This Thesis Has Been Approved by the Honors Tutorial College and the Department of Political Science

This thesis has been approved by The Honors Tutorial College and the Department of Political Science

______Dr. Kathleen Sullivan Professor, Political Science Thesis Adviser

______Dr. Andrew Ross Director of Studies, Political Science

______Dr. Donal Skinner Dean, Honors Tutorial College

MOMS GO POLITICAL: MATERNALISM IN THE NATIONAL WELFARE RIGHTS ORGANIZATION AND WOMEN STRIKE FOR PEACE ______A Thesis Presented to The Honors Tutorial College Ohio University ______In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation from the Honors Tutorial College with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Political Science ______by Shae A. Woodburn April, 2020

Introduction and Literature Review: The first time I came across the term maternalism, I was sitting in my

Constitutional Law class. The class was learning about Progressive Era Supreme Court cases and how the Court refused to allow protective labor legislation to stand. Certain groups of Progressives began to frame arguments from a maternalist perspective in order to convince the Court to allow protective labor laws. They used maternalism, arguing that women deserved a special status because of their capacity for motherhood. This was the first time I had ever seen an argument or political strategy like this and it caught my attention. I began to seek out other examples of maternalism in politics. Of course, I knew about groups like Moms Against Drunk Driving or Moms Demand Action, but this intentional and strategic use of motherhood was new to me. This was not the casual mothers’ groups I knew about that occasionally dabbled in political issues but ultimately were social in nature. I had questions about its implications. I wanted to know if this was a feminist concept or one that set women back. I wanted to know if all people could politicize motherhood or if it was reserved only for a select group. I wanted to know if this was a successful political strategy. I wanted to know the implications of maternalism in politics. I wanted a bigger picture. The Progressives offered an example of non- mothers using maternalism but I sought other groups who used it like them: groups that were not exclusively mothers but deliberate with their maternalism as a strategic choice.

These questions led me to my eventual thesis topic, that of two groups from the 1960s and 1970s that practiced maternalist politics.

Maternalist politics have almost always been prevalent in US politics.

Maternalism as a political strategy has been most famously used in Progressive Era

2 politics, but it did not end there. Women in the 1960s and 1970s used maternalist strategies in political organizations like Women Strike for Peace and the National

Welfare Rights Organization. The implications of these strategies, illustrated by WSP and

NWRO, include racial and gender consequences. Maternalism raises questions of who exactly can utilize the strategy successfully and what that success looks like. It demands a closer examination of how motherhood is racialized and the ramifications of that racialization. This raises questions of what maternalism looks like when utilized predominantly by poor Black women, such as the NWRO women, and when utilized by socioeconomically privileged white women, such as the WSP women. Each of these groups also provides an opportunity to analyze the dynamics between Black women’s groups and white women’s groups that claim to speak for all women and all children with maternalism. In analyzing the maternalism of each group, the different types of maternalism also are revealed as well as public reception to the assertion of motherhood by WSP and NWRO. Some of the limitations of motherhood as a political strategy are revealed in a close study of NWRO and WSP, as well as some of the potential benefits of maternalism that may allow for a more successful use of maternalist strategies in modern politics. The following literature review demonstrates the common theories and research in maternalist politics, as well as some of the gaps that my thesis seeks to address.

In Favor of Maternalism Mothers’ movements and maternalism have long been present in American politics. Early examples of maternalism date back to Progressive Era legislation when activists insisted on protection for women in the workplace because of their status as mothers or potential mothers. Contemporary examples are prevalent with movements like

Mothers Against Drunk Driving or Moms Demand Action. Mothers and maternalism have been powerful political actors, and many theorists are in favor of maternalist lenses.

Some argue that maternalism can be empowering for women by broadening their access to the political sphere. Others argue that maternalism can actually be a gender-neutral care ethic and so produce public goods. Still others insist that maternalism is expansive and can work with other activist frameworks to create more inclusive political environments.

Danielle Poe argues in favor of maternalist lenses in politics in Maternal

Activism: Mothers Confronting Injustice.1 Poe argues that there is a difference between maternalism and women activists who are mothers. Each of the women from her four case studies—Molly Rush, Michele Naar-Obed, Cindy Sheehan, and Diane Wilson—are activists that also identify as mothers. Poe claims that the work done by each of these women serves to empower women and expand the role of women from private, domestic spheres to public ones. Each of the activists frame their arguments around motherhood however, demonstrating that these women are in fact strategically conceptualizing their political goals around motherhood and engaging in maternalist politics. Poe insists that maternal activism does not have to lead to essentialist understandings of motherhood; instead, it empowers women through pushing the boundaries of gender roles and allowing them to engage in the political arena. Maternalism empowers through providing a radical way to express themselves as women and mothers beyond stereotypical

1 Danielle Poe, Maternal Activism Mothers Confronting Injustice, (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, Albany, 2015).

4 understandings. Poe argues “...political action and mothering coincide, but their actions expand notions of mothering beyond narrow stereotypes, and their political actions extend their communities.”2 Poe believes that maternalism is revolutionary and expansive for women as a whole and that it allows more women to engage politically. What Poe fails to acknowledge is the privilege associated with politicizing motherhood and that often it serves to reinforce patriarchal roles.

Poe’s case studies illustrate an ongoing flaw in maternalist frameworks because each woman is criticized by media for not being a ‘good’ mother throughout her activism. The rhetoric around what makes a ‘good’ mother demonstrates the lack of inclusion in maternalism. Women who mobilize their motherhood are permitted to do so only if they are perceived as ‘good’ mothers. A good mother looks like white, middle-to- upper-class women who don’t push the limits of gender roles too far. The women Poe describes engage in behavior that is not suitable to women as mothers, such as being arrested and incarcerated, which keeps them from their children. Rush, Wilson, Naar-

Obed, and Sheehan also engage in more progressive political issues such as protesting the military or objecting to environmental degradation. These issues do not reinforce the status quo and raise questions of just how far women who mobilize their motherhood can push back against patriarchal expectations and still be seen as ‘good’ mothers.

Cynthia Stavrianos similarly argues in favor of maternal frameworks in The

Political Uses of Motherhood in America.3 Stavrianos puts forth two categories of analysis in maternalism. She describes one as understanding maternalism to be either

2 Poe, Maternal Activism, 107. 3 Cynthia Stavrianos, The Political Uses of Motherhood in America (New York: Routledge, 2015).

5 politically limiting in that it reinforces limiting gender roles or that it makes women

“politically invisible.”4 Political invisibility is useful for mothers in activist roles when they are undertaking activism that could be potentially dangerous. Stavrianos uses the example of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo who protested against governments in Latin

America after their children were disappeared. Political invisibility means that these mothers were viewed exclusively as apolitical entities and therefore their political power was limited. The other analysis of maternalism, and the one Stavrianos subscribes to, insists that maternal frameworks and equal rights frameworks can work together to expand political activism to people who may otherwise not engage. Like Poe, Stavrianos believes that maternal frameworks can be expansive to women seeking to participate in the political sphere. She believes that maternalism can thus be a useful and effective political strategy in contemporary politics and makes her argument with several case studies: Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Million Mom March, Mothers in Charge,

Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, and Mainstreet Moms Organize or Bust. Stavrianos does acknowledge the limitations of maternalism for women of color and working-class women. She also acknowledges that liberal movements must be careful when deploying maternalist strategies because those strategies can sometimes backfire and serve to restrict women through stereotypical gender roles. Instead, Stavrianos argues that maternal frames should be crafted alongside equality frameworks. Despite these limitations, Stavrianos still believes that maternal frameworks in political movements can still be used effectively in contemporary politics.

4 Stavrianos, The Political Uses of Motherhood in America, 6.

Virginia Held argues in favor of a maternal lens through care work in Rights and

Goods: Justifying Social Action. Held addresses maternal frameworks through an ethic of care which is a different perspective from some of the other proponents of maternalism.

She argues that mothering is an act that can be done by all people: “Human mothering is above all an activity that need not be performed by women.”5 This perspective supports maternalism in politics in that the goals argued for with maternalism can and should be broadly applicable. However, the fact that mothering connotes a gender role makes it difficult to separate from patriarchal expectations of women. Held’s argument that mothering is an action that can be undertaken by anyone ignores the context around maternalism and its exclusive nature. Other care theorists, like Joan Tronto, argue that an ethic of care without the gendered nature of mothering should be put forward. In the same way, many maternalist goals serve a public good but could be put forward without the gendered lens of maternalism which is not inclusive.

Critics of Maternalism While some scholars support maternalism, others are staunchly against it. Critics of maternalism point out the lack of socioeconomic awareness given that those who engage in maternalism are largely upper-middle class. The policies produced by maternalism also tend to benefit the wealthy. Furthermore, maternalism is exclusive to women of color both in politicizing motherhood and in the policies. Because maternalism often relies on the narrative of good moral mothers, some groups are always excluded. There are also critiques

5 Virginia Held, Rights and Goods: Justifying Social Action (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), 196.

7 that maternalism serves to further entrench patriarchal gender roles instead of truly allowing women access to the political sphere.

Joan Tronto critiques the motherhood framework in Moral Boundaries.6

Motherhood frameworks often rely on a general perspective of women as mothers as more moral, virtuous figures in society. Tronto explains that this understanding of women, and thus mothers’ movements, is flawed and has consequences for full gender equality in addition to failing to accomplish political power and equality for women. She condemns women’s morality arguments as requiring “that some women’s realities be sacrificed to achieve other women’s inclusion.”7 Tronto is responding to earlier care theorists like

Virginia Held who advocated for a motherhood care lens, arguing that even men can engage in mothering. Tronto points out that movements based on the superior morality or innate goodness of women as mothers are flawed and destined to fail. She argues that when women make an argument centered around moral motherhood, they face arguments that insist morality does not belong in politics.8 When morality becomes excluded from political activity, women who have depended on a maternal moral framework to enter politics are subsequently excluded as well. Because morality is so heavily associated with the private sphere and with women as mothers in the private sphere, these understandings are only reinforced by mothers’ movements that seek to utilize morality in their arguments and political goals. Not only do maternal movements exclude women of color because of their inability to achieve the virtuous mother status, these movements also prove incapable of allowing women and mothers access to the political sphere because they reinforce notions

6 Joan Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care, (New York: Routledge, 1994). 7 Tronto, Moral Boundaries, 2. 8 Tronto, Moral Boundaries, 6.

8 of motherhood and morality that oppress and relegate women to the private, domestic sphere.

Karen Tani offers insight into the bureaucracy and how government agencies, specifically welfare agencies, can both build and limit rights in States of Dependency.9

During the New Deal, the federal government began the process of centralizing assistance programs across states into federal agencies within those states. The federal government insisted that the states follow specific guidelines and gained their cooperation through grants and funding. If a state cooperated, it was given grants from the federal government.

If it refused to comply, then that money was taken away. This was an effective method of getting states to implement federal policies. Many states were reluctant to concede to a program that looked like federal intervention and control over what was previously not even a state function, but a function of localities. The fact that providing aid was a function of localities allowed for the race discrimination described by Hancock and McRae, especially against Black mothers. Tani describes the individualized nature of poverty and points out connections between morality and poverty which further served to alienate Black mothers thought to be immoral from being recipients of welfare.10 In critiquing maternalism, Tani cautions that its consequences in welfare politics meant that the myth of the moral mother was perpetuated and a requirement for receiving aid. It allowed state control over the regulation of mothers’ sexuality and allowed for the exclusivity of Black mothers who were consistently deemed ineligible to receive aid.

9 Karen Tani, States of Dependency: Welfare, Rights, and American Governance, 1935-1972, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 10 Tani, States of Dependency, 33.

The new agencies and the employees within localities began using the language of rights when discussing recipients of aid and the extent of assistance those recipients were entitled to. Federal employees embraced rights rhetoric to push an agenda of acceptance of these federal welfare plans, but that language had further reaching consequences. The meaning and connotations of aid began to change. American understandings shifted from dependence means loss of freedom to the government owes citizens some level of protection and those citizens get to maintain their freedom. Lawyers began using the

14th Amendment, and especially the Due Process Clause, to push for fair hearings for those seeking to appeal decisions in the welfare system. Others made headway in redefining rights through the courts. Tani demonstrates here the ways in which the bureaucracy can be used to create and uphold rights. However, Tani also points out the consequences of this rights rhetoric in the ways southern states began to reject New Deal policies, especially because of the increase of Black mothers receiving aid in the 1950s: “Black single mothers raised special concern: their behavior showed that they had not only reclaimed their own reproductive capacity… but had also chosen to rely on the government rather than to work for low wages in fields and whites’ homes.”11

Intersectional Lens In examining the critics of maternalism, and applying my own critical lens, an intersectional analysis is crucial. A key critique of maternalism is often its lack of intersectionality and the exclusion of women of color. I will further explore the need for an intersectional lens in my case studies WSP and NWRO. These cases allow for a more clear examination of the exclusivity and racism in maternalism. The critique can be taken

11 Tani, States of Dependency, 159.

10 even further in studying WSP and NWRO. Questions of how white feminism can claim to represent all women are present in maternalist women’s groups. The urgency of a maternalist rhetoric can also be examined when using an intersectional lens. WSP’s maternalism is about a more conceptual issue like world peace while NWRO’s is a more present and urgent demand for welfare rights. Maternalism must be analyzed with an intersectional and critical lens in order to fully understand its role in US politics.

