Ann Taylor Allen - Feminism and Motherhood in Western ...

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This illustration from the British journal The Suffragette (1913) shows a mother with child in thevanguard of a demonstration for women’s rights.

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Ann Taylor Allen

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FEMINISM AND MOTHERHOOD IN WESTERN EUROPE, 1890–1970© Ann Taylor Allen, 2005.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

First published in 2005 byPALGRAVE MACMILLAN™175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XSCompanies and representatives throughout the world.

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ISBN 1–4039–6236–7

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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First edition: July 2005

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Preface ix

List of Abbreviations xi

Introduction: From Destiny to Dilemma—Motherhood in the Twentieth Century 1

1. “Aeons of Wrong”: Mothers in Prehistory and History 19

2. From Patriarchy to Partnership: Feminism, Motherhood, and the Law in Western Europe, 1890–1914 41

3. Employment or Endowment? The Dilemma of Motherhood,1890–1914 63

4. “The Right of the Child to Choose its Parents”: Motherhood and Reproductive Responsibility in the Prewar Era 87

5. “The Value of Babies”: Mothers, Children, and the State in Wartime, 1914–1918 111

6. The Double Burden: Marriage, Motherhood, and Employment in the Interwar Years 137

7. “Conscious Motherhood”: Birth Control, Eugenics, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Interwar Era 161

8. “The Right to be Happy”: Feminism and Child-Rearing during the Interwar Years 187

9. From Motherhood to Sex Roles: The Postwar Era, 1945–1970 209

Conclusion: A Continuing Dilemma 235

Notes 243

Bibliography 309

Index 337

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In memory of Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau, 1926–1990

Mentor, colleague, friend

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Looking back over the fifteen years that have passed since I began theresearch for this book, I am truly grateful to a large number of people andinstitutions for the help and support that they have given me. The NationalEndowment for the Humanities provided a grant that enabled me to travelto libraries and archives in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. TheUniversity of Louisville funded travel to Britain and a sabbatical leave.The Institute for Research on Women and Gender of Stanford University,where I spent a semester, gave me access to Stanford’s excellent libraries anda congenial atmosphere for thought and research. In addition, I thank myparents, Ann U. Allen and Franklin G. Allen, for the many forms of supportthat they have provided for all my endeavors.

The staffs of many libraries and archives provided me with indispensableassistance. I thank David Doughan of the Fawcett Library of London (nowthe Women’s Library) for his advice, which was based on a wide and deepknowledge of the library’s materials and of women’s history, and for thesense of humor that enlivened my long days of research. I also received ableassistance at the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding ofMedicine. The Galton Society kindly gave me permission to see the recordsof the Eugenics Society, which are held at the Wellcome Library. Annie Dizier-Metz and the staff of the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand provided friendlyand collegial support for my research in Paris. I also thank the staffs of theBibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris and of the Bibliothèque Nationalede France for their help in tracking down materials. Annette Mevis and herstaff received me hospitably at the International Information Centre andArchives of the Women’s Movement in Amsterdam. In Germany, I am obligedto the staffs of the Landesarchiv Berlin, the Bundesarchiv Koblenz, theBundesarchiv Lichterfelde, and the Deutscher Staatsbürgerinnen-Verband.Finally, I thank the staff of the Ekstrom Library at the University of Louisville.Delinda Buie of the Special Collections Department applied for funding toacquire several microform collections, including the excellent GerritsenCollection, that were crucial to my research. Jim Ryan of Interlibrary Loanhelped me to find many important published sources. I thank Marja-LeenaHanninen and Sondra Herman for providing translations of sources, and GailChooljian Nall for compiling the bibliography.

Many colleagues suggested or provided research materials, helped me tonavigate libraries and archives, commented on portions of this work thatwere contained in lectures, conference papers, and articles, or read drafts of

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chapters or of the manuscript as a whole. A very incomplete list of thesecolleagues includes Marilyn Boxer, Sondra R. Herman, Tiina Kinnunen,Gisela Bock, João Esteves, Anne Cova, Susan Pedersen, David Lindenfeld,Kees Gispen, Gerald R. Kleinfeld, Thomas Trautmann, Michael Grossberg,Michael Schwartz, Francesca de Haan, Hugo Röling, Andrew Lees, MarjattaHietala, Ulla Manns, Mira Böhm, Jürgen Zinnecker, Imbke Behnken, Lesley A.Hall, Pia Schmid, James C. Albisetti, Nancy Theriot, Julia Dietrich, Mary AnnStenger, Eileen John, and Dawn Heinecken. Above all I thank Karen Offen,who gave generously of her time to support grant applications, to read man-uscripts, to offer careful, honest, and demanding criticism, to suggest avenues forresearch, and to encourage me when I felt overwhelmed. I have benefitedfrom her immense knowledge of European women’s history and from herfriendship over many years.

This book is dedicated to the memory of Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau. WhenI came to the University of Louisville as an instructor in 1971, Professor Tachauwas the only other woman in the Department of History. In the early years ofmy career, she was a guide, mentor, and friend. A distinguished scholar ofAmerican constitutional history and an activist for the rights of women,Professor Tachau encouraged me to teach and study women’s history—a newand controversial field at that time. Whatever I have achieved in this field,I owe in some measure to her.

Ann Taylor AllenLouisville, Kentucky

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IIAV International Information Centre and Archive for the Women’sMovement, Amsterdam

BAK Bundesarchiv KoblenzBL Bundesarchiv LichterfeldeLAB Landesarchiv BerlinWL Women’s Library, LondonBMD Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand, ParisBHVP Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de ParisWLHM Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine,

LondonBDF Bund Deutscher FrauenvereineBfM Bund für MutterschutzOV Onderlinge VrouwenbeschermingUFCS Union féminine civique et socialeNUSEC National Union of Societies for Equal CitizenshipCNFF Conseil national des femmes françaisesGFEF Groupe français d’études féministesWCG Women’s Cooperative GuildPCF Parti communiste françaisSPD Sozialdemokratische Partei DeutschlandsUDI Unione donne italianeUFF Union des femmes françaisesEES Eugenics Education SocietyES Eugenics Society

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“A R H B”

When Nora, the heroine of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, walked out the door ofher comfortable home, her husband Torvald frantically sought to hold herback. “Before all things, you are a wife and mother,” he protested. “I don’tbelieve that any longer,” was Nora’s response, “I believe that before all elseI am a reasonable human being, just as you are—or at any event, that I musttry and become one.” Nora, the mother of three, aspired to autonomy forher own sake and for the sake of her children. In her present state of child-likedependence, she reflected sadly, she was “of no use to them.”1 As she slammedthe door on her husband and children, Nora raised the question that thisbook will address: is it possible to be both a mother and an autonomous indi-vidual? This is what I will call the “maternal dilemma.”

In the twentieth century, the maternal dilemma has emerged as one of themost intractable problems facing women in the West. Although the identifi-cation of womanhood with motherhood can be traced back to the beginning ofhuman history, the conception of motherhood as a dilemma is relatively new.For without choice, there can be no dilemma. Only since the turn of thetwentieth century has freely chosen motherhood been perceived as a realistic—though still often unattainable—aspiration. But the choice is too often betweenmotherhood and other forms of self-realization. Women still assume the chiefresponsibility for the family, and do most of the work of reproduction andchild-rearing. This “double burden” restricts their participation in economic,social, and cultural life and is now the major source of gender inequalityin Western societies. Of course, many women never have children, but thetendency to identify womanhood with motherhood nonetheless shapes theenvironment in which they live and work.

Motherhood is a central concern not just of women, but of the societies inwhich they live, which depend for their survival on women’s willingness tobear children. The solution of the maternal dilemma is an essential steptoward the full realization of women’s rights of citizenship, which will bedefined here to include not only participation in politics, but also equalopportunity in social, economic, and cultural life. Suffrage, said the Frenchfeminist Nelly Roussel in 1905, was not an end in itself, but a means to the

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higher end of ensuring “the natural right of every human being, to liveautonomously and to develop all abilities in freedom.”2

In this book, we will look at the ways in which feminists who lived andworked in several Western European countries between 1890 and 1970attempted to resolve this dilemma by creating a new role for mothers—onethat would not restrict, but enhance, their development as individuals. Thematernal dilemma was not, of course, invented by feminists. But it was theywho defined it, explored it, stressed its importance as a social, cultural, andpolitical issue, and placed it at the center of their theoretical analyses andpolitical programs.

