09:32 selected titles available in the series Myth and materiality in a woman’s world: Shetland 1800–2000 Lynn Abrams Destined for a life of service: defining African–Jamaican womanhood, 1865–1938 Henrice Altink Gender and housing in Soviet Russia: private life in a public space Lynne Attwood Love, intimacy and power: marital relationships in Scotland, 1650–1850 Katie Barclay History, patriarchy and the challenge of feminism (with University of Pennsylvania Press) Judith Bennett Women of the right spirit: paid organisers of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) 1904–18 Krista Cowman Living in sin: cohabiting as husband and wife in nineteenth-century England Ginger S. Frost Murder and morality in Victorian Britain: the story of Madeleine Smith Eleanor Gordon and Gwyneth Nair The shadow of marriage: singleness in England, 1914–60 Katherine Holden Women and the shaping of British Methodism: persistent preachers, 1807–1907 Jennifer Lloyd The feminine public sphere: middle-class women and civic life in Scotland, c. 1870-1914 Megan Smitley Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy and the Victorian feminist movement: the biography of an insurgent woman Maureen Wright Davis_ModernMotherhood.indd 2 05/12/2011 09:32 modern motherhood WOMEN AND family IN ENGLAND, c. 1945–2000 Angela Davis Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed in the USA exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan Davis_ModernMotherhood.indd 3 05/12/2011 09:32 Copyright © Angela Davis 2012 The right of Angela Davis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act ï. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester m1 9nr, UK and Room ï´, ï± Fifth Avenue, New York, n ï±ï, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, n ï±ï, USA Distributed exclusively in Canada by UBC Press University of British Columbia, ï²ï West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada t 12 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for n ï 0 ï·ï 455 hardback First published ï²2 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset in Minion with Scala Sans display by Koinonia, Manchester Printed in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire Davis_ModernMotherhood.indd 4 05/12/2011 09:32 Contents noedement page vii t of reton viii 1 Introduction 1 2 Family and community: surveying women and the family 15 Educating mothers: family, school and antenatal education 5 4 Pregnancy and childbirth: antenatal care, birth and postnatal care 84 5 Experts and childcare ‘bibles’: mothers and advice literature 112 Working and caring: women’s labour inside and outside the home 142 7 Breadwinners and homemakers: ideals of men and women in the family 177 Conclusions 207 Appendices 1 Typical interview schedule 21 2 Oxfordshire interviewees’ biographical details 21 seet orph of puhed eondr oure 22 ndex 25 Davis_ModernMotherhood.indd 5 05/12/2011 09:32 Davis_ModernMotherhood.indd 6 05/12/2011 09:32 Acknowledgements I would first like to thank the women who shared their recollections and thoughts with me. I hope they will feel I have done justice to their memories. I would like to express my gratitude to the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the British Library; the Centre for Oxfordshire Studies; the Elizabeth Roberts Archive at the Centre for North-West Regional Studies, Lancaster University; the Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex; the Wellcome Library; and the Women’s Library. I began the research on which the book is based as a DPhil student at the University of Oxford (200–2007). I am grateful to the Department for C ontinuing Education and St Cross College for the research grants they provided. I completed the book while a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Warwick (200–2010). I am indebted to the Leverhulme Trust for their generous support. I would like to thank the many colleagues who have offered advice and constructive criticisms. Special thanks go to my DPhil supervisors, Janet Howarth and Kate Tiller; my DPhil examiners, Sally Alexander and John Davis; and my colleagues at the University of Warwick. Final thanks go to my family and friends who have all helped with the writing of this book. vii Davis_ModernMotherhood.indd 7 05/12/2011 09:32 List of Abbreviations AIMS Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services BBC British Broadcasting Corporation BLISS Baby Life Support Systems ERA Elizabeth Roberts Archive GP general practitioner MOA Mass Observation Archive MOH Medical Officer of Health NCT National Childbirth Trust NHS National Health Service OWL Oxford Women’s Liberation PPA Pre-school Playgroups Association SANDS Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society WHO World Health Organization Davis_ModernMotherhood.indd 8 05/12/2011 09:32 1 Introduction he years following 1945 were marked by significant social developments. Yet, the post-war era remains greatly neglected by historians.1 TPerspectives on the period also tend to be over- generalised. For example, the 1950s are often seen as a golden age of prosperity and consensus before the upheavals of the 190s. In reality, as has been increasingly demonstrated, the picture is more nuanced. Many of the social changes believed to have occurred after the war had already commenced beforehand and there was a great deal of continuity as well as change in the years that followed. In recent years historians have shown how these developments were also mediated by factors such as gender, class, region and ethnicity. This book builds upon such existing scholarship but offers new insights through its focus on motherhood. Looking through the prism of motherhood provides a way of understanding the complex social changes taking place during this time. Motherhood is an area where a number of discourses and practices meet, such as education, health care, psychology, labour market trends and state intervention. In consequence the experience of motherhood has a wide resonance, demonstrating change in: women’s lives, gender relations, culture and society, family and community patterns, health and welfare, and the relationship between the family and the state. Drawing on the themes of continuity and change I will examine the legacies of these developments and will consider what they indicate about both the past and future of motherhood in England. While motherhood is both a biological and cultural state there is, as Ellen Ross argues, little that is truly ‘natural’ about an institution which is so embedded in social and cultural practices.2 Ideas about motherhood have accordingly changed over the centuries. Indeed the term ‘motherhood’ itself seems to be a relatively recent invention. Ann Dally cites 1597 as the first entry for ‘motherhood’ in the Oxford English Dictionary, and then only as a fact rather than an ideology. She argues it was not 1 Davis_ModernMotherhood.indd 1 05/12/2011 09:32 modern motherhood until the Victorian era that the word emerged as a concept, when many elements of motherhood as it was conceived in the post-1945 decades, such as its association with sex, cohabitation, and capitalist consumption became established. However, understandings of motherhood in the years after 1945 were also influenced by some theoretical developments specific to this period, such as mother-centred psychoanalysis, structural- functionalist sociology and second-wave feminism. Indeed motherhood in the second half of the twentieth century is a particularly interesting subject due to the dramatic changes in conceptions of the role of women that occurred at this time. As Carol Dyhouse points out, the years after World War Two were a time of contraÂÂ dictions for women. There was ‘a growing ideology of home-centeredness reflected in the proliferation and phenomenal growth of the women’s magazines spreading the gospel of salvation through consumption during the period’; but this was accompanied by ‘a steady significant rise in the number of women leaving their homes, particularly when children were old enough to go to school, and returning to paid employment.’4 However, while married women were increasingly present in the workforce they were not conceived of as workers on the same terms as men.

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