Patricia Hill Collins illustrates most clearly the issues with white maternal rhetoric in Black Feminist Thought because of the myriad ways it is connected to and creates oppression of Black women.12 Hill Collins describes a “cult of true womanhood” that women were to aspire to, composed of the virtues of piety, submission, purity, and domesticity.13 These were virtues that Black women have historically been excluded from, and these are the virtues most embodied in historical mothers’ movements.

Progressive Era maternalism insisted that mothers receive special protections precisely because of their virtuous qualities like these. Similarly, WSP was active during the Cold

War when domesticity was expected from mothers and they used that expectation in making their arguments for global peace. Because Black women could not achieve the goal of the true woman, they were controlled through other images and stereotypes, often centered around motherhood. This is another reason Black women could not politicize and mobilize their motherhood like white women. Black women have been stereotyped into four images of the Black mother, according to Hill Collins: the Mammy, the Black

Matriarch, the Welfare Mother, and the Black Lady. Each of these images are a way of

12 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, (New York: Routledge, 2000). 13 Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 72.

11 controlling Black women and are critical of Black motherhood. They each indicate a lack of the virtues embodied by the white mother; the Black mother is unfeminine, aggressive, promiscuous, etc. The white mother can politically appropriate those virtues to argue for some sort of goal or policy for her children. Black mothers would come across as aggressive, etc., and are therefore excluded from the rhetoric of maternalism, meaning

Black children are excluded from any benefits gained in a maternal movement. Hill

Collins also discusses the concept of othermothering in Black communities. This is one of the ways in which groups that are excluded from maternalism have reclaimed motherhood in ways that do not reflect typical maternalist politics.

Elizabeth Gillespie McRae offers a critical perspective regarding the white supremacy often inherent in mothers’ movements in Mothers of Massive Resistance:

White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy.14 Often the racism and exclusion of mothers’ movements is more subtle and not necessarily intentional, however, McRae’s example of mobilized motherhood is very much one of white supremacy and demonstrates how easily maternalism can lend itself to racism. McRae analyzes the actions of white women in the South from the early 1900s through the 1970s and their efforts to solidify white supremacy through encouraging mass resistance. She focuses on four women, Florence Sillers Ogden, Mary Dawson Cain, Cornelia Dabney Tucker, and

Nell Battle Lewis, who were employed at local newspapers which provided networking opportunities as well as an outlet through which to influence public opinion and politics.

Many of these women were southern, white mothers in the 20th century and these

14 Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

12 identities influence their political actions and provide frameworks through which to make their political arguments in favor of segregation. These women worked to solidify racial hierarchies into the realms of social welfare institutions, public education, electoral politics, and pop culture by utilizing a maternal lens. McRae also points out that white women are often left out of the historical and political dialogues of segregationists. Could maternalism be a factor in obscuring the problematic nature of white women’s push for segregation because it tends to uphold and reinforce gender roles?

White women in the South often were crucial to constructing race and enforcing color lines. In the early 1900s, white women were key figures in establishing race. They worked as school teachers, midwives, social workers, and low-level employees in local government, and in these roles, white women were encouraged by state officials and politicians to identify and officialize the race of local families in order to establish clear racial hierarchies. This was often connected to white women’s roles as good mothers:

“For many, being a good white mother or a good white woman meant teaching and enforcing racial distance in their homes and in the larger public sphere.”15 The maternal framework invoked in assigning race was expanded to the realm of education, where white women in Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, and other southern states argued that because they were mothers, they had a moral authority on what their children were being taught in school. Women in groups like the Daughters of the American Revolution,

Citizens Councils, local school boards, and United Daughters of the Confederacy pushed to expunge Black history from textbooks, control which textbooks were used, and rewrite

American history in the South to promote white supremacy. These efforts were repeated

15 McRae, Mothers of Massive Resistance, 4.

13 and ongoing throughout the 20th century, although by the 1950s they had merged segregationist ideologies with anticommunist ideologies, both of which utilized maternal lenses. This maternalism stands in direct contrast with Women Strike for Peace who argued for denuclearization during the Cold War while presenting themselves as concerned mothers.

McRae also discusses the mass resistance to Brown in 1954 organized by white mothers. She writes, “Good white mothers reared children who maintained appropriate racial distance, made sure the schools taught a curriculum in line with white supremacist politics…”16 In the aftermath of the Brown decision, white mothers across the south wrote to their local politicians about their objections to integrated schools through the lens of motherhood. These women insisted that segregation be maintained for the good of their children and they understood Brown to be an invasion of their private family spheres. White mothers believed that Brown sanctioned interracial relationships and mobilized to prevent integration. In addition to letter-writing, they formed their own groups, like the Mothers League in Arkansas who mobilized their own children in their efforts to prevent integration. White mothers also got involved with Citizens’ Councils and other school groups because the vision of white motherhood was connected with segregation in that good white mothers did not permit their children to be integrated.

Throughout McRae’s analysis is the unexplored theme of “good” mothers. Good white mothers were the women who could utilize a maternal lens successfully in the

South. Women of color were denied this access as we see exemplified with Mamie Till

16 McRae, Mothers of Massive Resistance, 112.

Bradley, the mother of Emmett Till. Stavrianos discusses the inability of Bradley to successfully politicize her motherhood because she was not understood to be a “good” mother.17 Bradley used maternal rhetoric in her activism after the death of her son, but after crossing a line on how far she was permitted to politicize her motherhood as a Black woman, Bradley was alienated even from groups that supported her cause like the

NAACP and was slandered in the press as greedy and a bad mother.

Ange-Marie Hancock also explains the struggles Black women have in making maternal arguments in more contemporary contexts through analysis of the “welfare queen” caricature. Hancock says, “The public identity of the “welfare queen”, a product of the political culture, effectively stymied single, poor Black mothers’ empowered participation in the public sphere.”18 Hancock argues that the welfare queen stereotype is created and perpetuated through a politics of disgust that serves to disenfranchise Black mothers. She explains that public identity is created from stereotypes and then those stereotypes are accompanied by a moral judgment. Those moral judgments then go on to serve as a premise for public policy.19 The politics of disgust creates an obstruction to full democracy and citizenship for those members of the public identity group, in this case poor, single, Black mothers. Hancock’s work is in conversation with that of Hill Collins with her understanding of the origins of the welfare queen. The historic stereotyping of

Black women as Jezebels or Mammy figures gave way to the welfare queen who lives a life of luxury on the tax payer dollar through welfare benefits. This also connects back to

17 Stavrianos, The Political Uses of Motherhood in America, 23. 18 Ange-Marie Hancock, The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen, (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 27. 19 Hancock, The Politics of Disgust, 16.

15 the prevalent theme of “good mothers”, a status Black mothers are consistently unable to attain through the construction of public identities like that of the welfare queen.

Hancock further discusses the historic ways in which Black women have been excluded from maternalist politics like with the origins of welfare benefits originally intended only for white widows as well as the protective labor legislation of the

Progressive Era. Hancock describes the Southern white women’s clubs that pushed for this type of exclusive policy, echoing the work of McRae. She calls this paternalistic maternalism and points out the context in which protective legislation was passed, arguing that the nationalist, anti-immigrant rhetoric of the time ensured that Black women and mothers were not intended recipients of those policies20. Black mothers were not passive victims of this discrimination. They formed their own middle-class Black women’s clubs to engage in activism and political work for access to state social services.

Later, poor Black mothers organized within the National Welfare Rights Organization to protest the discrimination in access to welfare services.

Throughout American history and into today’s contemporary politics, there have been mothers’ movements. These movements are usually composed of exclusively mothers and sometimes use maternalism is framing their arguments. They can be social or political groups, but the main defining feature is that their membership is composed of women who identify as mothers. These movements are not inherently what interests me in this thesis. The case studies I have chosen are not mothers’ movements. WSP and the

NWRO are not organizations that require motherhood for membership. What interests me

20 Hancock, The Politics of Disgust, 28.

16 about these organizations is that while not requiring motherhood, they frame their political goals and arguments around maternalism at least in some capacity. Maternalism is arguing that certain political goals are beneficial to women as mothers and their children. They often fall back on moral reasoning and indulge the myth of the “good mother”. However, these arguments in the case studies I am examining are not made exclusively by mothers. Instead, maternalism is a deliberate political strategy and that is what distinguishes these case studies from mothers’ movements.

Set Up Case Studies I will analyze two case studies: Women Strike for Peace and the National Welfare

Rights Organization. Each of these cases is similar in that the movements are not explicitly and exclusively composed of mothers, but they each strategically deploy maternal frameworks and rhetoric in crafting their arguments in order to accomplish their goals.

Protective labor legislation in the Progressive Era is one of the earliest examples of maternalism in the US and demonstrates the ways in which the law and precedent can be manipulated to provide for a progressive goal of protective labor legislation that would not be struck down in court. Understanding the Progressive maternalists provides some political context for maternalism and shows its historic background in US politics. The usage of maternal frameworks is overtly strategic here because Progressive maternalists argued for protective labor legislation specifically for women because of their capacity for motherhood. During the Lochner Era of the US Supreme Court, labor legislation such as minimum wage, maximum hours, etc. was struck down by the Court as a violation of the 14th Amendment right to contract. Protective labor legislation that specifically

17 referred to women or mothers was upheld by the Court, most notably in Muller v

Oregon.21 However, it also demonstrates the limits of maternalism because of the narratives of virtue and domesticity around motherhood that were required in order to politicize motherhood.

Unlike WSP, the groups in Novkov’s work Constituting Workers, Protecting

Women were not organized solely around one issue or composed entirely of mothers.22

These groups included the National Women’s Trade Union League, the National

Consumers’ League, and various other labor unions and feminist groups. Maternalist ideology did not embody these groups in the same way it embodied WSP, but instead it was used as a strategy to advance labor protection laws for women and eventually to widen the scope of those laws. These organizations argued from a position of motherhood as a unique place in society that could be used for advancing protective labor legislation as a response to the Court’s refusal to uphold more general protective legislation. These movements hoped to establish legal precedent for protective labor legislation by arguing in favor of protective legislation for women first in order to eventually utilize some of the same arguments to get legislation for all vulnerable laborers. Novkov’s work centers around the shift in the Court from the Lochner Era, when it refused to uphold any protective legislation, to the Progressive and New Deal Eras when that type of legislation was finally maintained. She argues that gendered legal strategies played a role in this shift.

21 Julie Novkov, Constituting Workers, Protecting Women: Gender, Law, and Labor in the Progressive Era and New Deal Years, (The University of Michigan Press, 2001), 99. 22 Novkov, Constituting Workers, Protecting Women

Several of the gendered strategies revolve around maternalist ideology. These strategies argued by the groups mentioned above, insist that women are in need of protective legislation because hard intensive labor resulted in damage to a woman’s reproductive capabilities. This argument centered around women’s identities as mothers or future mothers and was used to achieve progressive ends in labor legislation. However, proponents of this argument often varied in their motives, with some seeking true protective legislation for all and using maternalist ideology to get there, while others made this argument with the hope of pushing women more fully back into the domestic sphere and out of the labor sphere. Regardless of intent, maternalist ideology was used to push a progressive goal. Novkov’s work raises other questions to further explore, like the possible legal and future case consequences of arguing that women are fragile because of reproductive capacity and making that reproduction an issue that became public and available for the Court to address and the state to regulate. Novkov’s work also leaves room for questioning whether other movements existed that used maternalist ideology for progressive ends at the time but resulted in perhaps less progressive consequences in the future. Could this thinking be applied to modern mothers’ movements as well?

Women Strike for Peace The literature about the Women Strike for Peace movement varies from analysis of the movement’s coalition building to analyzing the organization within the larger Cold

War context. Amy Swerdlow’s personal and academic account is probably the most prominent literature on the movement itself. Swerdlow discusses the organization’s structure, goals, and methods from the perspective of someone within the movement. She attempts to correct faulty narratives as well as offers criticisms of the organization.