Despite the central importance of this theme to the history of women andof feminism, it has often been neglected by historians, who are usually mostinterested in women’s entry into new areas such as politics, the professions,sports, and social life outside the family. Motherhood, many imply, was a“traditional” role, and feminists who emphasized it are often identified asconservatives whose contribution was minor, if not actually harmful. In theirstudy of German women in the interwar era, Atina Grossmann, RenateBridenthal, and Claudia Koonz emphasize the “dangers implicit in a feminismthat celebrates separate spheres and differences between the sexes.”3 AndDenise Riley charges feminists of earlier generations with emphasizing the“timelessly frozen properties of maternity” and constructing “a woman-thing, objectified as a distortion.”4 But we shall see that in fact feministdiscourses on motherhood were fixed neither on “timeless” and essentialiststereotypes, nor on “separate spheres.” On the contrary, they contributed toa remarkable process of transformation.

At the turn of the twentieth century, many feminists extolled motherhoodas the highest of human achievements. Indeed, claimed the influential Swedishauthor Ellen Key, it was “the most perfect realization of human potential thatthe species has reached.”5 In the political realm, this view was expressedthrough an ideology that historians call “maternalism,” which asserted thepublic importance of motherhood and child-rearing. Some even includedlife-giving motherhood with death-dealing military service among the rightsand obligations of citizenship.

By 1970, we note a conspicuous shift in both the content and the tone offeminist debates. Activists of that era continued to advocate the political andsocial rights of mothers and to explore the experience of motherhood and itsplace in each individual life. But most repudiated maternalism and aggressivelyrefused to acknowledge motherhood as a universal female vocation, moralmission, or duty of citizenship. In fact, many regarded this as a stereotypethat oppressed and confined women. In 1972, young activists of the Frenchwomen’s liberation movement called upon women to free themselves froman ancient yoke. “The only rational attitude toward what society has made ofmotherhood is to refuse it,” stated one of their many manifestoes.6

Why this change in the space of less than a century? Why did thegrandmothers’ exalted ideal become the granddaughters’ restrictive

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stereotype—a development that is all the more noteworthy in a period duringwhich the medical and material conditions surrounding motherhoodimproved immeasurably? This book will answer this question by looking atthe relationship between feminism and motherhood in its historical context—the massive transformation of family structure that occurred during the yearsfrom 1890 to 1970. The approach will be international and comparative, andwill include the nations of Western Europe, focusing chiefly on Britain,France, Germany, and the Netherlands but including many others. Unlikemost existing works on this subject, which are centered on public policyissues, this one will emphasize the connection between public policy and thefamilial roles of mothers. Of course, no single book could cover all aspects—legal, medical, moral, cultural—of the maternal role, so we will focus here onthe questions that figured most prominently in feminist debates. Whatshould be the legal status of mothers, and what changes in the law might berequired to promote gender equality in the family? Was the child the respon-sibility of the individual mother, the married or unmarried couple, or thecommunity or state? And if the latter, should the state be empowered to com-pel, to limit, or to prohibit parenthood? Was motherhood in itself an occu-pation deserving of compensation, or should it be combined with paid workoutside the home? Were all women “motherly” by nature, or were some unfitfor this responsibility and thus morally obligated to decline it? And, finally,how would women’s new aspirations to occupational or personal fulfillmentaffect the mother–child relationship?

As its title indicates, this study focuses on the history of feminist move-ments, Western Europe, and motherhood. I will begin by briefly addressingthese three concepts.

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Any historical consideration of such a diverse and controversial phenom-enon as feminism must begin with a definition. The terms “feminist” and“feminism” were first used in the late nineteenth century by the French suf-fragist Hubertine Auclert, and by 1900 these terms were in use throughoutEurope and in North and Latin America. From that day to this, their meaninghas been disputed. As the historian Karen Offen has remarked, many historicalworks of the 1970s evaluated their subjects according to the authors’ owndefinitions of feminism, derived from the women’s movements of the latetwentieth century. True feminists, these authors insisted, aimed for “equalopportunity for the individual irrespective of sex, familial considerations, ornational concerns.”7 But most leaders of the first women’s movement, fromits origins in the eighteenth century until 1960, took a positive view of thefamily, the maternal role, and the complementary male–female couple, andworked from a concept of “equality-in-difference.” Such activists were oftendismissed as simply not feminist—a judgment that Offen rightly rejects asunhistorical.

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Offen divides feminist arguments into two types: the “individualist,”which stressed individual rights, and the “relational,” which emphasizedcooperation, solidarity, and the complementary male–female couple.Encompassing both of these variations, Offen defines a feminist as a

female or male whose ideas and actions . . . show them to meet three criteria:they recognize the value of women’s own interpretations of their lived experienceand needs and acknowledge the values women claim publicly as their own . . . inassessing their status in society relative to men; they exhibit consciousness of,discomfort at, or even anger over institutionalized injustice (or inequity)toward women as a group by men as a group in a given society; and they advocatethe elimination of that injustice by challenging, through efforts to alter prevailingideas and/or social institutions and practices, the coercive power, force, orauthority that upholds male prerogatives in that particular culture.8

Many people who will figure in this book put their major efforts into cam-paigns for the rights of children rather than of women. Others shunned thelabel “feminist”—religious women because of its secular, and socialists becauseof its middle-class, connotations. But under Offen’s broad definition most ofthese people qualify in some sense as “feminist.”

Other historians emphasize the conflict rather than the basic agreementamong feminist ideologies. Since their beginning in the eighteenth century,claims the well-known historian and theorist Joan Wallach Scott, feministmovements have been trapped in an intractable paradox, albeit one that is notof their own making. In Scott’s view, feminists usually begin by challengingwhatever notions of gender difference are used to justify women’s subordi-nation during a given era, and making a claim to equality with men based ona doctrine of gender-neutral human rights, or rights of citizenship. But such agender-neutral doctrine always proves elusive, for in practice citizenship isassociated with maleness (e.g., military service was commonly regarded duringthis period as an indispensable qualification for citizenship). And thereforefeminists are forced to admit gender difference and to argue that women areentitled to equality on the basis of their distinctively female characteristics,thus creating a new version of female “nature” that eventually becomes sooppressive and limiting that a new generation of feminists challenges it in thename of equality (starting the process again).9

In practice, the distinction between arguments for gender equality and gen-der difference was often meaningless, for these arguments were often usedinterchangeably. And yet on issues concerning maternity, we will see that thesetwo approaches dwelt uneasily together. For the mother identified herselfboth generically as a human individual and specifically as a woman. In the latenineteenth century, feminists demanded full and equal rights of citizenshipfor women. But a doctrine of rights that had been designed to fit the malecitizen, an independent individual, could only with difficulty be adapted tothe citizen-mother, who claimed rights to dependence as well as to liberty.And the mother–child relationship, which evolves from symbiosis throughintermediate stages of dependence that must inevitably end in separation,

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had no counterpart in the male life-patterns upon which most normativeunderstandings of human nature and politics were based. Many feministssolved this problem by claiming that motherhood itself was a vital service tothe state, which deserved to be recognized by the granting of full rights ofcitizenship. But this maternalist ideology, which emphasized social solidarity,was often difficult to reconcile with individualist claims to equality andliberty. For feminists, motherhood inevitably involved a conflict betweensocial and individualist aspirations, and this conflict will be a major theme ofthis book.

The term “feminism” has also been problematized for imposing a falseunity on a highly disparate set of people, ideas, and events.10 Female sex andgender do not in themselves confer a political identity, and those who speakfor “women” in general always represent some particular group. In what fol-lows, we will be concerned with a numerous and diverse array of individuals,not all of whom were women—for men, though in the minority, have alwaysplayed a role in feminist movements. These individuals’ ideas and actions wereshaped by many aspects of identity—not only sex or gender, but also national-ity, class, religion, marital and parental status, and others. At no time does theterm “feminism” denote a unified movement or a single orthodox ideology—italways refers to a complex and shifting process of coalition-building.11

Class conflict, which shaped the political life of this era, was often a majorobstacle to this process. Both definitions of class and perceptions of classdifference varied across national boundaries. In Germany, a hostile relationshipbetween socialist and middle-class women’s groups prevented cooperationover most of our period. In France, Scandinavia, and Britain, cross-classalliances were easier to forge. Moreover, feminists in all the countries includedin this study found it easier to work together across class barriers on issuesconcerning the family, motherhood, and child welfare than on many otherissues. However, because of the far greater access of upper- and middle-classwomen to money, time, and media attention, their viewpoint usually hadthe greatest visibility—an asymmetry that will be noted at many points in thefollowing chapters. Another difference that is important to feminists atpresent—difference in sexual orientation—influenced our period’s discourseson motherhood only indirectly. Although in fact many lesbians had their ownchildren or raised the children of others, they were imagined during this erachiefly as unmarried and childless women. The lesbian mother became visibleonly after 1970.