Swerdlow acknowledges the struggle for an inclusive demographic, pointing out that while the rhetoric of WSP was inclusive, the reality of its members was largely white, middle-class women. Swerdlow also points out some mistakes made within the organization in its struggles to connect with younger leftist movements and with early second-wave feminists.23

Swerdlow writes that WSP women framed their protest in terms of motherhood which made the movement very difficult to criticize and also provided some degree of immunity from the anticommunist backlash that was so prevalent against political groups that objected to the government in some way.24 The movement argued that mothers needed to unite to combat increasing nuclear tensions in order to save the future of their children as well as for the health of their children. HUAC demonstrated that arguing against a movement like WSP proved difficult precisely because of the maternalist ideology used to advance a radical notion of denuclearization and anti-military expansion.

HUAC lost the advantage of public opinion when it interrogated WSP; it looked like a group of bullying men outwitted by feminine wiles. These women could openly question the government because of their position as mothers. Motherhood also provided a platform for otherwise nonpolitical women to be politically active in their communities without any negative stigma because it was through a deeply traditional role.

Mothers in WSP presented themselves as apolitical beings who wholeheartedly embraced their identities as mothers and homemakers, and never hesitated to broadcast that identity. This identity served to unite the various members of the movement who operated

23 Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993). 24 Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace.

20 from all over the United States. However, the majority of WSP members were white and middle-to-upper-class. Using these traditional identities and a grassroots and loosely structured movement, these women advanced a radical goal of peace in the context of increasing nuclear power, Cold War tensions, and anti-communist sentiment. The maternalist ideology of WSP granted it legitimacy in this context. Because mothers are this untouchable, almost virtuous figure in society, making an argument by twisting those views to accomplish specific goals is precisely what my project seeks to understand and further develop. WSP exemplifies this maternalist ideology in action, and more importantly, in effective radical action. One critique and question that Swerdlow’s work raises is the future of maternalist ideology and groups like WSP. Swerdlow openly discusses the difficulties

WSP had in relating to the emerging second wave feminist movement and the rejection that feminist movement had of traditional motherhood as a position for accomplishing radical change. Issues of the use of maternalist ideology in contemporary politics are worth exploring. Questions regarding the role, if one exists at all, of maternalism in achieving radical change in modern politics need to be answered.

The struggles of coalition building are highlighted by Andrea Estepa who writes about the work of building coalitions within WSP.25 Estepa points out that one reason

WSP initially struggled to develop alliances with other political groups in the United

States, particularly the Civil Rights Movement, is that WSP focused more on maintaining a palatable image than on engaging with controversial issues. Estepa argues that the public image of WSP was that of white, middle-class, middle-age homemakers and

25 Andrea Estepa, Taking the White Gloves Off: Women Strike for Peace and “the Movement,” 1967-73 (University of Illinois Press, 2008), 85-104.

21 mothers. This image was strategically crafted by the organization in order to allow the group to make radical peace arguments in a political environment that insisted pro-peace was synonymous with communism.26 Maternalism provided a certain degree of protection for the women within WSP. During their demonstrations, WSP would bring their children and babies in strollers and cheerfully interact with police. Even during their hearings before the House Un-American Committee, WSP engaged in traditional behavior, embracing gender roles and holding babies on their laps in the hearings. The image of homemaking mothers was deliberately constructed within the group to appear that way to an external audience. In reality, many women in WSP worked outside the home and did not personally claim motherhood as the reason for their political involvement. They simply embraced maternalism because of its rhetorical success.27

However, Estepa argues that the concern with image ultimately held WSP back from forming a concrete coalition with civil rights groups and more radical peace groups.

During the early years of the movement, WSP would refuse to engage in civil disobedience and avoided being arrested during their political demonstrations. Estepa claims that an ideological shift occurred within WSP, and more accurately, within political activism nationwide during the late 1960s. In 1967, WSP demonstrated in front of the White House to protest involvement in the Vietnam War. Unlike previous demonstrations, the 500 women practiced civil disobedience, refusing to leave and eventually physically fighting with the police. Some women were injured and others were arrested. This change in protest methods marked a shift within WSP. The image of

26 Estepa, Taking the White Gloves Off, 85. 27 Estepa, Taking the White Gloves Off, 88-89.

22 traditional motherhood became unstable because the actions of WSP no longer matched the maternalist rhetoric it espoused. Estepa credits this shift with the Vietnam War,

MLK’s Poor Peoples’ Campaign, and the outbreak of race riots in cities around the country. WSP began to develop a domestic peace platform that addressed poverty and race issues in addition to its international peace platform that protested war and nuclear proliferation.

With this shift to a more radical politics, WSP began to more actively attempt to partner with organizations in the New Left movement, civil rights groups, and poverty groups. It formed coalitions with the New Left on anti-war and draft resistance, and with poor women of color regarding issues of race and poverty. The Philadelphia branch of

WSP tried to work with the local chapter of NWRO in order to address issues of war and poverty, but the two groups struggled to connect over their different understandings of the military. NWRO mothers understood the military as a potential career option for their sons that could offer them success and a path out of poverty while WSP understood the military as killing their sons.28 This struggle to connect with Black women and their experiences and worldview defined the struggles of intersectionality in WSP. WSP also failed to connect with many young women in the New Left movement because of WSP’s embrace of traditional gender roles and motherhood. These young women were original activists in the second-wave feminist movements and could not understand why WSP would embrace their oppression. Even in coalition building, WSP maintained its maternalist rhetoric, which while not the focus of Estepa’s work, can still be seen. WSP regarded itself as a sort of mother group to the young New Left organizations. It played a

28 Estepa, Taking the White Gloves Off, 94.

23 maternal role in trying to guide those organizations and offer them advice. WSP would bail out New Left activists from jail, often referring to them as “kids”. In some publications, WSP referred to itself as one of the few “adult” groups. This maternal attitude undoubtedly chafed and further alienated WSP from connecting with those groups.

Other literature on WSP, like that by Petra Goedde, focuses on the politics of peace in a Cold War context. The work on WSP refers to its understanding of peace and of peace as a gendered concept. Goedde points out that peace during the Cold War had become an empty rhetoric used by politicians and global leaders. Activist groups and peace movements like WSP had more concrete definitions of peace, with clearly defined goals and critiques of leaders both in the US and abroad. These groups became associated with communism and often were strictly surveilled by intelligence agencies. WSP was no exception, and Goedde discusses their hearing before HUAC where the maternalism prevalent in the group as a political strategy becomes apparent, as mentioned above, when the women brought their babies to the hearing and handed out bouquets to witnesses.29 The disregard for the seriousness of a HUAC hearing shows the level of immunity WSP felt it had attained.

Goedde also provides some of the historical political background into how peace became gendered as a women’s issue which allowed groups like WSP to claim a place in international politics through peace activism. Goedde discusses how myths about inherent differences between men and women persisted into the Cold War and those

29 Petra Goedde, The Politics of Peace: A Global Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).

24 myths defined some of the struggles for achieving global peace.30 The Cold War brought a resurgence in traditional gender roles for men and women which only furthered the belief that peace was a women’s issue that was associated with motherhood. War was gendered as masculine and while peace negotiations were happening during the Cold

War, male politicians insisted they come from a place of strength, usually in the form of military power. These attitudes in US society meant that women began to establish peace organizations, among them Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom,

Women’s International Democratic Federation, and Women Strike for Peace. Goedde points out that anti-war activists also frequently embraced maternalism as the justification for their political work: “all women’s peace organizations drew on a common repertoire of women’s special dispositions. Central to that repertoire was the trope of motherhood, which had a long history in the context of women’s peace activism… Women, in short, felt that motherhood gave them a mandate for participation in the larger political questions of war and peace.”31 I chose WSP out of the organizations for peace because I felt that the way in which it used maternalism was more politically strategic and because as a group, it did not include motherhood as a prerequisite for membership, but still attempted to self-identify as mothers. WSP also embraced feminine peace and gender roles while other women’s peace groups rejected them.

NWRO Guida West is the leading historian on the National Welfare Rights Organization.

West was a member of the Friend of Welfare Rights group, which was composed of allies

30 Goedde, The Politics of Peace, 130-131. 31 Goedde, The Politics of Peace, 133.

25 to the welfare movement and she described NWRO as a “movement of poor people but more specifically as a protest of poor, mostly black women on welfare.”32 West details the organization’s founding leaders and its national structure, focusing on the grassroots nature of localized welfare groups and the more privileged positions of some of the founders like George Wiley who was a professor and wealthy white liberals who contributed to the group monetarily. Because West was one of these liberal allies, she doesn’t bring an insider perspective to the group, especially when describing the struggles of poor Black women on welfare. One of the main struggles that NWRO faced throughout its existence was financial instability and this contributed to its dissolution.33

It relied heavily on external donors because its own membership were impoverished and dependent on welfare services. The structure of NWRO, outside of its wealthy, liberal allies, emphasized leadership from within the poor community. Poor Black women often headed local organizations with Johnnie Tillmon and Beulah Sanders as two prominent examples.

In addition to its financial difficulties, NWRO also struggled with maintaining political and organizational alliances which further contributed to its demise. NWRO lacked support from unions and militant Black groups. It also had conflicts with the

Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Its allies included largely Protestant churches and it had a shallow alliance with women’s peace movements.34 There were also conflicts within NWRO amongst men and women members who disagreed on the gendered nature

32 Guida West, The National Welfare Rights Movement: The Social Protest of Poor Women (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1981), 3. 33 West, The National Welfare Rights Movement, 30. 34 West, The National Welfare Rights Movement, 200-250.

26 of poverty and the role of women. Women argued for the option to choose to work or stay home while men insisted women not be employed.35 However, while each of these issues did contribute to the ultimate decline of NWRO, West underestimates the role of racism and the denial of maternalism to Black women as another factor in the failures of the group.

NWRO developed as a “movement of poor people but more specifically as a protest of poor, mostly black women on welfare.”36 The organization operated from

1966-1975 and represented a shift from civil rights organizing to poverty and welfare rights organizing. The circumstances and context under which poor Black women ultimately began to organize for their welfare rights began with the rise of welfare policies in the 1930s, originally meant for temporarily unemployed white men but then later expanded to include aid for the deserving poor such as widows, the elderly, and dependent children. Black women were historically excluded from full access to welfare benefits and West points out that even when poor mothers qualified for benefits, they were often given less than what they qualified for or denied completely. This unequal access to needed welfare benefits set the stage for the mobilization of poor women to demand their welfare rights.

West analyzes the structure of NWRO much more than the actual actions or rhetoric used by members of the organization. NWRO was created by well-meaning, middle-class men who sought to solve the issue of poverty. George Wiley, a Black man, was the main leader and original organizer of NWRO. He valued an integrated

35 West, The National Welfare Rights Movement, 91. 36 West, The National Welfare Rights Movement, 3.

27 organizational structure and intended to reverse traditional hegemonic political roles within NWRO. He, and other leaders throughout NWRO’s existence, defined the group as a movement for poor people. He, along with leaders like Johnnie Tillmon who was the

1st chair of NWRO, insisted that it was not a women’s movement or a Black movement because he didn’t want to discourage political allies who would view an identity movement unfavorably. Despite these claims, NWRO largely consisted of poor Black women with children. The leadership of NWRO reflected this demographic as well.

While Black women served in most leadership positions, one should note that

Wiley’s organizational structure consisted of two distinct groups. Organizers or staff were nonmembers of the organization and served to mobilize poor women at local or state levels. Wiley’s goal was for staff to help structure local groups and then gradually cede control to the poor activists. These organizers often did not meet the low-income requirements to be a member of NWRO and did not hold voting privileges. It is important to note that while Wiley may be credited with creating NWRO and helping to make it a national movement with grassroots connections all over the country, he did not create local welfare rights movements. Those movements were already in existence and being led by Black women like Johnnie Tillmon. Wiley provided networking opportunities for these grassroots movements to connect with each other and become a national organization with local chapters.

NWRO struggled with making political allies and with raising enough money to maintain itself. These issues ultimately contributed to its dissolution as a national organization, although local welfare movements continued and the cause of welfare rights was included in other activist groups. West also attributes NWRO’s decline to the rise of

28 neoconservatism with the election of Richard Nixon as well as the increasing popularity of more militant Black groups.37 Friends of NWRO largely consisted of middle-class white liberals who often sponsored NWRO. The organization received funding from some Protestant churches, grants, and eventually government funding for a short period of time. However, because of its inverted power structures, NWRO struggled to ally itself with many powerful political groups. Poor, Black women had the power in the organization and according to West, other political groups struggled to accept the nontraditional roles of women of color. The white feminist movement and other women’s movements often chose not to prioritize welfare rights and so were not allied with

NWRO. Conflicts between the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who did have a focus on poverty, and NWRO over each group’s handling of the issue. This alienated many civil rights groups who additionally struggled with the leadership of Black women.

However, NWRO did ally itself with the women’s peace movement which included

Women Strike for Peace as both groups wanted a basic guaranteed income for women and a recognition of homemaking and mothering as labor deserving of monetary compensation. This also demonstrates how each group has shared ideologies with care ethics which can serve as one possible alternative to maternalism.

Regarding maternalism, both the intellectual elite leadership and the poor women of color utilized this rhetoric. West quotes Wiley as arguing for a guaranteed income for poor women because “many would just like to be mothers” instead of working.38 Part of the controversy of the NWRO was that often it didn’t argue for access to jobs but only

37 West, The National Welfare Rights Movement, 212. 38 West, The National Welfare Rights Movement, 89.

29 increased welfare benefits. Wiley and the other wealthy leadership believed that poor women were could not become economically mobile or independent and so needed a guaranteed income. The women of color in the movement strongly disagreed. More than anything else, they wanted the choice of work or staying at home. The main issues women wanted addressed were training and job opportunities, childcare, and a guaranteed basic income if they couldn’t work. They rejected the maternalist argument in the way it was framed by Wiley. Wiley, like the Progressive Era activists, uses maternalism as a political tool with which to achieve his goals. Maternalism is not a strategy exclusive to only mothers but here we see that it still serves to harm women of color even when the goal is to improve welfare access for them. Wiley’s maternalism denies Black women the autonomy and choice they sought from NWRO.

Ange-Marie Hancock discusses the importance of intersectionality in the National

Welfare Rights Organization. She argues that when poor, single, Black mothers were denied equal access to welfare services, it was not solely because of one of those identities, but because of all of them together, creating issues when the NWRO organizers attempted to establish alliances with other organizations.39 Hancock says that the NWRO provides a narrative of poor Black mothers’ feelings about injustice and inequalities, allowing a degree of agency and self-expression that was previously unheard. The Black mothers in the NWRO engaged in radical politics demanding equal access and challenging the prevalent welfare queen stereotype as well as the beliefs of

Black women as lazy and extremely fertile. It provided an opportunity for collective mobilization in the name of Black motherhood which was radical in itself because of the

39 Hancock, The Politics of Disgust, (New York and London: New York University Press, 2004), 39.

30 historical struggles to engage in maternalism for women of color. Hancock’s focus on many of the stereotypes faced by Black women is during the 1980s and 1990s, after the

NWRO had already dissolved, which demonstrates some of the limitations of the organization’s success.

Like Hancock, Mary Triece also discusses the importance of women in NWRO being able to “tell it like it is” and the value of personal experience as political expertise with poverty and welfare rights.40 Triece argues that “reality referencing” is a political strategy used by NWRO that included maternalism because motherhood was an experience Black women felt comfortable speaking up about.41 By using maternalism with reality referencing, the women of NWRO politicized motherhood. Triece also argues that welfare rights organizations were spaces for otherwise nonpolitical Black women to engage in consciousness raising and self-reflection through sharing their personal experiences. They also were intentional about the ways in which they portrayed themselves, promoting images of Black welfare women as both credible workers and deserving mothers.42 Like West, Triece analyzes the ways in which NWRO made welfare rights a gendered issue. Triece and West both saw NWRO as a way that poor, Black women became politically active. Some of the demands made by NWRO, such as access to adequate childcare and even demanding payment for mother work, can easily provide a transition into a care alternative to maternalism. I chose NWRO as my second case study because, like WSP, it existed primarily in the 1960s and 1970s. Motherhood was not a

40 Mary Triece, Tell It Like It Is: Women in the National Welfare Rights Movement (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2013), 23. 41 Triece, Tell It Like It Is, 35. 42 Triece, Tell It Like It Is, 53.

31 membership requirement for NWRO, yet the group framed many of their arguments via a maternalist lens. This indicated the way that maternalism was a political strategy for the group. It also provided a more intersectional perspective on a maternalist strategy because NWRO was largely composed of poor Black women. This allowed me to analyze the ways race impacted maternalism and its success.

Care Alternative In analyzing these case studies, I’ve begun to consider potential alternatives to maternalism. Othermothering offers one possible alternative in that it provides a more inclusive option for maternal politics for women of color in their private communities.

Othermothering, unlike my case studies, is a form of maternalism that is not a loud and public demonstration, but rather one that takes place in a more private sphere. It retains many of the benefits of maternalism like organizing for children and positive policies that impact them in public and at home, while serving as a more subtle method of maternal engagement than what we see with WSP, NWRO, and protective legislation. Conversely, care theories can serve to replace public maternalism. We can look to care theories to shift into horizontal, grassroots activist frameworks that retain the benefits of maternalism while discarding the outdated, racist, and classist elements. As I conclude this thesis, care alternatives and alternatives like othermothering will provide a direction to shift into from maternalism.

Use of Children as Political Props

Women Strike for Peace advocated for their political causes by using maternalism. They made the argument that because they were mothers, they had a special status to argue for global peace. In the literature on WSP, this rhetoric and political strategy is discussed. However, children are not mentioned with regards to WSP’s activities with a few exceptions, such as the HUAC hearings and early involvement with anti-nuclear activism. The group and its members obviously refer to their children when making arguments from the perspective of motherhood, but the literature suggests that is the extent of children’s involvement. The archives tell a different story. The archives at

American University reveal images of children present at political demonstrations, photographs of children used in the group’s literature, images published in newspapers, and activities that involved children such as making coloring books. From the archives, it is clear that children were a very present part of WSP’s organization and were not abstract figures to use exclusively for maternalist arguments. In analyzing the presence of children at protests and other WSP events, it is important to ask why the literature today does not discuss their presence. Why were children so present? Is the presence of a child politically necessary for maternalism to work and achieve the goals WSP wanted?

The literature on WSP does not leave children out completely. The hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1962 are described in detail by Swerdlow, Estepa, and Goedde as being one of the WSP incidents with children present. In fact, the presence of infants and toddlers on their mothers’ laps is discussed at

33 length to showcase the maternalism of WSP and the group’s triumph over HUAC.43

Goedde writes, “At the hearing, WSP played up its maternal image, turning the event into a forum for their children’s well-being…scores of mothers with babies and small children were in attendance.”44 Children were intentionally brought to the hearings to heighten the impression that these were nonthreatening mothers, not dangerous communists. The women present for the hearings filled the room, handed out bouquets of flowers, applauded and laughed, and otherwise made an intentionally feminine mockery of the entire event. HUAC members were taken aback by their WSP audience and witnesses, and the organization declared the hearings a victory for themselves with some even going so far as to credit WSP with the downfall of the Committee. Swerdlow describes the tactics of WSP for the hearing as “non-ideological, pragmatic, feminine, yet combative, far different from those of any other radical or liberal group that had faced the dreaded committee.”45 This shows that the behavior of WSP during these hearings was not natural actions of silly housewives, but rather a thought-out strategy designed to overwhelm the

Committee members and to portray WSP members in the best possible light.

43 Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), 97-124. Petra Goedde, The Politics of Peace: A Global Cold War History (New York: Offord University Press, 2019), 150-152 Andrea Estepa, Taking the White Gloves Off: Women Strike for Peace and “the Movement,” 1967-73 (University of Illinois Press, 2008), 85-104. 44 Goedde, The Politics of Peace, 151. 45 Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace, 97.

American University

Archives Box 2, Folder Women Strike for Peace A History 1961-1994 Chicago Daily

News 12-14-62 by James McCartney

While Swerdlow was discussing the specific actions of the audience and witnesses, the presence of children was also likely a part of this strategy. This suggests that, at least in this instance, WSP mothers used their children to achieve a political goal.

This is not to say they were bad mothers or that they were callous in using their children, but rather that members understood the intrinsic value of having a bouncing baby on their laps while arguing that they were simply mothers, not communists. It’s also important to recognize that maternalism was an intentional strategy when arguing that the presence of children was a strategy. Estepa describes the contradiction between the strategy and the women’s real political lives: “Though the overwhelming majority of the respondents

35 were, in fact, mothers, they did not usually identify motherhood as the focal point of their political identities.”46 With the Committee hearings, one can see that the presence of children was simply a more radical and controversial extension of that maternalist strategy.

Children were not usually discussed in the literature aside from being mentioned when WSP members identified themselves as mothers. WSP’s first national strike was in

1961 and was focused on ending the arms race and nuclear testing. WSP expressed concern for both their children’s health and their children’s future, especially regarding nuclear contamination of milk. This anti-nuclear testing protest in 1961 was WSP’s first national strike and the rhetoric used by members was overwhelmingly maternal and referenced children. It was an unexpectedly successful demonstration with roughly

50,000 women striking in 60 cities across the US.47 Dagmar Wilson and other founders of

WSP planned the strike in her living room, later sending out a call for action to various women across the United States to strike and march for an end to the nuclear arms race for their children.48 Included in this call to action was a statement that said, “Husbands or babysitters take over the home front.”49 This shows that the organizers of this particular demonstration and of WSP made it clear that children were to be kept at home while their mothers marched. However, a year later in 1962, children were brought to the HUAC hearings in an obvious maternalist political strategy. This suggests that when children were present at demonstrations, it was an intentional tactic.

46 Estepa, Taking the White Gloves, 88. 47 Goedde, The Politics of Peace, 148. 48 Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace, 17-18. 49 Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace, 18.

The archives provide more extensive internal literature showing how WSP used the image and presence of children in their political activities. While the literature indicates that children were mentioned and occasionally present, it fails to discuss the use of children’s images in WSP propaganda and of children’s activities as part of WSP’s work. As the 1961 strike call to action shows, some protests were clearly designated as to whether or not children should be present. One poster for a demonstration in 1979 advertised “special activities for children” and took place at Lafayette Park in

Washington, DC.50 The archives also mentioned a protest in Las Vegas against nuclear testing in which women brought their children and pushed them around the street in their strollers. Because WSP prided itself on being a horizontal and unstructured group with limited leadership, there are different local groups who acted differently with children.

The Las Vegas group could have had no objection to bringing children to protests while the Washington group advocated for women to get babysitters. Whatever the decision in bringing children, it is clear that this was thought-out and demonstrates some level of using children as political pawns. It is also important to note that the demographic of

WSP were white, middle-class women who probably had the option of securing childcare. When children were brought to demonstrations, this was a deliberate choice, not a desperate lack of alternative childcare.

Even the illustrations and cartoons on the bottom of WSP literature and posters show children present at demonstrations while historical accounts of the movement gloss over that fact. The figure below shows an example of drawings with children on a protest

50 Women Strike for Peace Records. American University Archives and Special Collections. Box 1. Folder: Women Strike for Peace A Advertisements 1969, 1972, 1976, 1978-1979, 1983-1984, 1987, 1989, 1991.

37 flyer. Beyond simple drawings, WSP used the rhetoric of children and images of mothers with children in almost all of their internal literature. Newspapers publishing articles on the group also used images of children. Because of the prevalence of children in the archives, it is possible that WSP felt they could not rely simply on maternalism alone without invoking the image of a child. Historically, we see maternalism used by women asserting a special political authority because of their status as mothers. While WSP does this, they also include even more overt language about children and images of children to drive their point home. WSP used children as political props both at demonstrations and in their documents to make their arguments. However, this was not a callous act and

WSP members very much loved their children. This ties into the essentialism argument below, because WSP women believed they were being good mothers in engaging in this political work with their children. There are some images of children in WSP’s documents and demonstrations below.

American University Archives and Special Collections, Women Strike for Peace Records, Box 1, Folder: Women Strike for Peace A Demonstrations 1962. 1967-1975, 1979-1994

American

University Archives and Special Collections, Women Strike for Peace Records Box 1,

Folder: Women Strike for Peace A Demonstrations 1962. 1967-1975, 1979-1994

American University

Archives and Special Collections, Women Strike for Peace Records, Box 1, Folder:

Women Strike for Peace A Anniversary 19th-24th 1980-1985

In addition to the use of children in internal documents and at protests, WSP also made efforts to engage directly with children. One of their most controversial activities was the creation and distribution of a children’s coloring book. In 1965, WSP created a coloring book promoting disarmament. WSP set up a booth at a UN fair in Rockville,

Maryland where they distributed the coloring book to local school children. The coloring book features several pages and images for children to color, alongside captions about the

United Nations and international warfare. It includes captions like, “Color the crowded

41 old school, the jobless father, the unhoused family, a sorrowful grey” and “See the soldier with all his war toys. Our government buys the war toys with more than half of all the money it gets from all of us. Color the toys an obsolete orange.”51 The coloring book discusses promises made to the world’s children by the United Nations, and how the

Arms Race prevents the fulfillment of those promises. It even contains an image of a mushroom cloud to show the potential consequences of the Arms Race, encouraging children to “color it a fiery red.” This coloring book created a public outcry and resulted in a conflict between WSP and the Rockville Board of Education. In this instance, it seemed that the group had gone too far in their willingness to involve children in WSP’s political organizing. Children contributed to a carefully crafted image of maternalism for the organization, and while it was good for WSP’s national image to include their own children in their demonstrations, when they involved other children like with the coloring book, the public response was less than positive. The members who handed out these coloring books were more than willing to cooperate with school authorities, probably in an effort to seem less extreme, but this incident likely had a negative impact for WSP in

Maryland.