Although they were very aware of differences among women, feminists ofthis era did not share the preoccupation of present-day theorists with definingor deconstructing female identity. The identity to which they aspired was notchiefly that of woman, but that of citizen. And the audience that theyaddressed was not composed exclusively of women or of feminists, but includedthe general public. They rightly insisted that motherhood, the family, andreproduction were not just “women’s issues,” but vital aspects of national lifethat concerned both women and men. “Just as we need the human couple tocall a new person into life,” wrote Hubertine Auclert, “in order to create an

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environment where that person can develop fully, both men and women areindispensable.”12 Feminists will be presented here as contributors to publicdebates that included a wide variety of speakers—politicians, military leaders,physicians, psychologists, creative writers, and many others.

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This will be an international and comparative history that includes all of thenational cultures of Western Europe. The focus will be on Great Britain,France, the Netherlands, and Germany (the Nazi era, during which feministorganizations were prohibited, will be discussed only as it influenced devel-opments in other countries and in postwar West Germany). The Scandinaviannations will also figure prominently. Southern European nations such asSpain, Italy, and Portugal will play a lesser role, partly because for a large portionof the period they were ruled by dictatorships that suppressed feminism, butthey will also be included, as will smaller nations such as Switzerland andIreland.13 The source material will include both original documents and therich and copious body of secondary literature that has reconstructed the historyof women in many nations.

My aim is both to provide a synthesis of existing research and to placeits results in an international perspective. The field of women’s and genderhistory has questioned many conventions of the discipline of history but hasretained its focus on the national state. The past thirty years have seen theproduction of countless excellent works covering many aspects of women’sand gender history in individual countries—works upon which the presentstudy depends. And their perspective is valid and illuminating, for thenational state—its political structures, its distinctive geography, language,and culture, its economic and social systems, and not least its militaryfortunes—did much to shape the environment in which individuals lived andthought.

But the national focus can also limit the explanatory power of history,for most major trends, especially those of the modern era, arise from forcesthat are international in scope. And we cannot simply assume that nationalitywas the only, or even the primary, marker of individual identity. Nations, asBenedict Anderson has pointed out, are not timeless and primordial entities—on the contrary, they are “imagined communities,” invented and sustained tofulfill their citizens’ need for a “sense of belonging.”14 These citizens may wellhave an equal or greater need to belong to entities smaller or larger than thenational state. Among the former are families, cities, and provinces; among thelatter are regions and other “imagined communities” linked by religion, class,race, gender, or other identities shared across national boundaries.

During our period, the feminist movement was among the largest andthe most closely knit of these international communities.15 To be sure, bondsof gender did not transcend those of nationality, and the dense network offeminist organizational life and intellectual exchange was disrupted by war

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and international rivalry. But international tensions could also stimulatecommunication, for feminists were loyal defenders of national honor andsought information about other countries in order to compete with them.And international dialogue, though it touched on all issues, was particularlyintense on themes related to the family, child welfare, and the theory andpractice of motherhood—aspects of life that, though they took distinctiveforms in each national culture, were common to all.

The international approach does not obscure or overlook the differencesamong nations—on the contrary, it illuminates these differences.16 The follow-ing chapters will center on ways in which ideas derived from an internationalmovement—feminism—were received, implemented, modified, or rejectedwithin specific national cultures. As the sociologist Theda Skocpol remarks,such comparisons can demonstrate difference by showing what variable fea-tures of each case affect the “working out of putatively general processes.”17

More than the study of a single nation, a comparative perspective can revealwhat is truly distinctive to each culture and what cultures have in common.

Why the focus on Western Europe? Traditional historical narratives treatthe European nations as separate entities and stress their cultural differencesand their conflicts. Within a historical perspective that centered on Europe oron Western civilization and took little account of other regions of the world,these conflicts loomed large. But with the end of European dominance andthe rise of global politics, Europe was displaced from the center of historyand reclassified as only one of many regions of the world. “Europe,” writesthe historian of India Dipesh Chakrabarty, has been “provincialized by historyitself.”18 From this global perspective, the European “province” is at least asnotable for its common civilization as for its internal diversity—a perspectivethat the recent consolidation and growth of the European Union has powerfullyreinforced.

Among all the aspects of culture that Western European nations share,patterns of reproduction and family life have always been among the mostdistinctive. A “European marriage pattern” involving late ages at marriageand small nuclear-family households emerged in the early modern era, andduring the period covered here the trend toward reduced birth rates that isknown as the “demographic transition” occurred within about thirty years(from 1880 to 1910) in all the Western European nations with the exceptionof France (where it had begun much earlier, around 1820) and Spain andIreland (where the process began later, in the 1920s). Throughout WesternEurope, these statistical trends were accompanied by highly distinctive politicalprocesses, chiefly the building of welfare states, and by social change, especiallyin the experience of childhood, family life, and the status of women. Thesepatterns diverged from those of Eastern Europe, where the demographictransition and its attendant changes came (on average) somewhat later, andfrom those of European settler societies such as Australia, the United States,and Canada, which differed from their mother countries in demographiccomposition, population trends, and political systems.19

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Although the turn toward comparative history is recent, the field ofwomen’s and gender history has already produced some outstanding worksin this field. Many of these are anthologies that include articles on individualcountries but do not explicitly compare them. Synthetic works of comparisoninclude Richard Evans’s early work on international feminism; SusanPedersen’s pioneering book on family allowance policies in France andBritain; Alisa Klaus’s account of maternity policies in France and the UnitedStates; comparative histories of family policies in Germany and Sweden byTeresa Kulawik, Silke Neunsinger, and Wiebke Kolbe; and Karen Offen’ssurvey of European feminist movements.20 Among these authors, only Evansand Offen deal with more than two national cultures. Following the exampleset by these authors, this study will include smaller countries such as Holland,Belgium, and Ireland as well as the better-known “great powers.” Mindful ofrestrictions imposed by publishers’ page limits, the availability of researchmaterials, and not least the patience of readers, I have no intention ofproviding a complete and systematic survey of events in all the countries thatI have included. Instead, I will use selected examples to illustrate majortrends.

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At the turn of the twentieth century, when our story begins, feminist rhetoricwas pervaded by the exaltation of motherhood as the woman citizen’s mostimportant right and duty. In our own time, historians’ responses to thistendency, which they have called “maternalism,” have covered a broad spec-trum from vehement denunciation to fulsome praise. Some have pictured thematernalists as the misguided allies of militarist politicians whose aim was theproduction of cannon fodder. Richard Evans and Marie-Louise Janssen-Jurreitlinked the history of German feminism to that of nationalism; Claudia Koonzto that of Nazism and the Holocaust.21 Anna Davin included British maternal-ists among the proponents of “imperial motherhood.”22 Karen Offen delivereda more nuanced judgment on French feminists, whose support of populationgrowth, childbearing, and the maternal role she attributed to a pragmatic con-cern for survival in a highly natalist atmosphere—a kind of “raison d’état.”23

Other historians have condemned all tendencies to identify womanhood withmotherhood, whatever their context, as a betrayal of feminism. “When thechild becomes the sacred king of the family,” wrote the influential Frenchtheorist Elisabeth Badinter, “society, with the father’s full cooperation, willdemand that the mother rid herself of her aspirations as a woman.”24

Recent works have called these negative judgments into question bystressing the many positive achievements of maternalist feminism. As suchauthors as Seth Koven and Sonya Michel have pointed out, maternalistsplayed an important role in this era’s most notable trend in social policy: theinvention and development of the welfare state.25 To be sure, the maternalistsare sometimes criticized for their authoritarian attitude toward parents whodid not meet their standards of proper child-rearing, and children whose

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behavior did not fulfill middle-class norms.26 However, these historiansrespect the idealism of women such as Hubertine Auclert, who aspired totransform the warlike “minotaur state” into a “motherly” commonwealththat would “nurture its citizenry, offering security and work to the healthy,assistance to children, old people, the sick and disabled.”27

Though both of these approaches are valid, their explanatory poweris reduced by a longer chronological and broader international perspective.For if feminists’ concern for mothers and children was intended to servemilitaristic ends, then why was this concern as passionate in neutral statessuch as Holland, Belgium, and Sweden as in bellicose France and Germanyand imperialist Britain? And why was maternalist rhetoric as common amongpacifists who opposed war as among nationalists who glorified it? And ifmaternalist ideology was designed first and foremost to serve a specific politicalend—the building of the welfare state—then why did the influence of theideology decline as this end was achieved—in the 1920s and 1930s, when thefirst reform measures were implemented, and in the post–World War II era,when the growth of the European welfare states reached its highest point?Although it will draw on all the works mentioned earlier, this book willattribute the evolution of feminist attitudes toward motherhood chiefly tomore fundamental trends—the demographic transition, declining birthratesand family size, and cultural changes affecting marriage, the status of women,the roles of mothers and fathers, and parent–child relations.