For the historians documenting WSP, their 1967 protest marked a shift for the group from apolitical mothers to more radical activists. For the first time, WSP members clashed violently with police outside of the White House, disrupting their image as sweet mothers and homemakers. The group in the early 1960s focused almost exclusively on peace and refused to take a definitive stand on other issues like civil rights or feminism.

51 Women Strike for Peace Records. American University Archives and Special Collections. Box 1. Folder: Women Strike for Peace A Disarmament Coloring Book 1965, 1984.

By the late 1960s, the group had become more radical, and the 1967 protest only furthered this shift.52 It is important to note that while many pictures of WSP protests included images of children holding signs and marching alongside their mothers, in the

1967 protest, children were notably absent. This could indicate that WSP encouraged the presence of children only at protests where there was no chance of violence or it could suggest that because of the lack of children, police were more comfortable engaging in physical conflict with WSP. This has concerning implications. It’s possible that WSP understood that the presence of children would mean they were safe from physical attacks from authorities and so they took advantage of this knowledge. It is also possible that WSP intentionally left children at home for potentially violent demonstrations in order to protect them. Because we know that maternalism was a political strategy for the group, we can infer that regardless of reasoning, the presence of children was also a political strategy.

NWRO also had children present at their demonstrations and that fact is not analyzed extensively in the academic literature. Unlike WSP, the members of NWRO were poor, Black women who probably could not access appropriate childcare while they demonstrated. The children at NWRO events showcase one of the political platforms of

NWRO: the very real need for adequate childcare for poor mothers. However, like WSP, the children at NWRO protests and in their literature served to bolster their image as mothers and further their maternalism. Because children are present in both groups so prominently, it suggests that perhaps the members did believe that their arguments could only be effective with a child present. NWRO’s platforms included meeting needs of

52 Estepa, Taking the White Gloves Off, 93.

43 mothers and children, so children are discussed in relation to those issues, like childcare.

Guida West rarely mentions the presence of children in her work as a prominent historian of the organization.53 Children are mainly discussed when West analyzes the policies that involve the children of mothers on welfare. Mary Triece spends time explaining that children were brought to some demonstrations, but she fails to explain the motivation behind their presence.54 Ange-Marie Hancock’s discussion of children is similar to

West’s in that children are mentioned through public policy supported or opposed by

NWRO.55

53 Guida West, The National Welfare Rights Movement: The Social Protest of Poor Women (New York: Praeger Publishers CBS Educational and Professional Publishing, 1981). 54 Mary E. Triece, Tell It Like It Is: Women in the National Welfare Rights Movement (South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press, 2013). 55 Ange-Marie Hancock, The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen (New York and London: New York University Press, 2004).

Optics/How Members Understood Themselves Maternally

The National Welfare Rights Organizations and Women Strike for Peace both understood themselves and their members as mothers with a special morality and role in taking political action on behalf of their children. However, each group understood themselves as women and mothers differently. Neither group claimed the identity of a feminism originally. WSP in the late 1960s began to tentatively embrace that identity with the rise of second-wave feminism. While the two groups do seem similar in their organizational structure and use of maternalism, they understood themselves as mothers and women very differently. WSP claimed a special authority not only as mothers, but also as women. They fully embraced the gendering of peace as a women’s issue and believed women had better dispositions for negotiating an end to war. WSP also believed that women as mothers were different from men and that the differences created by motherhood made them qualified to speak on political issues. NWRO also made arguments based in maternalism but they argued more for social rights than from a difference feminism lens like WSP. NWRO understood that as poor Black women, they had to actively work to overthrow the hegemonic images of Black women on welfare in order to present themselves as deserving mothers. They argued for the right to choose to stay home with their children or the right to choose to work, embracing a different type of maternalist activism than WSP. Theirs was more based in claims to social rights.

NWRO advocated for specific social rights in their activism for welfare rights. T.

H. Marshall defines social rights as being a part of social citizenship: “the right to defend

45 and assert all one’s rights on terms of equality with others and by due process of law”56.

As Marshall explains, to have social rights means that regardless of class, within society every person is equal to every other person. When NWRO argued for access to childcare, quality jobs, and increased welfare benefits, they were arguing for the same treatment and benefits in society as more privileged people received. They wanted to have the same opportunities and access as their white and male counterparts. Good paying jobs and childcare would ensure that they could have that access and opportunities. Similarly, increased welfare benefits meant that members could also make the decision to stay home with their children. The women of NWRO were not arguing for the exclusive right to work or the exclusive right to stay home with their children. They were arguing for the option that their fellow citizens had to choose which of those lifestyles they wanted.

These arguments did still frequently take the form of maternalism, especially when

NWRO members wanted to stay home with their children.

WSP’s first strike in 1961 is an example of how the group originally conceptualized itself and its members: as mothers first. One November 1, 1961 call to action poster states “Appeal to all governments on behalf of all the world’s children – for an end to the nuclear arms race…Women believe that nations can resolve differences as families do – without killing each other.”57 WSP claimed political legitimacy by insisting that they were in a special position to speak for children and they channeled the rhetoric

56 T. H. Marshall and Tom Bottomore, Citizenship and Social Class (Concord, MA and London: Pluto Press, 1992). 57 Women Strike for Peace Records. American University Archives and Special Collections. Box 2. Folder: Women Strike for Peace A History 1961-1994.

46 of the family to further emphasize their feminine and maternal status. This illustrates the difference feminism and essentialism sometimes embraced by WSP.

NWRO phrased their political goals more around having social rights. They believed women should have the ability to stay home and raise their children while still receiving sufficient government benefits. Each group’s demands and conceptualizations of themselves as mothers are more traditional and seem to reinforce patriarchal ideas of gender roles, but NWRO’s demands for basic care needs to be met can also be understood as radical. In asserting a right to stay at home with their children, NWRO members were resisting white patriarchal constructs that insisted Black women were bad mothers and lazy workers. Triece argues, “Black women’s appeals to the desirability of stay-at-home mothering can be seen as a form of resistance to a white culture’s conception of motherhood that denied poor black women the ‘possibility of nurturing, motherhood, and family maintenance’.”58 This argument that maternalism for Black women is a method of resistance highlights the need for an intersectional lens when analyzing maternalism. I argue that maternalism is a problematic political strategy because of the ways in which it reinforces patriarchal gender roles and limits women’s involvement in the political sphere, but in the case of NWRO, maternalism can be both an act of resistance for members as Black and a limiting political strategy for members as women. Even within the organization itself, the limitations of maternalism emerged.

Triece also discusses how men in NWRO were more in favor of gendered welfare policies that allowed women to stay home and prevented women from taking jobs that

58 Triece, Tell It Like It Is, 87.

47 men should have.59 This gendered division illustrates how despite maternalism being an act of resistance to white supremacy, it reinforced the belief that women should be at home with their children instead of in the workforce. Presumably, the men in NWRO were supportive of maternalist strategies because they believed women should stay at home. The clashes between members occurred when NWRO women argued for access to jobs.

NWRO members were very aware of the need to cultivate an image of deserving mothers in order to achieve their goals. The need to cultivate this image further contributes to the issues with maternalism as a political strategy because it shows that maternalism is often limited to white women. NWRO had to create an image of themselves as deserving mothers because of the hegemonic images of Black women in

US culture as promiscuous welfare queens. These dominant images made maternalism a less successful strategy for women of color because maternalism is most effective when the mothers are seen as deserving. Black women struggled to utilize maternalism with the same success as white women because of the stereotypes about Black mothers that date back to slavery. Black women were denied the ability to engage in motherhood in the ways that white women could. Patricia Hill Collins describes this as, “African-American women’s experiences as mothers have been shaped by the dominant group’s efforts to harness Black women’s sexuality and fertility to a system of capitalist exploitation.”60

Because Black women were subject to sexual assault at the hands of white men, the narrative of Black women as sexually promiscuous emerged. Black women were also

59 Triece, Tell It Like It Is, 64. 60 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2000), 50.

48 denied the ability to be good mothers by staying home with their children because slavery separated mothers and children and forced Black women to work. This led to the stereotype of Black women as undeserving and bad mothers because they have always had to work outside the home, as well as the belief that Black women were more suited to hard labor than white women.

These beliefs continued to be relevant when NWRO was active and the organization actively worked to combat that narrative. The belief that welfare recipients should be deserving poor people perpetuated an image of Black women as people who took advantage of the welfare system, creating the image of the welfare queen. The stereotype that Black women were promiscuous further inflated this image into one where Black women had many children in order to attain more welfare benefits while being a bad mother. These stereotypes were used by many politicians to justify cuts to welfare, despite all of them being untrue. The Moynihan Report issued by Patrick

Moynihan in 1965 further contributed to these negative images of Black women, as it described the Black family as one in crisis with single mothers raising criminal children.61 Triece describes how Black and white women were juxtaposed in welfare political discussions to illustrate the deserving white mother and the undeserving Black one: “Images of the “welfare queen” and the “matriarch”, also readily evoked by politicians, offered a specifically gendered take on recipients who allegedly took advantage of the system. These two images tapped into racist narratives of motherhood extending back to slavery, which at one and the same time contrasted the notion of the

“deserving” white mother, domestic and pure, with the black mother, employable,

61 Triece, Tell It Like It Is, 10.

49 promiscuous, and greedy.”62 This understanding of how motherhood can be different for

Black and white women further illustrates how maternalism for NWRO was an act of resistance to a racist society. By embracing an image of motherhood that was historically reserved for white women, NWRO members were demanding to be recognized as deserving mothers who needed welfare benefits while rejecting a narrative that portrayed them as bad mothers.

In addition to engaging in resistance by portraying themselves as deserving mothers, NWRO members actively worked to combat the racist myths of Black women on welfare. The group published and distributed pamphlets and booklets detailing common welfare myths and disproving them with facts and data. One booklet was called

“Six Myths About Welfare” and was published by NWRO and the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries.63 Some of the myths explicitly addressed and disproved in this booklet included “all welfare mothers do is have illegitimate children” and “welfare is the good life – color TV’s and Cadillacs.”64 This demonstrates that NWRO women recognized the stereotypes surrounding Black women on welfare and understood the importance of combatting those stereotypes. Each myth was accompanied by a short paragraph detailing statistics and facts that disproved it. The booklet also emphasized the importance of welfare mothers having the option to stay home with their children which shows the focus on social rights within the organization. Unlike WSP, NWRO had to do extra work to prove they were deserving mothers entitled to make maternalist arguments.

62 Triece, Tell It Like It Is, 41. 63 National Welfare Rights Organization Archives. Courtesy Library Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University. Box 2208. Folder NWRO LIT. 64 National Welfare Rights Organization Archives. Courtesy Library Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University. Box 2208. Folder NWRO LIT.

This work was necessary because of the hegemonic racist images discussed above.

Despite these efforts, the images of the “welfare queen” persisted and continued to influence welfare policy in later decades as explained below.

The limitations of maternalism for NWRO women were highlighted as their organization was not nearly as successful as WSP, and because it predated some of the most extreme racist images of Black mothers promoted by politicians like Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Critical race theory discusses the failures of civil rights advancements and racial backlash from a white supremacist society that often follow those advancements.

The most common example is Brown v Board of Education in 1954, analyzed by Derrick

Bell. Bell argues that, like the Emancipation Proclamation, Brown is largely symbolic instead of proactive.65 After Brown, legal cases around busing and enforcement of integration bombarded the courts. These legal cases and white flight out of cities and districts with more integrated schools ultimately created schools that were not significantly integrated.66 Bell also argues that racial progress only occurs during interest convergence. Interest convergence is when Black interests converge with white interests and so those interests gain popular support67. Ultimately, Bell points out that Brown was not successful and that the majority of students in the United States do not attend racially integrated schools.68 Charles Rosenberg discusses the backlash in the aftermath of Brown from whites across the US and the end result of nonintegrated schools.69 While

65 Derrick Bell, Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 114. 66 Bell, Silent Covenants, 118. 67 Bell, Silent Covenants, 49-58. 68 Bell, Silent Covenants, 127-128. 69 Charles Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1991).

Rosenberg discusses the failures of the courts more broadly than critical race theory, his point about Brown applies to the racial backlash faced by Black people when racial progress is close to being achieved.