Any discussion of the history of motherhood must start by considering acentral question: to what extent is maternal behavior shaped by nature orinstinct and to what extent by culture? This question is often obfuscated bya fallacious association of maternal instinct with the unconditional devotionthat Western culture defines as “mother-love.” Badinter, the author of a bookentitled Mother-Love: Myth and Reality, assumed that the very existence ofunloving mothers ruled out any instinctual basis for motherhood, which shedefined as a purely cultural phenomenon, a “human feeling . . . uncertain,fragile, and imperfect.”28

But in fact, although mothers of human and many other species bond withtheir offspring, in no species can maternal instinct be identified with altruisticand unconditional love. As the anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy showed,mothers throughout nature often choose how many offspring they will rear,and their commitment to their progeny is contingent, dictated first and fore-most by the pressure to survive in a given habitat. Among human beings, asamong other mammals, “a mother’s emotional commitment to her infantcan be contingent on ecologically and historically produced circumstances.”29

The variability of human maternal behavior—from murderous to adoring—isrooted in nature as well as in culture and history.

From the Middle Ages until the beginning of the period under discussion,survival needs drove human parental behavior. Most parents assumed thatchildren would contribute labor and earnings to the household, and thusprove to be an economic asset. High birthrates and large families wereaccepted though not always welcomed, and laws emphasized the duties of

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children to support their parents and the rights of parents to their children’sobedience, labor, and service. Recent research has refuted earlier claims—made by such historians as Philippe Ariès and Badinter herself—that parentsof the early modern era did not love their children, and has presented us withmany appealing examples of parental affection.30

However, parental love was not understood as altruistic or unconditional,but was firmly based on reciprocity. To cite only one influential example: theseventeenth-century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes assumed thatthe mother–child relationship, like all other human ties, was based neither onsentiment nor instinct, but rather on the rational pursuit of self-preservation.“Again, seeing the infant is first in the power of the mother, so as she mayeither nourish it or expose it, if she nourish it, it oweth its life to the mother,”Hobbes wrote, “and is therefore obliged to obey her, rather than any other,and by consequence, the dominion over it is hers. But if she expose it, andanother find and nourish it, the dominion is in him that nourisheth it. For itought to obey him by whom it is preserved, because preservation of life beingthe end, for which one man becomes subject to another, every man is supposedto promise obedience to him, in whose power it is to save, or destroy him.”31

Hobbes allotted no natural power over the child to the father (presumablybecause by himself he could not preserve its life), but derived paternal powerfrom the husband’s “dominion” over the wife—a theory that would becontested by feminists of a later era.

The first sign of change in these attitudes emerged in the late eighteenth andearly nineteenth centuries, when a wealthy middle class which could dispensewith the labor of its children created a new kind of childhood involving educa-tion, age-appropriate play, and individualized nurture. This fortunate groupredefined the care of its unproductive progeny as a work of selfless devotion,rewarded by emotional satisfaction rather than by economic gain. And, as anindustrial economy removed fathers from the home, mothers assumed thetask of child-rearing and human qualities that it required, which weredeclared to be natural to the female sex. Although its children were now notan economic asset but a liability, the middle class continued for a while toproduce large families, probably because of male supremacy in the marital rela-tionship and religious strictures against the discussion or practice of contracep-tion. A notable exception to this general pattern was found in France, wherepeople of all classes began limiting birthrates in the early nineteenth century—a practice that is often attributed to the partible inheritance laws introducedby the Napoleonic Code and the process of secularization that the FrenchRevolution had initiated. In the families of the urban and rural working class,children remained important contributors to the family economy until theturn of the twentieth century. Only then did laws requiring school attendanceand forbidding child labor remove large numbers of working-class childrenfrom the labor market and force their parents to support them for an extendedperiod—a process that was not complete until the 1930s.32

Changing parent–child relationships were probably a major factor in theso-called “demographic transition,” or sharp reduction in birthrates that

F M W E 10


occurred in all Western European countries over a time-span of less thantwo generations, between 1880 and 1930. To give only a few examples: duringthese years birthrates in England declined by 52 percent (relative to the 1880figure); in Germany by 54 percent; in Sweden by 48 percent; in Spainby 28 percent; in France by 25 percent. By 1930, France was no longerexceptional; in fact its birthrate in 1930 exceeded those of Britain andGermany.33 Recent historical research has challenged traditional explanationsthat identified industrialization, urbanization, or an increase in children’ssurvival rate as the causes of this trend. Though it first appeared in cities,it spread rapidly to rural areas; and its onset preceded the striking improve-ments in children’s life expectancy that were brought about in the earlytwentieth century.34

Cultural rather than economic or medical factors seem to have accountedfor what the historian Hugh Cunningham calls “the most important transitionto have occurred in the history of childhood.”35 The late nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries saw the spread of middle-class ideals of sheltered,educated, and carefully nurtured childhood to broad segments of the popu-lation.36 Children were revalued as priceless emotional assets. The longerduration and higher cost of child-rearing, which motivated the preference forsmall families, was due chiefly to parents’ own increased sense of obligation.The French suffragist Hubertine Auclert saw this as a sign of advancing civi-lization. “For the savage, the child is an asset,” she wrote, “but for civilizedpeople, the child is a duty.”37 Other causes of the decline in birthrates wereprobably the loosening of the hold of religious beliefs and a rise in the statusof women in marriage, trends that encouraged a more open discussion andcooperative practice of family planning by married couples.38

And the investment in children was public as well as private, for the statenow regarded children as an important resource and child welfare, previouslyleft to parents and private organizations, as its legitimate concern. This new-found official interest in children is often rightly attributed to anxieties aboutthe effect of falling birthrates on military strength, which in this era dependedon the number of soldiers that could be put into the field. However, the samepublic concern for the survival, health, and well-being of children emerged instates on the periphery of the great-power struggle, such as Holland,Norway, and Sweden, as in the major European powers. For a generationwhose general tendency to anxiety and pessimism had been exacerbatedby the decline in birthrates, the healthy, vigorous, and well-nurtured childpromised vitality, regeneration, progress, and the survival of nations and cul-tures. Campaigns to prevent child-abuse, to improve health services, to providepure milk, and to furnish recreational opportunities now received the supportand encouragement of governments.

Starting around 1890, a legal revolution reversed the traditional allotmentof rights to parents and duties to children, giving children the right to propercare, health, and education, and parents the duty to provide these benefits.Parenthood was reconstructed as a kind of public function exercised forthe benefit and under the scrutiny of the state, which (in the words of

I 11


the British socialist H.G. Wells) had become “the Over-Parent, the Outer-Parent.”39 Of course, the new laws were often designed to supervisethe poor and working-class households which did not meet middle-classmoral and hygienic standards and were regarded as sources of disorder andcriminality.40 But they also expressed the era’s idealism. “Mankind,” statedthe Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which was passed by the Leagueof Nations in 1924, “owes to the Child the best that it has to give.”41

Feminists were not slow to point out that the new “century of thechild” was also the era of the mother. Their unreserved enthusiasm forthe collapse of the boundaries between family and state has often beencriticized by historians for its insensitivity to privacy rights.42 However,nineteenth-century feminists associated the home more with confinementthan with liberty. The definition of the home as a “private” sphere, separatefrom the public realm of the state, had been invented in the eighteenthcentury chiefly in order to exclude women from participation in politics.43

Throughout the nineteenth century, feminists had contested the doctrineof “separate spheres” by insisting that family and state were organica-lly related. The one-sided dominance of men in public life, they claimed,had led to a catastrophic neglect of the values associated with the family—nurture, compassion, concern for the weak and dependent. And only theentry of women into public life could remedy this injustice. “Surely,”claimed an editorial in the British suffrage paper, Votes for Women, “womanby very reason of her oppositeness to man is needed for the right balance ofany enterprise, be it domestic, municipal, national, or imperial.”44 If thestate now aspired to be a parent, were not mothers its most qualifiedagents? If the state sought to limit the power of fathers, were not mothers,who were also victims of patriarchy, its natural allies? And if the state nowcreated services for children, were not mothers best fitted to administer andlead such services?