NWRO as a predominantly poor, Black women’s organization faced an intersection of barriers to success. In applying Bell’s and Rosenberg’s theories about critical race theory and white backlash, the role of racism becomes more apparent in

NWRO’s struggles as a group. While NWRO was organizing in support of expanded welfare rights, there was limited interest convergence for Black women’s interests and white interests. NWRO struggled to ally itself with other organizations and this likely contributed to its struggle to make welfare a more universal interest. Despite the majority of welfare recipients being white, there was not a public image of welfare as a white person’s issue. The prevailing images of the welfare queen were overwhelmingly Black women. This meant that white people did not view welfare as one of their interests.

NWRO did actively work to dispel these myths, but their strategies did not ultimately change public opinion, as we see with the racial backlash described by Charles

Rosenberg. In the 1980s and 1990s, negative images of Black women on welfare continued to dominate welfare discourse and these persistent images could be in response to the activism work done by NWRO to push back against those stereotypes. Hancock describes how hegemonic images of the Black welfare woman were even more prominent in the 1990s and influential for welfare policies.70

70 Hancock, The Politics of Disgust, 86-87.

Unlike WSP, NWRO women did not have conflicting ideas of themselves as mothers. NWRO members understood themselves as mothers and workers in the same way they presented themselves as mothers and workers. Their maternalism was a political strategy, but their belief that personal experience created a degree of expertise on the issue of welfare and poverty meant that the way they presented themselves as an organization was also in line with how they understood themselves personally. This is another example of resistance to white supremacy in that NWRO members put forth a personal narrative as a form of expertise. Often in academia and in politics, personal narratives serve to disqualify a person or group from being considered an expert. Critical race theory argues that by using personal narrative, people of color are challenging dominant beliefs that expertise must be inherently emotionless and objective. Patricia

Williams explains this in her work which exemplifies the use of personal narrative.71

NWRO was engaging in resistance by arguing that their experiences as poor mothers qualified them to discuss and critique welfare policy.

WSP and NWRO both illustrate the ways in which race impacts the limits of maternalism. WSP used a variety of political strategies, including different types of maternalism to argue for their political goals. The group’s longevity is a testament to its ability to shift with changing peace narratives and adopt new issues as they emerged in society. They began with denuclearization and protesting baby milk contamination and evolved into a group that opposed the draft and Vietnam. The different ways of presenting themselves as mothers contributed to this longevity and also illustrate the

71 Patricia J. Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1991).

53 privilege of WSP. The most clear example of the group crossing the limits of its maternalism is when it distributed the Disarmament Coloring Book at a local Maryland school. For this action, WSP faced backlash by local school boards and news media.

However, the politicization and distribution of a coloring book was a radical decision on behalf of the organization and the backlash would likely have occurred for any group. It was not exclusively tied to their maternalism which further demonstrates the expansive options enjoyed by WSP as a white, middle-class group. NWRO shows the opposite. The limits of maternalism for NWRO were much stricter. The very act of claiming motherhood and engaging in maternalist political action was challenging for NWRO.

Simply existing as a Black mother pushed the limits of maternalism. WSP members could go as far as distributing political coloring books at local schools under the guise of political motherhood while NWRO women struggled to even assert their role as deserving and good mothers in need of a broader social safety net. This role was assumed for WSP women.

The Spectacle of Motherhood Women Strike for Peace and the National Welfare Rights Organization both testified before Congress. WSP testified in December, 1962 and were called by the

Committee on Un-American Activities in the House. NWRO testified in November, 1977 to a variety of House committees, including the Subcommittee on Welfare Reform.

WSP’s witnesses were called because HUAC suspected that WSP had been infiltrated in some capacity by communists. They were amongst fellow peace movements and a man who associated with Russian spies. NWRO volunteered to provide their personal experiences with living on welfare and to object to a piece of legislation, H.R. 9030 which was part of the Nixon administration’s attempts to reform the welfare system. In both groups, motherhood and maternalism are consistently present in their testimonies and in their very presence. However, the differences in reception and public perception after these hearings is indicative of the different levels of privilege each group possessed and the comfort with which each group navigated the halls of political power.

Almost every single woman called to testify about WSP discussed the organizational structure of the group. The congressman who made up the Un-American

Activities Committee were very focused on a document that detailed the structure of

WSP and so each witness was asked about it. In a display of their comfort with defying a well-known and intimidating House Committee, each woman denied that WSP had any organized structure at all. When asked about her membership status, Mrs. Ruth Meyers responded that she was not a member of Women Strike for Peace because the group “has no membership.”72 Every other woman that testified answered similarly. Mrs. Lyla

72 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities, Communist Activities in the Peace Movement (Women Strike for Peace and Other Groups), 87th Cong., 2nd Sess., 1962, 2050.

Hoffman similarly said, “I just repeat again that Women Strike for Peace is not a membership organization, so we do not have members. We have a communication system --.”73 This demonstrates the grassroots nature of the group. WSP was intentionally informally structured. There were local groups that met, often under the name Women for

Peace who maintained some degree of contact with each other and with more central offices in DC and New York. These groups frequently adopted different names such as

Women Stand for Peace, Women Strike for Peace, and Women for Peace.74 However, each group lacked a formal leadership structure and a formal list of members. Similarly,

WSP founder Dagmar Wilson explained in her testimony that she considered the word leader when applied to her to be a “term of endearment” or “honorary title” because every woman in the group was a leader.75 Wilson argued that her idea simply allowed for the creation of the grassroots group. There were mailing lists of women who had expressed interest in working for peace, but those lists were not membership lists.

Archival documents contain books full of mail from women across the country who had suggestions for actions to take for peace. There was certainly no membership application and women who were active did not discriminate based on political affiliation. The women who testified explained that their meetings were both social and work-related and that a variety of different women attended each meeting. In answering questions about membership, the women who testified deliberately misunderstood the questions and argued that because there was no structured organization or membership, they simply

73 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee, Communist Activities in the Peace Movement, 2106. 74U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee, Communist Activities in the Peace Movement, 2188. 75 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee, Communist Activities in the Peace Movement, 2188.

56 could not answer. These acts of defiance illustrate a confidence and comfort with testifying before Congress that NWRO does not exhibit.

NWRO was similarly grassroots in its organizational structure. Local welfare rights organizations began to connect with each other, and a central group was established almost separately from these organizations. Academic and liberal elites created the National Welfare Rights Organization, but local welfare groups had existed already. The NWRO existed to connect those groups and create a more national agenda.

The development of each of those individual local groups was grassroots in nature and, like WSP, they each had their own meetings and local political involvement. Leaders of these local groups began to take on more prominent leadership positions in the national group, like Mamie Tillmon and Beulah Sanders. Unlike WSP which asked for donations in its mailing lists, NWRO asked for membership fees and likely would not deny that they had a membership. The difference in socioeconomic status of people within both groups contributed to NWRO’s struggles to succeed, and eventually, to even exist at a national level. In the testimony provided to the Congressmen seeking to know constituent opinions on the welfare reform bill, women from a variety of welfare rights organizations proved the grassroots nature of the group. There were women from the Houston Welfare

Rights Organization, the New Orleans Neighborhood Welfare Rights Organization, and the Chicano Welfare Rights Organization to name a few.76 Each of these women had their own political opinions about the bill, and while all were there to share their thoughts

76US Congress, House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Welfare Reform, Committee on Agriculture. House.; Committee on Agriculture. House.; Committee on Ways and Means. House.; Committee on Education and Labor, Administration’s Welfare Reform Proposal, Part 7, 95th Cong., 1st Sess., 1977, 603- 623.

57 and experiences, it’s worth noting that those thoughts and opinions were not the same across the organization. This demonstrates how the group functioned more independently at local levels while coming together on bigger issues nationally.

The casual defiance shown by WSP in their testimonies was not limited to denying an organizational membership. The women questioned both the pertinence and the constitutional authority of questions asked of them by HUAC. The Committee justified their questioning by insisting that “in the Communist view, peace is not a sought-after way of life, but rather a cold war weapon with which to reduce the free world’s alertness in defending itself against the Moscow-directed conspiracy.”77 For the

Committee, questioning WSP was necessary in order to establish the degree to which it had been infiltrated by communists. WSP women insisted that their presence was unnecessary and unconstitutional. Nearly every woman invoked her right to the fifth amendment, but many women also insisted that the questions posed by HUAC violated their first amendment rights and that they were entitled to not answer them on those grounds. This familiarity with the Constitution and their access to lawyers indicates the comfort and privilege many of these women had in testifying before Congress. These women were represented by private lawyers and by lawyers from the ACLU of

Washington, DC in Dagmar Wilson’s case. Many of the women were represented by

Telford Taylor, who was well-known for his opposition to the practices of HUAC. This familiarity with Congress was not present in NWRO’s testimony and NWRO women did not have the privilege of ACLU or well-known lawyers.

77 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee, Communist Activities in the Peace Movement, 2047.

Maternalism was most present in the spectacle WSP created in the House where the questioning occurred. As discussed in previous chapters, WSP women brought their children to the hearings and essentially made a mockery of what was supposed to be a serious and somber event. WSP women engaged in traditional acts of femininity and motherhood to resist an intimidating government body. They handed out bouquets to witnesses. Miss Clinton was one of the women who testified and she was greeted with a bouquet and applause. Chairman Doyle, who was conducting the majority of the questioning, made several comments about the bouquet and the conduct of the WSP audience.78 He asked that they not applaud and took issue with what he believed was a coordinated effort on behalf of WSP. The women acted as if the hearings were a social gathering, similar to ones that many had likely hosted in their homes. They fed their children, bounced their babies, laughed, applauded, and overall made a show of dismissing the serious nature of the hearings. Mr. Doyle and the other committee members were unsure of how to address the spectacle. Using motherhood and femininity was an act of resistance to a traditionally male environment designed to make witnesses uncomfortable. Witnesses often pointed out that their group was feminine and so the male questioners couldn’t understand how it operated. Dagmar Wilson, in response to a question about one of WSP’s demonstrations said, “That I find very hard to explain to the masculine mind.”79 Wilson also referred to some of the projects done by WSP as “our baby.”80 This particular show of maternalism was one of WSP’s most successful, with

78 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee, Communist Activities in the Peace Movement, 2126. 79 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee, Communist Activities in the Peace Movement, 2196. 80 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee, Communist Activities in the Peace Movement, 2197.

59 newspapers declaring the group’s victory. Many newspapers specifically referenced the ways that feminine behavior confounded the questioners.

The show put on by WSP audiences was not the only maternalism demonstrated during the hearings. Many witnesses insisted on identifying themselves as housewives and mothers. Both Mrs. Freed and Mrs. Neidenburg stated that housewife and mother were their occupations, indicating that motherhood was one of the ways in which these women identified themselves. Other witnesses gave speeches when they could, often interrupted by the Committee members. These speeches discussed the role that maternalism played in WSP’s organizing. As discussed before, WSP embraced a variety of political tactics and strategies, including a variety of types of maternalism. These testimonies are likely another example of how WSP used maternalism to best suit their political needs. Here, the goal was to portray the group as silly housewives and mothers who were only acting on behalf of their children’s interests. Mrs. MacKenzie argued,

“And I think this is an attempt to prevent me and other people from exercising our rights to speak as women for peace to protect our children.”81 With this criticism, MacKenzie defied HUAC’s authority and invoked maternalism. She claimed that the group was simply acting as mothers to protect their children. This allowed the group to portray itself as innocent of any inappropriate political activity because white and wealthy mothers are typically above reproach. It also shows the comfort the group had in openly criticizing

HUAC. Another woman, Mrs. Posner, argued that, “This movement was inspired and motivated by mothers’ love for their children… They feared for the health and life of

81U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee, Communist Activities in the Peace Movement, 2144.

60 their children. That is the only motivation.”82 Because WSP emerged victorious from the

HUAC hearings, their ability to invoke motherhood to defend political behavior remained intact. NWRO similarly tried to use maternalism in their testimony but were denied the same respect and understanding granted to WSP. As socioeconomically secure white women, WSP embodied what mainstream politics and institutions like Congress understood mothers to be, and so their activism for their children could continue.

While testifying to the Un-American Activities Committee, many WSP members were questioned about their past political involvement. The Committee was investigating communist infiltration into peace movements, and so in the course of those investigations, it discovered that many of the women in WSP had been involved in communist activities, usually years before the hearings. Each woman invoked her 5th

Amendment rights when questioned about former political associations. While it should be noted that HUAC engaged in questionable behavior regarding suspected communists, it is probable that these women were involved in the activities they were questioned about. For example, Mrs. Jeanne Brancato’s signature appeared on a document called

“Communist Party Independent Nominating Petition” in 1949 which the Committee members questioned Brancato about.83 The Committee brought up other evidence of

Brancato’s past communist involvement. She took the 5th. Mrs. Cecile Gross was another witness who was known to closely associate with communists and when the Committee questioned her, she also took the 5th.84 The Committee uncovered publications from 1953

82 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee, Communist Activities in the Peace Movement, 2074. 83 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee, Communist Activities in the Peace Movement, 2165. 84 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee, Communist Activities in the Peace Movement, 2160-2162.