But mothers could do none of these things while they were deprived ofrights in both state and family, including even the right to make decisionsabout their own children! The production and management of the state’smost important resource depended on the enfranchisement of women.Among the most honored of all citizens of the state, wrote the British Fabiansocialist Mabel Atkinson, must be “the women who are rendering to it thegreatest possible service, that namely, of ushering into the world its futurecitizens . . . Not least among the duties of that citizenship should be whatPlato long ago demanded of his women guardians—that they should bearchildren for the service of the state.”45 The comparison of this contributionto its male equivalent, military service, became a cliché of feminist rhetoric.The mother, said the British activist Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, “risks herlife for the perpetuation and progress of the race. It is because women areresolved to be mothers in the highest, and no longer in the ignoblest sense ofthat term, that they now demand for themselves, and for each other, thefullest opportunity of self development.”46

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However, feminists who extolled motherhood as woman’s distinctivecontribution to society—and they were many during the period from 1890 to1914—had no intention of confining mothers to their conventional rolesof dependent wife, domestic drudge, and sexual slave. Indeed, along withIbsen’s Nora, they aspired to be both mothers and human beings. Their aspi-rations included not only political rights and legal equality, but economic self-sufficiency that would enable them to live free of male control, freedom todevelop their talents, and above all control over their reproductive lives, whichalmost all feminists, even if they did not support birth-control movements,claimed in some fashion. Maternalist ideology and practice involved no returnto traditional roles, but rather utopian visions of a world where motherhoodwould enhance rather than limit women’s freedom. No longer burdened with“the purely physical motherhood of the underdeveloped woman” of the past,wrote the German philosopher Helene Stöcker, the new woman will “be afully-developed personality” who will choose motherhood “in the knowledgethat she is using her powers in the most rewarding, the most individual way.”47

Whatever its value as a political strategy—and this will be explored in thefollowing chapters—the pursuit of citizenship through motherhood was anintensely problematic undertaking. Only in some utopian world—perhapsthe “mother-state” of Auclert’s dreams—was the aspiration to individualautonomy compatible with the duty of bearing children for the state. In thereal world, governments regarded mothers chiefly as the instruments of policiesdesigned to increase numbers or to meet other population goals. The notionof motherhood as a social function raised countless questions, most of whichconcerned the relationship between the social and individual dimensions ofreproduction. If motherhood was indeed a service to the state, some asked,then should the state give financial support to mothers and children? In thatcase, did the state have the right to require parenthood, to regulate the num-ber of children in each family, or to forbid certain people to reproduce?Should reproduction be a direct contract between the state and mothers—anarrangement that would encourage mother-headed families—or should thestate encourage marriage? If the state supported children financially, then towhom did they belong? If the economic independence of mothers was thegoal, then how should it be achieved—through the remuneration of mother-hood as a paid profession, or through the provision of child care and otherservices that would enable mothers to remain on the labor market? And whatshould be the role of fathers—should they be distanced from their partnersand offspring, or more intimately bound into the household?

Still more controversial was the basic assumption that women wished to bemothers and that only the lack of proper support and assistance limited theirwill to bear children. To be sure, the twentieth century was marked by a trendtoward the popularization of motherhood. Marriage rates tended to rise—more rapidly after 1930—and although family size shrank, the number ofcouples having children increased. Thus motherhood could appear, even tofeminists, as the vocation of all or most women. “Women will always be wives

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and mothers, primarily and for choice,” stated a writer for the British suffragenewspaper, The Vote, in 1912. “No matter what profession or occupation awoman may take up, no matter how wide her scope may extend, she willalways be a wife and a mother first—by nature, by choice, and by inclina-tion.”48 In fact, feminists and others often assumed that the reform of thefamily to give mothers equal rights, and of the labor market to enable themto combine career and motherhood, would make childbearing attractive toable and emancipated women.

However, other conditions undermined this belief in motherhood aswomen’s central mission. For as conspicuous a trend as the decline in familysize was the drastically shortened period occupied by pregnancy, lactation,and the care of small children. A task that in the nineteenth century hadconsumed much of a woman’s adult life was now compressed into a muchshorter period: the number of children born to the average British womanhad decreased from six in the mid-nineteenth century to about two a centurylater, and time spent in pregnancy and lactation fell from fifteen to four years.Along with a greatly increased life expectancy, this trend left women manyyears of life after a the conclusion of their period of “active motherhood.”49

And were all women motherly? “Nature,” wrote the editorialist forThe Vote in 1912, “designed us and fitted us to fulfill these duties, and whatNature makes, man or woman cannot counteract or change.”50 Indeed,many trends of our period reinforced this view of maternal duty, for bothsmaller families and increased investment in the individual child increaseddemands on mothers. But with increased pressure came increased anxiety—was maternal “nature,” unenlightened by science, a sufficient guide toproper child-rearing? Or could mothers actually be dangerous to theirchildren? And was the small family, with its narrow environment andintense, jealous relationships, the optimum environment for children’sdevelopment?

A still more basic issue was raised by the reappraisal of the value of childrenin emotional rather than economic terms—a cultural change that drove thedemographic transition. For if the child was there only to make its parentshappy, then childbearing was redefined from a religious obligation or aneconomic necessity to a choice, to be weighed against other pleasures anddesires. Among these were the ambitions of women for economic independ-ence and self-realization. Moreover, the higher value placed on children didnot always encourage childbearing. In fact, it could be a deterrent. In 1906,H.G. Wells ironically remarked that one of the reasons that many familieswere discontent was “the enhanced sense of the child in middle-classlife . . . There has come an intensified respect for children, an immenseincrease in the trouble, attention, and expenditure devoted to them—and avery natural and human accompaniment is the huge fall in the middle-classbirthrate. It is felt that to bear and rear children is the most noble and splendidand responsible thing in life, and an increasing number of people modestlyavoid it.”51

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Thus the prophecy, so confidently advanced by Ellen Key in 1914, thatthe twentieth century would see a “renaissance of motherhood” was not ful-filled. Striking improvements in the health and living conditions of mothersand children did not give motherhood a more important place in women’slives or increase its social prestige. Instead, the significance of motherhoodwas reduced from a central aspect of identity to one of “women’s tworoles.”52 After World War II, a rise in birthrates and a return to domesticityseemed for a while to reverse this trend. But by the mid-1960s, decliningbirthrates and an influx of mothers into the labor force signaled the redefini-tion of motherhood, from a life-long status to a role––a flexible and optionalactivity that could be chosen, combined with other identities, or refused. Andthe task of negotiating this complex life-plan was allotted to the individualwoman. Having ceased to be a destiny, motherhood was redefined as adilemma.

C O

The following chapters will trace the stages of this process during the periodfrom 1890 to 1970. The time period will be divided into four segments: theprewar era (1890–1914); the period of World War I (1914–18); the interwarera (1918–39); and the era of World War II and the postwar era (1945–70).The distribution of space reflects the amount and diversity of feminist activityin each of these eras.

We begin our story around 1890, when the declining birthrates that markedthe demographic transition brought motherhood and childrearing into thecenter of public debates that involved not only feminists but other leaders ofpublic opinion. Chapter 1 will center on the historical analysis of the maternalrole that was created by feminist scholars and activists around the turn of thecentury. Basing their research on new findings in the fields of anthropologyand ancient history, these authors denied that patriarchal power and femalesubordination were universal and God-given patterns, and claimed on thecontrary that in prehistoric times motherhood, regarded as the highest ofhuman achievements, had justified a powerful position for women in familyand state. But they disagreed on the implications of this prehistory for thepresent and the future. Was the ideal form of the family headed by a mother,or by an egalitarian male–female couple? Chapter 2 will trace the efforts offeminists during the period 1890–1914 to raise the legal status of mothers,both married and unmarried. Here again, the issue of family structure wasimportant: should the family consist of mother and child, or of a parentalcouple and their children?

Chapter 3 will examine the controversies that surrounded the economicstatus of mothers during the prewar era. Most feminists believed that themajor source of women’s disadvantage was their economic dependence withinthe marriage relationship, and thus demanded some form of economic inde-pendence for wives and mothers. But how could economic self-sufficiency

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be reconciled with the burdens of pregnancy and child-rearing? Somerecommended that motherhood, itself a useful job, should be financiallysupported by the state; others that mothers should work for a living, sup-ported by state-funded child-care facilities and other services. Both ofthese solutions removed motherhood from the private sphere and reclassifiedit as a “social function.” Chapter 4 looks at the implications of this newdefinition of motherhood for the reproductive rights of women—if child-bearing was a public duty, should mothers have the freedom to chooseor refuse it? Did the state have the right to regulate reproduction, or to pro-hibit it in some cases? Discussions of birth control in the prewar era alsoconcerned the allocation of power within the family: should reproduc-tive decisions be made chiefly by mothers themselves, or by the marriedcouple?

In chapter 5, we will look at the trauma of World War I as it affected feministmovements and their approaches to the private and public implications ofreproduction. The war’s effects were paradoxical. Catastrophic loss of liferaised the value placed on the individual child and thus resulted in importantnew measures designed to safeguard the lives and the health of mothers andchildren. The employment of mothers in traditionally male-identified occu-pation permitted a new independence. But the disruptions of wartime produceda powerful longing for the restoration of the male-headed household, thenuclear family, and the return of mothers to the home.

Chapter 6 deals with the new domestic ideal, centering on companionatemarriage and full-time motherhood, that developed during the interwar era.During these years, feminists went against the trend of public opinion byproposing an alternative version of the maternal role that combined commit-ments to child care and to a job or career—a position that was particularlycontroversial when the depression of the 1930s prompted new attacks onmarried women’s employment. Chapter 7 covers the birth-control movementsof the interwar era, and the new ideal of marital bliss and parent–childintimacy that birth-control activists created. A new emphasis on the privatejoys of marriage and parenthood undermined the maternalist view of repro-duction as a form of public service. Faced with new population policies,feminists debated the role of the state in encouraging, controlling, or pro-hibiting motherhood. Chapter 8 looks at the implications of smaller familysize for the mother–child relationship. Was the intense commitment of mothersto their children’s well-being beneficial or harmful to the individual child?Psychologists, endowed with a new authority, took the lead in criticizing tra-ditional maternal practices, and feminists used these new theories to justifya new approach to parenthood that permitted greater freedom to both moth-ers and children. Because of a decline in the influence of feminism and theoccupation of many European countries by the Axis powers, the period ofWorld War II saw little feminist activity. Chapter 9 will discuss the results ofthe war for the postwar era, when an official ideology that stressed domesticityand full-time motherhood was soon discredited by an influx of mothers into

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the labor market, the popularization of birth control and small families, anda new emphasis on individual happiness that challenged the traditional primacyof motherhood in the lives of women. And the conclusion will point out thatthe maternal dilemma still persists as a problem for women, men, and nationsin the present.

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Bust of Nelly Roussel and her daughter, Mireille Godet, by Roussel’s husband, Henri Godet,1911. The original is in the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand, Paris.

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“A W ” : M

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Ibsen’s heroine, Nora, aspired to emerge from her sheltered “doll’s house”and to become an autonomous human being as well as a wife and mother.But was such a thing possible? Scholars looked to the past for answers to thisquestion—often with dismal results, for history and prehistory seemed toshow that woman’s subordination was universal throughout time and space.“Aeons of wrong, ere history was born,” wrote the British reformerElizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy,

With added ages passed in slight and scorn,Maintained the chains of primal womanhood,And clogged in turn man’s power of greater good.1

Other feminist authors often painted the same depressing picture. Inthe opinion of John Stuart Mill, in “the very earliest twilight of humansociety . . . every woman . . . was found in a state of bondage to some man.2

And motherhood had cemented woman’s domestic servitude, for male con-trol of reproduction was widely assumed to be a universal feature of humansocial organization. The French historian Ernest Legouvé remarked thatwoman had often been deprived of her “honor as creator of life,” the creativerole in reproduction having been ascribed to fathers.3 Evolutionary theory,which purported to discover the origins of human society among present-day“primitive” peoples, yielded still more discouraging results. The human malein the “savage state,” wrote the great Darwin, kept his female “in a far moreabject state of bondage than does the male of any other animal.”4 Indeed,lamented Odette Laguerre in the French feminist paper La Fronde, the mostconvenient argument against gender equality was that “during all of histo-ry and among all peoples the man was the natural chief of the familial group.We must therefore believe that he is made to command and the womanto obey.”5

The greatest obstacle to any change in the economic, political, or familialposition of the mother was the belief that her subordination in the patriarchalfamily was dictated by nature and therefore necessary and inevitable. In the


latter decades of the nineteenth century, however, new interpretationsof human prehistory and history challenged this widely accepted idea.Patriarchy was not a universal aspect of human civilization, declared somescholars, and mothers had not always lived a life of abject dependence—theyhad once been independent, self-supporting, and even powerful. Feministsfound this an exhilarating message, for if the father-headed family was not aGod-given and universal order, but merely a political arrangement that hadrisen in response to historical circumstances, then it might also come to anend. Far from an arcane and cloistered pursuit, the new research was widelydiscussed in and outside academic circles, and often provided the indispensa-ble theoretical basis for political campaigns for the rights of mothers. But likeany body of theoretical knowledge, the history of the family had complex andambiguous implications. If patriarchy was an evanescent family structure,then what should replace it: a family headed by a mother, or an egalitarianmale–female couple? And what would be the consequences of patriarchy’sdemise? This question aroused enough anxiety to set off an anti-feministbacklash. This chapter will first look at the intellectual context in which thisnew knowledge was produced and then at these feminist and anti-feministinterpretations.

The debate on the origins of the human family went back at least tothe seventeenth century, when the exploration of the New World broughtEuropeans into contact with cultures that seemed to them to representan earlier stage in human development, perhaps even a “state of nature.”6

For example, the seventeenth-century British philosopher Thomas Hobbesdoubted that patriarchy was the primordial form of the family, for “in thecondition of mere nature, where there are no matrimonial laws, it cannotbe known who is the father, unless it be declared by the mother, and there-fore the right of dominion over the child . . . is consequently hers.”7 And theEnlightenment philosopher Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel attributed thesubordination of women to male aggression rather than to any law ofnature.8 Some feminists of the early nineteenth century insisted that theprimacy of the mother–child bond, already ordained by nature, must also berecognized by law. In the 1830s, French Utopian Socialist women pro-claimed that “woman is the family, and the child should bear her name!”9

But with the defeat of the Revolutions of 1848, a massive counterrevolutionarose to discredit such dangerous notions. This conservative movement enlistedsome of the era’s most prominent scholars in the defense of patriarchy and othertraditional forms of authority.10 In 1861, the British jurist Sir Henry Mainedeclared on the basis of a massive study of Western legal traditions that thehuman family had always and everywhere been ruled by fathers. The Romanlegal tradition, which Maine considered the origin of all Western law, dividedsociety into the private realm of the household, ruled by the father’s authority(or patria potestas) and the public realm of the state, in which his role as head ofhousehold entitled the father to citizenship. Maine did not consider this form ofthe family immune to historical change—on the contrary, he noted that themarriage relation in his own time had evolved “from status to contract.”11

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It can be counted among the ironies of history that the first importantchallenge to Maine’s theory emerged from the same mid-century conservativemovement. The Swiss legal historian Johann Jakob Bachofen ascribed all pro-gressive movements, feminism presumably included, to the impious disre-spect for tradition that pervaded contemporary society. Born in 1815 into themercantile patriciate of Basel, Bachofen studied law in several Europeancountries. Among his teachers was German legal scholar Friedrich Karl vonSavigny, a romantic theorist who presented law as the expression of the his-tory and spirit of a people. Much of Bachofen’s research was conducted inthe British Museum, home of the Elgin Marbles that showed the mythicalstruggle of the Amazons, as well as in many Italian cities. When the demo-cratic movements of the 1840s in Basel threatened the position of his class,Bachofen withdrew from his public offices into the comfortable life of awealthy independent scholar.12 In search of the cultural roots from which hisown generation had been (in his opinion, disastrously) torn, he returned tothe classical world, and particularly to the archaic period of Greek civilization,which preceded the classical civilization of Athens by a century or more.

When Bachofen began his work in the 1850s the modern fields of arche-ology, anthropology, and ethnology hardly existed. Troy, Mycenae, Knossos,and the cities of Mesopotamia were as yet un-excavated, and a pre-Darwinianconception of human prehistory (which according to the Bible dated backonly to 4004 BC) placed ancient Greek civilization among the earliest ofhuman cultures. By comparison to what later became available, Bachofen’ssource material was extremely limited, and this was one of the reasons thatlater generations of scholars rejected his methods as outdated and unscien-tific. So have today’s feminist scholars, who are particularly critical of his useof mythology as a historical source—an approach that is discredited today.13

But despite the limitations of his chronological and scholarly scope, Bachofenwas in some ways ahead of his time. A product of nineteenth-century roman-ticism, he also anticipated the much later insights of psychoanalysis and thesocial sciences. Certainly he regarded myth as a historical source, but not fora factual history of events—in fact, he regarded the positivist methods thatwere fashionable in his day with the utmost contempt. Rather, he usedmythology as a guide to the deep structures of consciousness which, muchmore than political or economic developments, he considered to be the true“lever of history.” Such meanings, encoded in symbolic language, could notbe grasped by the pedantic labors of philologists and historians but only byintuition: “the shorter path of the imagination, traversed with the force andswiftness of electricity.”14 Bachofen’s interpretive method in fact resembledpresent-day deconstruction; it attended not only to the content of classicaltexts but even more to the gaps, silences, and inconsistencies that hadresulted from an editing process by which (or so he believed) a later genera-tion had expunged the traces of an earlier narrative.