61 from a communist organization called the American Russian Institute of San Francisco written by Elizabeth Moos who took the 5th when asked about her involvement.85 These are just a few examples of the numerous specific questions asked of nearly every witness regarding past communist affiliation. It suggests that the women in WSP who were considered important enough within the organization’s ambiguous leadership structure did have previous communist involvement prior to their work for WSP. This prior political experience gave WSP an advantage over other groups because the organizers were more efficient in political activity due to prior experience. It also suggests that maternalism was even more of an intentional political strategy crafted by former communist activists who understood that they must use a different angle in their politics in order to gain positive national attention instead of being slandered as communists.

The NWRO women who testified to the various House committee members engaged in political maternalism like WSP, but theirs was a more practical and urgent maternalism. These women put on less of a show of maternalism: they did not hand out bouquets or invoke feminine motherhood to avoid answering questions. However, their maternal testimony did create a spectacle of sorts in the visuals these women created in describing their experiences as mothers on welfare. Their maternalism was urgent but also a political strategy, likely more unintentional than WSP, and crafted to evoke sympathy to their cause from the Congressmen. NWRO’s goals were not an ideological and abstract vision like that of WSP. The leaders of the group were not experienced

85U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee, Communist Activities in the Peace Movement, 2156.

62 political activists hiding behind a veil of motherhood. The leaders were women who had established their own local groups to fight for resources needed to survive.

The NWRO women who testified often identified themselves as mothers, connecting their identity with their motherhood. For example, Mrs. Helen Fountain said,

“I am a mother of four children who has partially raised them from social security allowances.”86 However, in addition to claiming motherhood as an identity, these women used their experiences as mothers on welfare to testify as a type of experiential expert.

They embodied the reality reference Triece discusses by claiming space to speak because

NWRO mothers were experts on motherhood and welfare. They felt comfortable providing the information from their lived experiences and in this way, asserted agency for themselves in a space that did not make poor Black women feel comfortable: the halls of Congress. In making these claims of expertise based on experience, NWRO women also engaged in challenging the myths of welfare and its recipients. Both Fountain and

Victoria Fletcher addressed those myths, with Fletcher saying, “We know that welfare mothers “are lazy” is a myth. Studies have shown that over 75 percent of welfare recipients want to work and they are willing to work.”87 Maternalism allowed the women of NWRO to create a space for themselves in politics and to create a show of what welfare motherhood looked like. Fletcher spoke to what living on welfare was like for herself as a mother, saying, “I have experienced that welfare mothers are the last to get hired and the first to get fired or laid off. One of my worst experiences and most

86 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Sub-Committee, Administration’s Welfare Reform Proposal, Part 7, 603. 87 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Sub-Committee, Administration’s Welfare Reform Proposal, Part 7, 623.

63 humiliating was having to tell my seven kids that Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas after all because as of next payday mother wouldn’t be working anymore.”88 Like Fletcher, many of the women who testified painted a picture of what it meant to be a mother on welfare in an effort to be heard on a national stage regarding welfare reform. While this was not as showy as the bouquets with WSP, these first-hand accounts given through the lens of maternalism produced a show through the politicization of motherhood. Mamie

Tillmon’s testimony also contributed to this type of maternalism when she said, “I don’t have a prepared statement. My children’s schedule has prohibited me from doing so.”89

NWRO deployed maternalism in an effort to have very real needs met. They were also more intersectional in their political work. In addition to already being a group composed of minority poor women, local welfare rights organizations existed that demanded more intersectional needs be met. For example, representatives from the

Chicano Welfare Rights Organization testified before Congress asking for bilingual welfare services be provided in California where many recipients spoke Spanish.90 This type of activist work is not present in WSP because those women were predominantly white and middle class. They did not often cross class, race, or cultural lines despite claiming to represent all children and all mothers. In these congressional testimonies, we see NWRO women attempting to assert themselves as political actors through deploying maternalism. However, unlike WSP, their attempts to create space and agency through

88 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Sub-Committee, Administration’s Welfare Reform Proposal, Part 7, 623. 89 US Congress, House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Welfare Reform, Committee on Agriculture. House.; Committee on Agriculture. House.; Committee on Ways and Means. House.; Committee on Education and Labor, Administration’s Welfare Reform Proposal, Part 8, 95th Cong., 1st Sess., 1977, 30. 90 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Sub-Committee, Administration’s Welfare Reform Proposal, Part 8, 117.

64 maternalism are not successful. This is demonstrated by the ways in which, even while asserting themselves as mothers, NWRO women still must engage in myth busting regarding common stereotypes of welfare women. The circumstances of their maternalism also demonstrates their lack of privilege in navigating politics. These women were fighting against continual welfare cuts. Those welfare cuts were happening because those on welfare were not viewed as deserving poor, regardless of how they presented themselves as maternal figures deserving of sympathy.

Conclusion: In analyzing WSP and NWRO’s uses of maternalism and their varying degrees of success, as well as the exclusive nature of maternalism, we can see where the groups can inform modern feminist and activist groups. While neither group is necessarily a feminist one and do not embrace that identity, NWRO and WSP still demonstrated many of the pitfalls of activism that are prevalent in modern groups, especially feminist ones. WSP’s struggle to maintain inclusivity and grappling with their whiteness is a problem many feminist groups face. The group never fully addressed their whiteness and secure socioeconomic status. It refused to acknowledge its privilege, even when many of the demonstrations and instances of maternalism, such as the HUAC hearings, relied on that privilege. NWRO’s struggles to assert their motherhood and to maintain itself as a group are directly related to the race of its members. The most visible feminist groups today also rest on their privilege without acknowledging it. Women’s marches on Washington were overwhelmingly white. Black women struggle to engage in the same types of politics and activism as white women in feminist groups because, like the women of NWRO, they are denied space.

WSP also provides an opportunity to analyze claims to universalism. The women in WSP argued that they were advocating for all children everywhere. They insisted that the issue of peace was a universal one. This tendency towards universalism is present in groups that possess privilege. These groups can argue that their issues are universal because their issues are usually more abstract and ideological. WSP would insist that world peace was an urgent issue for all children, but this claim to universalism proves their privilege, especially when compared with NWRO. Instead of claiming universalism, NWRO women

66 refer back to their own experiences. It is the opposite of universalism, instead arguing for welfare rights based on the individual experiences of Black women. NWRO does not, and cannot, claim universalism because its needs are more urgent. NWRO does not argue for an abstract ideological goal. The women of NWRO were fighting for survival and needed resources. The impulse to claim universalism informs conflicts between feminist groups even today, especially with how they grapple with whiteness and inclusivity. Universalism in groups seems to be constructed when urgency is not an issue. Black Lives Matters groups are an example of not claiming universalism, but instead using reality referencing of the experiences of people of color. The organizers of the Women’s March in DC do claim universalism. They claim that women’s issues are everyone’s issues and that we must fight for gender equality. The group has also been criticized for its lack of inclusivity and diversity. NWRO and WSP demonstrate that issues in activism have not changed.

The politicization and mobilization of motherhood is frequently an imperfect strategy that is only successful in a limited capacity for white women and serves to entrench oppressive gender roles and stereotypes. Mobilized motherhood is a political strategy limited to upper-class white women and often serves to create a problematic virtuous mother figure. However, there are some benefits to maternal political movements. These movements often advocate for progressive goals that serve to benefit children. Mothers frame their arguments around the future of children, for example, when WSP advocated for denuclearization because children should not grow up under the constant threat of nuclear destruction or NWRO pushed for more expansive welfare benefits so children could have food and new clothes. Mothers’ movements are also usually grassroots and have horizontal leadership methods, allowing for close-knit relationships and support.

They emphasize caring and nurturing for others, which is part of their appeal. These movements also bring private and domestic matters into the public and political sphere.

They create a space in politics for women who otherwise are typically excluded. In using maternalism, these groups expand understandings of what is political and making themselves visible as political actors. I argue for an expansion of the maternal framework to a framework that includes some of the values of an ethic of care while maintaining the benefits of maternalism. This expansion of bringing in a care lens allows for the benefits of maternal movements, like the grassroots nature and the progressive goals for children, to remain while discarding the problematic gendered language of motherhood and the exclusive and racist practices of maternal rhetoric. Care also removes the individual perspective that mothers’ movements possess because goals are often for a particular child, not all children, and shifts instead to a more interdependent perspective. Joan Tronto offers an explanation of what an ethic of care looks like alongside Eva Kittay who provides an example of a mother utilizing a care ethic over a maternal framework. Tronto also demonstrates why a care ethic should have a democratic framework instead of a justice framework, especially since the democratic framework is more suited to a transition from maternal rhetoric.91

Maternal frameworks are often rooted in racist understandings of motherhood and that is one reason why those frameworks should shift into one of care. Women Strike for

Peace was largely composed of white middle to upper-class women. The National Welfare

Rights Organization included racial and class intersections and was composed mostly of

91 Joan Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (London and New York: Routledge, 1993).

68 poor Black women. Patricia Hill Collins illustrates most clearly the issues with white maternal rhetoric in Black Feminist Thought because of the myriad ways it is connected to and creates oppression of Black women. Hill Collins describes a “cult of true womanhood” that women were to aspire to, composed of the virtues of piety, submission, purity, and domesticity.92 These were virtues that Black women have historically been excluded from, and these are the virtues most embodied in historical mothers’ movements. Because Black women could not achieve the goal of the true woman, they were controlled through other images and stereotypes, often centered around motherhood. This is another reason Black women struggled to politicize and mobilize their motherhood like white women. Black women have been stereotyped into four images of the Black mother, according to Hill

Collins: the Mammy, the Black Matriarch, the Welfare Mother, and the Black Lady. Each of these images are a way of controlling Black women and are critical of Black motherhood. They each indicate a lack of the virtues embodied by the white mother; the

Black mother is unfeminine, aggressive, promiscuous, etc. The white mother can politically appropriate those virtues to argue for some sort of goal or policy for her children. Black mothers are excluded from the rhetoric of maternalism, meaning Black children are excluded from any benefits gained in a maternal movement. This is a clear indicator of a need to shift to a more inclusive framework like care.

In addition to the issues of racism, maternal rhetoric is unsustainable in its creation of a virtuous mother figure. Joan Tronto critiques the motherhood framework in Moral

Boundaries. As mentioned earlier, motherhood frameworks often rely on a general

92 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), 72.

69 perspective of women as mothers as more moral, virtuous figures in society. Tronto explains that this understanding of women, and thus mothers’ movements, is flawed and has consequences for full gender equality in addition to failing to accomplish political power and equality for women. She condemns women’s morality arguments as requiring

“that some women’s realities be sacrificed to achieve other women’s inclusion.”93 Tronto is responding to earlier care theorists like Virginia Held who advocated for a motherhood care lens, arguing that even men can engage in mothering. Tronto points out that movements based on the superior morality or innate goodness of women as mothers are flawed and destined to fail. She argues that when women make an argument centered around moral motherhood, they face arguments that insist morality does not belong in politics.94 When morality becomes excluded from political activity, women who have depended on a maternal moral framework to enter politics are subsequently excluded as well. Because morality is so heavily associated with the private sphere and with women as mothers in the private sphere, these understandings are only reinforced by mothers’ movements that seek to utilize morality in their arguments and political goals. Not only do maternal movements exclude women of color because of their inability to achieve the virtuous mother status, these movements also sometimes prove incapable of allowing women and mothers access to the political sphere because they can reinforce notions of motherhood and morality that oppress and relegate women to the private, domestic sphere.

These critiques of motherhood clearly illustrate the limitations and problems of a maternal lens, and this is why I argue for an expansion of that lens to include care. A care

93 Tronto, Moral Boundaries, 2. 94 Tronto, Moral Boundaries, 6.

70 ethic allows for the best parts of maternalism to remain while discarding the issues illustrated above. Joan Tronto offers an explanation of what a care ethic looks like in, emphasizing four crucial elements of care: attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness. Attentiveness emphasizes that we should be aware of the care needs of ourselves and those around us. Responsibility includes the roles we play as citizens. It questions what we owe to each other, and this is where political movements centered around care can advocate for changes in political systems. Questions of what it means to be a citizen can include care responsibilities. Competence is obviously based upon having the skills and capabilities to care. Responsiveness is a recognition that each of us is vulnerable and not autonomous. In Tronto’s early theories around care, in Moral

Boundaries, she points out that each of these elements is important for an effective implementation of care.95 These elements are often visible in maternal movements and this is part of why transitioning from motherhood to care is plausible. Ideally, care is not strictly gendered. It does not require an argument about morality, but an argument for meeting the care needs of every person.