Bachofen’s method would later commend his work to feminist scholarswho found his picture of a historical record riddled with omissions, distor-tions, and silences all too credible. But they were even more fascinated by his

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results, published in 1861 in an erudite and hefty volume which containedmany quotations in the original Greek.15 The earliest forms of human society,he announced confidently, had been based on what he called mother-right(Mutterrecht), a legal system that was based on matrilineal inheritance and afemale-headed family structure. An elaborate evolutionary narrative explainedthis system’s rise and fall. In its earliest stage of development, Bachofen spec-ulated that the human race had lived, not as had previously been thought inpatriarchal families, but in a state of sexual promiscuity under the auspices ofthe goddess of lust, Aphrodite. As the physical fact of paternity was notunderstood, households were headed by women, and children legallybelonged to their mothers alone. Bachofen depicted the mother–child bondpoetically as the first social tie and thus as the basis of all moral sensibility: inthat dark time, he reflected, woman must have been “the repository of all cul-ture, of all benevolence, of all devotion, of all concern for the living and grieffor the dead.”16 Bachofen pictured this first era as one of male dominance, inwhich men sexually exploited women.

But he speculated that under these Hobbesian conditions women foundtheir lives altogether too nasty, brutish, and short, and used their moralascendancy to force men into marital and familial ties, thus initiating a secondperiod in which women dominated politics as well as the family. Thiswas a period of genuine “matriarchy,” in which a matronly elite presided over a settled agricultural culture marked by reverence for the earth, nature,and female deities: “an air of tender humanity,” Bachofen wrote wistfully,“permeates the culture of the matriarchal world.”17

However, in a thinly disguised reference to his own revolutionary period,Bachofen recounted how this peaceful culture was shaken by a revolt of itsmale subjects. Amazon warriors, who took up arms to defend female rule,were soon converted to the new cult of the fertility god Dionysus—a divinerock star who drove his female votaries into wild ecstasies of drunkenness andlust. “How hard it is at all times,” Bachofen primly reflected, “for women toobserve moderation.”18 The forces of patriarchy were victorious and usheredin a higher stage of civilization, which replaced the ancient cult of mother-goddesses with the worship of gods—particularly of Apollo, who symbolizedthe “heavenly light” of rationality. Rational too was the dominance of father-hood, defined as a legal relationship, over the fleshly and material mother–childbond. “The triumph of patriarchy,” Bachofen concluded, “brings with it theliberation of the spirit from the manifestations of nature, a sublimation ofhuman existence over the laws of material life.”19

Bachofen’s text can be and (as we shall see) often was read as a classicallyVictorian narrative of progress that justified both patriarchy and conventionalnotions of male and female nature. “Bachofen’s matriarch,” complainsthe anthropologist Joan Bamberger, is “a far cry from today’s liberatedwoman.”20 But like the classical texts on which his work was based,Bachofen’s own book contained a subtext that subverted its ostensible mes-sage. In fact, Bachofen lent scholarly authority to the highly disruptive ideathat the dominance of man over woman was not a God-given order but a

F M W E 22


political arrangement, contingent like others upon time, place, and culture.And this system of domination could never be entirely secure, for a femaleinsurgency always churned beneath the surface of patriarchal society.Moreover, Bachofen’s account of the fall of the matriarchy was tragic ratherthan triumphal: a conservative dislike for modern times spoke through hispoetic elegy for the pious, peaceful, and rural matriarchal world. AndBachofen was in fact no proper Victorian, for as a romantic he reveled in allthat was grotesque, marvelous, and fantastic, and portrayed women in theunconventional roles of bloodthirsty Amazons, wise rulers, Dionysian revel-ers, even poetic Lesbians. Feminists would later find much inspiration here.

Bachofen’s weighty tome was decisively rejected by the classical scholarsof his era, but before his death in 1882 he lived to see some of his basic ideasconfirmed by the new field of anthropology. In the 1860s, as the historianThomas Trautmann has observed, a “time revolution” that replaced theBiblical chronology with an immensely lengthened estimate of the age ofthe human race undermined the conception of the classical world as theearliest of human societies. Anthropologists now shifted their attention fromthe Greek and Latin classics to existing non-Western societies, and took thosethat they designated as “primitive” as models of the early stages of humanevolution.

While invalidating Bachofen’s temporal perspective, this change buttressedhis central conclusion. Though they observed no examples of true “matriarchy,”anthropologists often encountered female-headed family structures and gen-der roles that differed from those of Europeans. They concluded that femaledominance and matrilineal family structure were characteristic of the lowstages of human development, and patriliny and male supremacy of thehigher stages. Dismissing Bachofen’s improbable account of a war betweenmen and women, the anthropologists struggled to come up with an explana-tion for this transition. The American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morganattributed it to the accumulation of property in the hands of men; and theScottish John Ferguson McLennan to the custom of bride capture, which byremoving women from their own kinship groups and isolating them amidtheir captors’ families made them subject to patriarchal control.21 Whateverits cause, this transition was widely accepted in the 1880s as a stage in a uni-versal evolutionary process which had culminated in the apogee of humanhistory—the emergence of modern Western civilization.

But in fact, the extension of the temporal perspective ultimately under-mined this confident narrative of progress. For who could fathom the depthsof prehistory, in which so many cultures had vanished without a trace? TheGerman-born socialists Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx were enthusiasticreaders of anthropology, particularly of the works of Morgan. In his treatise,The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels started fromMorgan’s theory that the age of primitive matriarchy had been marked bygender equality and communal ownership of property, and that patriarchyhad resulted from men’s forcible assertion of private ownership in land andslaves. Engels insisted that this “world-historical defeat of the female sex”

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had opened a dark age of exploitation and inequality.22 Engels and his disciples,including the German August Bebel and the French Paul Lafargue, usedthis version of prehistory to justify their polemic against what they termed“bourgeois marriage.” Arguing that the first people had lived in promiscuity,the socialist theorists contended that marriage was no God-given order butmerely a self-serving arrangement whereby male property-owners ensuredorderly inheritance by establishing control over women and children. Certainly,the socialists did not advocate a return to mother-right, which they regardedas a primitive stage in social development. Nonetheless, Engels’ theoryinspired several generations of feminists, both socialist and liberal, to affirmthat patriarchy was not a permanent and universal, but on the contrary anevanescent and culture-bound phenomenon which would give way to moreegalitarian forms of marriage and the family.23

As the war of ideas continued, conservative scholars mobilized anthropo-logical and historical evidence to defend traditional values—including marriage,religious sexual morality, and male supremacy—against this socialist menace.A potent weapon in the conservative arsenal was Darwinian theory, which inthe later years of the nineteenth century was applied to the analysis of humanculture. The widely read British sociologist Herbert Spencer denied that themother-headed family could have ensured the survival of its offspring. Heargued that only fathers could adequately protect women and children, andtherefore that patriarchal monogamy was “the natural form of sexual relationfor the human race.”24 Another prominent authority was the Finnish anthro-pologist Edward Westermarck, who in a well-received book on the origins ofthe family published in 1891 (and later in many revised editions) assertedthat the innate tendencies of all male animals, especially of those of thehuman species, would always have dictated some form of marriage: “fromwhat we know of the jealousy or all male quadrupeds, promiscuous inter-course is utterly unlikely to prevail in a state of nature.”25

At the turn of the twentieth century, progressive anthropologists retreatedfrom some of their more controversial claims but not from their feminist andsocialist sympathies. They dismissed the possibility of true matriarchy—thatis, the political dominance of women—but insisted that the women of thepast had often played a powerful and productive role in their households andcommunities. In a book that was widely cited in both Europe and NorthAmerica, the American anthropologist Otis Tufton Mason asserted in 1899that prehistoric women had been the chief creators of human culture. Masonargued against his Darwinist opponents that not only competition, but alsocooperation had furthered the survival of human groups. Maternal tender-ness was the first civilized value. “All the social fabrics of the world are builtaround women,” Mason concluded. “The first stable society was a motherand her helpless infant, and this little group is the grandest phenomenon insociety still.”26

By 1900, ethnological data was so profuse as to undermine any attempt toidentify fixed and universal patterns, whether in sexuality, family life, genderroles, or any other aspect of culture. “All history proves,” declared the British

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novelist Mona Caird, “that there is, perhaps, no set of ideas so fundamentalthat human beings have not somewhere, at some period of the world, livedin direct contradiction to them.”27 The resulting turn to cultural relativismwould shape the intellectual life of the twentieth century. Because manythinkers at the turn of the century were devastated by this erosion of cher-ished beliefs, customs, and ideas, the characterization of this period as an“age of anxiety” has become a cliche of history textbooks. But, like otherdominant paradigms of intellectual history, this characterization of the fin desiècle is centered on male literary, artistic, and academic elites. Feminists didnot share this foreboding—rather, many rejoiced that they lived in an erawhen even such a formidable institution as patriarchy was open to question.As a character in a pageant by the British suffragette Cicely Hamiltondeclared in 1910, “ ’tis good to be alive when morning dawns.”28

“Queen of the Family”: The Mother as Matriarch

Like every rich and complex work, Das Mutterrecht could support a widevariety of interpretations. One of these was offered by Bachofen’s account ofthe age of classical matriarchy, when women dominated both state and fam-ily. This model found minority support among feminists of every country butwas most fully elaborated in France and Britain. However, French and Britishtheorists pursued different political agendas: the French emphasized socialsolidarity and the creation of a motherly state, the British the empowermentof the individual woman through the winning of suffrage and other politicalrights.