Care frameworks recognize that everyone is in need of care and sees individuals as embedded in relationships of interdependence. Attention to care just makes that interdependence more visible and encourages questions around the equitable distribution of care. Motherhood is a good starting point for understanding this interdependence because motherhood makes people vulnerable while they simultaneously take care of a vulnerable person. Eva Kittay demonstrates this vulnerability in her work Love’s Labor

95 Tronto, Moral Boundaries.

71 and is an example of a mother making a care argument instead of a maternal one.96 Kittay offers an alternative option to mobilized motherhood and allows for a visible example of the transition from a maternal lens to a care lens. One of the crucial points Kittay makes concerns the questions of vulnerability and interdependence through the ways in which our society obscures relationships of care. She points out that some people are more expected to do care work in society while others expect to have their care needs met with that work being concealed by unequal power dynamics. Kittay points out the issue with these neoliberal power structures, “the conception of society as an association of equals masks the inevitable dependencies and asymmetries that form part of the human condition...Therefore the presumption effectively obscures the needs of the dependents within society and women’s traditional roles in tending to those needs.”97 The power dynamics that conceal the vulnerability of some people while highlighting it in others is one of the issues that a shift from maternal movements into care can address. We see these power dynamics in the issues advocated for by WSP and NWRO. The fight for anti-nuclear expansion and for welfare rights shows how some women using maternalism were more vulnerable to power dynamics than others. WSP more easily navigated the power differentials of activism than NWRO. Both groups also focused almost solely on issues that impacted children when these issues could be more helpful in applying them to a broader society. NWRO women showed care ethics in arguing for childcare and access to needed resources for their children. Similarly, WSP showed care ethics in advocating for global peace for children; seeking better lives for their children free of fear and violence.

Their care ethics were more exclusive however, because the universal child discussed by

96 Eva Kittay, Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency (New York: Routledge, 1999). 97 Kittay, Love’s Labor, 14.

WSP was often a white child. While mothers’ movements often focus on the vulnerability and power dynamics of mother to child and patriarchy to mother, care frameworks reveal the care needs and vulnerability of every member of society. When we add Tronto’s frameworks involving civic responsibility, a true framework of democratic care emerges.

Within care theory however, there are debates concerning the appropriate lens of care. Some theorists, like Robin West, argue for a justice lens, while Joan Tronto and

Kristin Bumiller, present a democratic argument for care. The democratic lens is a more appropriate transition from maternal movements, as well as a lens that serves itself to care more proactively. West argues for an implementation of care and equal distribution of care in the law. She believes that instead of being oppositional, justice and care actually go hand in hand.98 West argues that we need to “transform our political structures to achieve a world in which the moral dimensions of caregiving are reflected in our political and economic lives.”99 This argument for implementing care within our political and legal structures borders on too idealistic. Critical theory has demonstrated exactly the ways in which trying to achieve equality through the legal system has failed. Instead, existing oppressive structures tend to perpetuate inequalities in new and different ways when strategies like

West’s are implemented. Care is already concealed within existing power structures, with the privileged recipients of care allowed to obscure who is receiving and who is giving more care. Additionally, the criminal justice system and the courts are not ideal locations for caregiving or receiving, especially within a neoliberal society. The courts serve as a system of capital and commodity where people are delivered up to prison businesses.

98 Robin West, Caring for Justice (New York and London: New York University Press, 1997). 99 West, Caring for Justice, 35.

Changing these structures to adopt a justice centered care lens seems impossible. Further, care should be community based and serve as a democratic framework.

Kristin Bumiller illustrates the failures of care in a justice framework in The Civil

Rights Society.100 Bumiller focuses on discrimination cases where the failures of the justice system to address wrongs is demonstrated through its inability to provide care. She interviews several people who faced discrimination and focuses on the actions those individuals chose to take or not take. Many of the individuals said they didn’t take legal action because they did not want to conceptualize of themselves as victims. The legal system requires a victim to be present in discrimination cases, but the stigma and struggles associated with claiming victimhood are not addressed. The legal system requires people to take on only one aspect of their identity, whatever was discriminated against, and to embrace the role of victim. The people Bumiller interviewed were not comfortable with this. Their care needs were ignored by a distant and clinical legal system.

Antidiscrimination laws are an example of when equality, and to an extent care, were written into law. Meeting the care needs of individuals involves ensuring they are not discriminated against. However, the system fails. People don’t report discrimination and they don’t feel that the system treats them justly. The justice system also treats people as individuals instead of members of a group: “These statements disassociate the individual who experiences discrimination from group identity, causes, or concerns.”101 They resent a victim identity because it is accompanied by feelings of helplessness and inadequacy.

There is no justice framework that meets those care needs.

100 Kristin Bumiller, The Civil Rights Society: The Social Construction of Victims (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). 101 Bumiller, The Civil Rights Society, 101.

Because of these issues with the justice lens of care, Tronto presents an argument for democratic care, which I argue is superior and a more appropriate transition from maternal frameworks. Like in her earlier work, Tronto questions what we as citizens owe each other through care. She argues that care work is a collective effort where everyone gives and receives what they can and need. She goes more in depth about the ways we should ensure that care is democratic, emphasizing that everyone gets a seat at the table and no one gets to recuse themselves from care work. People have attempted to avoid responsibility through claiming ignorance and through institutional structures that have obscured authority and power. These excuses must be done away with. We must also redefine what freedom means to implement democratic care. Often, the current understandings of freedom are “a conception in which freedom means not having to care.”102 Democratic caring also concerns removing care from the private sector. When we address care through the private free market, only the wealthy can afford to buy the care they need. Care workers tend to be exploited minorities whose care needs are subsequently not met when they have to provide care for the wealthy. The work of care only furthers their oppression because they are denied care. Tronto explains three negative results from disparate care access in the private sector. Care becomes competitive, there is an unsympathetic disregard for the care of others, and there is a privileged irresponsibility for providing care where recipients believe they are entitled to care while being exempt from giving it. Democratic care occurs on a community level and acknowledges the care needs of all people. It rejects the free market framework and does not place an economic value on care. Instead people recognize what they owe to each other.

102 Tronto, Moral Boundaries, 92.

Care as an alternative to the mobilization of motherhood is not without its critiques.

One such critique is in Mona Harrington’s Care and Equality.103 Harrington discusses in part the gendered concept of care, a notion that has been prevalent in various contexts in much of the literature around care. In implementing a care framework, Harrington discusses concerns around whether or not women can lead care politics without resorting to a maternal rhetoric. There is a belief that the qualities of motherhood (caring, emotion, vulnerability) are antithetical to leadership. However, women who embody the characteristics of leadership (assertive, stoic, strong) are viewed negatively by society as

Harrington demonstrates with the example of Hillary Clinton. Understanding these limitations imposed upon women creates questions about who should propose care policies and strategies, especially since resorting to motherhood rhetoric is problematic as illustrated above. It suggests that perhaps men should be at the forefront of care implementation since care work is so strongly coded as feminine, but there are issues with that as well.

Welfare policies are an example of male dominated care policies which have reinforced gendered care as well, with the paternalistic state providing care for dependent women and children. Harrington describes the Warrior Problem which prevents men from being suitable providers of and advocates for care. Men are supposed to be protective warriors in both leadership and personal lives. This limits men who seek to advance a feminine care policy, especially in our contemporary neoliberal society: “Advancing care and equality, then, depends on changes in conceptions of motherhood and changes in the

103 Mona Harrington, Care and Equality: Inventing a New Family Politics (Routledge: 2000).

76 tradition of special trust in masculinity as the mark of social and political leadership.”104

Joan Tronto similarly analyzes where men fit into care in Caring Democracy.105 Tronto argues that men have been able to avoid care work because they engage in practices of protection and production whereas women engage in the practice of creating citizens

(motherhood) which is associated with care.106 Men also tend to be those who receive care without acknowledging that work. All of these analyses create the question of where men fit in a care framework. To address these issues when implementing care, the neoliberal society that so harshly enforces the roles of men and women must be deconstructed. The privileged must no longer receive exceptions to care work and must be accountable for doing their care work.

In order to begin to implement care in a neoliberal, capitalist society, that care must begin at a grassroots level with horizontal leadership. I have explained the issues of leadership and care above and they show that care policies should best be implemented through local and grassroots movements. Mainstream politics rejects care frameworks and politicians who push for them. This allows an easier transition from motherhood lenses to care lenses because many of the motherhood movements I analyzed are grassroots and horizontal. Maternalism has proven that it can be politically mobilizing and offer a path into mainstream politics. WSP and NWRO both used maternalism in part for this very reason. This also begins to portray care as a feasible expansion to motherhood in a neoliberal society. The free market does not offer an appropriate option for care because it

104 Harrington, Care and Equality, 120. 105 Joan Tronto, Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice (New York and London: New York University Press, 2013). 106 Tronto, Caring Democracy, 70-80.

77 gives free passes to those who do not want to engage in care. Rather, the free market rejects care frameworks and monetizes and commodifies care work instead of allowing for interdependence to be visible. Tronto discusses two passes created by the free market, the bootstrap pass and the charity pass. The charity pass means “there is no need to think more collectively or coercively about others’ needs for care, because since everyone has the option to spend some of their money by giving it to charity, the needy can be helped.”107

By contrast, the bootstrap pass argues that “people meet their own needs by acting through the market.”108 Each of these passes leads one to conclude that the free market is not capable of producing the type of care framework that advocates democratic interdependence.

Patricia Hill Collins offers an example for my argument for the expansion of motherhood frameworks with care. She presents the concept of the othermothers in Black communities. Othermothers are a maternal option that does not have the same issues with racism as many mothers’ movements, but it is still gendered. Othermothers are figures in the Black community that mother children without being biological mothers. They are caregivers and contribute to raising children within the community. Often, othermothers engage in political activism and use maternal rhetoric to advocate for changes in education or healthcare. Othermothering is an opportunity for women of color to politically use their motherhood in ways that are usually denied them. It also emphasizes a care ethic:

“Community othermothers’ participation in activist mothering demonstrates a clear rejection of separateness and individual interest as the basis of either community

107 Tronto, Caring Democracy, 118. 108 Tronto, Caring Democracy, 118.

78 organization or individual self-actualization.”109 Hill Collins describes othermothering as

“women-centered networks.”110 Like the other forms of care discussed, othermothering has also been the work of women. It continues to raise the question of where men fit into a democratic system of care.

Othermothering can provide an opportunity for an ethic of care to rely on a maternalist framework. It can bring out all of the best aspects of maternalism while leaving behind the issues. Maternalism often was an entry point to politics for women who struggled to gain access. The women of NWRO and the women of WSP used maternalism to gain access to the political sphere, with mixed results. For NWRO, maternalism sometimes provided an opportunity for poor Black women to speak out about their welfare needs because motherhood was an area that Black women felt qualified to speak on. For

WSP, maternalism allowed the group to engage in political behaviors that would otherwise be questioned and suspect, such as their behavior during the Congressional hearings.

Maternalism also allowed for mass mobilization of many women who often did not previously consider themselves political. These are both benefits of a maternalist framework that should be included in a shift away from maternalism and towards care.

Othermothering provides a new framework to include those benefits. Othermothering is further beneficial because it can be more inclusive, especially since the concept originated in communities of color. It also discards the mother figure or the actual mother because it allows everyone to participate in this revised maternalism. In discarding the virtuous

109 Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 192. 110 Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 178.

79 mother, expectations of motherhood that excluded women of color are gone while still maintaining the good parts of maternalism.

Care is a radical departure from traditional frameworks of liberal democracy and political movements, but it is a framework that must replace or at least inform maternal organizations. Mothers’ movements reinforce problematic stereotypes and are exclusive.

The question of whether or not we really can dispose the deployment of motherhood is answered by a care framework. We must move away from mothers’ movements; they no longer are effective in a contemporary political context. These movements have become outdated. However, aspects of mothers’ movements should be maintained, like their grassroots nature, horizontal leadership, and emphasis on caregiving and nurturing. Care allows for the best parts of mothers’ movements to persist while discarding the gendered and racist issues, as well as the actual mother/ontological mother. Democratic care is the best lens to incorporate into mothers’ movements. Care implementation will require some big shifts in contemporary political understandings and especially a shift away from neoliberal capitalism which is why it can be successful when integrated into maternalism which provides pathways into politics and political mobilization.

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