In France, many socialist theorists of both genders aspired to return towhat Engels had portrayed as the original family structure—a unit consistingof a mother and her dependent children. Aline Valette, one of the earliestfemale socialist authors, started from a critique of Marxism. Marx hademphasized productive labor, the paid work performed chiefly by men, buthad made no mention of the reproductive labor that was performed bywomen. Had the majority of women whose labor consisted wholly or chieflyof reproduction (housework and child care) no role to play in the class strug-gle? Valette argued on the contrary that both workers and mothers werevictims of the same injustice: just as men had been cheated of the true valueof their productive labor by capitalism, women’s “product,” children, hadbeen appropriated by men. Alongside the class struggle she placed the struggleagainst sex oppression, and insisted that woman “the producer of humanity”must be restored to the “role that she deserves.” 29 Valette called on the stateto recognize and support a family structure in which mother and childrenlived independently of male control.30 An advocate of gender equality inpolitics, education and the workforce, Valette also exalted gender differenceand hoped that women, when fully enfranchised, would infuse the nurturingspirit of motherhood into public life.31

French feminists of the middle and upper classes, who had far more timefor research and discussion than their working-class contemporaries, showed

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an even greater enthusiasm for the history of the family. The central role inpublicizing and developing the new knowledge was undoubtedly played bythe eccentric and single-minded Céline Renooz. Born in 1840 to a wealthyfamily in Liège, Renooz had only the usual conventual education and wasmarried in 1859. The marriage, which produced four children (all of whomdied early of tuberculosis), was miserable, and Renooz eventually set up anindependent though economically precarious household in Paris.

Meanwhile she pursued her intellectual interests, which centered on thefashionable subject of the origin and evolution of life. In 1878, while readingat the Bibliothèque Nationale, she developed the novel theory that the trueevolutionary origin of the human race was in plant life, the head correspon-ding to the root ball, and the body to the trunk and branches of trees (in fact,she showed that a human being resembled a tree turned upside down).32 Likeother theorists of her era, Renooz argued against Darwin that true nature ofhuman beings was not competitive, like that of many animals, but coopera-tive, like that of the plants which (or so she seemed to believe) lived in peaceand harmony.33 We should hardly be surprised that Renooz’ theories wererejected and ridiculed by the male scientific establishment. Her intense, evenparanoid anger at her critics seems to have triggered another theoreticalinsight, this time into the pervasively masculine bias of all existing knowl-edge. Although by no means the first or only critic of what Charlotte PerkinsGilman called “our androcentric world,” Renooz stood out among her con-temporaries as the advocate of an alternative feminist science designed toliberate woman “from all the infamous historical lies and to rehabilitate herglory.”34

In a series of voluminous works, Renooz laid out a history and psychologyof gender relations. She drew on many of the era’s popular theories, particu-larly those of the British biologists Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thompson,who argued from Darwin’s theory of sexual selection that the reproductivebiology of males, human and animal, was “katabolic”—wasteful of energy—whereas that of females exhibited the “anabolic” tendency to conserve andcreate energy. The psychological consequences were impatience and instabil-ity in males, patience, stability, and “integrating intelligence” in females.35

Considering that these traits entitled women to the supreme role in religion,culture, and society, Renooz affirmed Bachofen’s glowing picture of a longprehistory when woman was “queen of the family” and “in charge of every-thing that requires patience, prudence, logic, perseverance.”36 She concludedthat the only advantage possessed by the inferior sex, physical strength, hadenabled men to overcome this peaceable and glorious regime and to establishan order that still bore all the marks of the destructive male psyche.

Following Bachofen, Renooz charged that males had consolidated theirhegemony by rewriting history to obliterate all traces of women’s formergreatness. “In order to justify his power,” she declared, “he (man) claimedthat it had always existed.”37 In 1897 she founded the Neosophical Society(Société Néosophique), which was dedicated to the recovery of women’s his-tory, and created a complete two-semester course in the subject. Some of the

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topics included the “golden age” of matriarchy, women in ancient societiesand in world religions, witchcraft and the persecution of witches, the renais-sance debate on women’s status (querelle des femmes), and women in themodern world. A prospectus for this course, which she taught in her home inthe Rue du Bac, stated that only serious students were welcome and that thetuition was twelve francs per semester.38

The development of this new science and its application to various con-temporary issues became the central aim of a new group founded in 1898,the French Group for Feminist Studies (Groupe Français d’ Études Féministes,or GFEF). Its leader was Jeanne Oddo-Deflou, a self-educated intellectualwho, when her family had refused to allow her a classical education, hadtaught herself Latin and Greek. The group created a scholarly field devotedto the study of women—in fact, what we know now as “women’s studies.”Among its first decisions was to commission a translation into French of thesubstantial introductory chapter of Bachofen’s Das Mutterrecht—certainlyone of the first translations of any portion of the work—which appearedin 1903. They translated only this portion, explained Oddo-Deflou in herpreface, because the entire work would have been too long and expensive tobe accessible to most women. Oddo-Deflou did not affirm all of Bachofen’sideas: she took issue with his assertion that the victory of patriarchy hadbrought the reign of enlightenment, and objected that on the contrary it hadopened a new era of oppression, marked by “atrocities from which the worldhas suffered too long, the most cruel wars, the most violent hatred.”39

The translation, which was sent to women’s organizations in several otherEuropean countries, caused a considerable stir in the French feminist com-munity.40 A series of front-page articles in the most widely read feministnewspaper, La Fronde, edited by the prominent leader Marguerite Durand,indicated that the new science of women’s history was of interest to a widefeminist public.41

Many feminists used historical arguments to support legal reforms thatwould ensure the right of mothers to equal rights with fathers, or even tosupreme authority, or puissance maternelle. The suffrage leader HubertineAuclert defended the mother’s right to give the child her name. She furthersuggested that a humane republic that cared for all its citizens might moreappropriately be called matrie (motherland) than patrie (fatherland).42 Andshe envisaged a nurturing society that was not unlike Bachofen’s organic andpeaceable matriarchy. “When she becomes a citizen,” Auclert argued, “theFrench woman will fulfill her duties even better, because her role as an edu-cator will create unity within the human collective, and her maternal solicitudewill embrace the entire nation.”43 The socialist Nelly Roussel cited theresearch of the GFEF to argue that “at a certain time, woman enjoyed muchmore extensive rights that she has today.”44

The new history inspired high-flown claims. The scholarly evidence accu-mulated over the past forty years, wrote Jeanne Oddo-Deflou, “establishesthat periods where women were predominant really existed, and that theywere very different from our own. . . . According to certain authors, the

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Matriarchate was a veritable golden age. The fortunate lives of a people whopracticed pure and tender virtues were marked by peace, unity, and fertility.In physical health and spiritual serenity, they enjoyed the favor of the benignregime to which they had voluntarily submitted.” When free of the politicaland intellectual domination of the more brutal sex, women would not simplyimitate their oppressors. “Men will never persuade them,” she predicted con-fidently, “that they must throw off their sex in order to end their servitude.They will hate men’s blind egotism too much to imitate it.”45

But not all French feminists shared this nostalgic longing for the lostgolden age—indeed, commented the journalist J. Hellé, the argumentsbetween the “Bachofistes” and the “anti-Bachofistes” often became heated.46

Renooz, whose own overbearing personality refuted her theories aboutinnate female humility and selflessness, arrogantly complained that manyprominent feminists did not greet her messianic message with the properreverence.47 Among them was the brilliant and acerbic Madeleine Pelletier,one of very few who developed a principled critique of the ideology of gen-der difference. To Pelletier, the Bachofen fad was all too typical of Frenchfeminists—a group led by women who were afraid to endanger their privi-leged position as the wives of rich men by advocating radical causes such aswoman suffrage. What safer fantasy for such respectable ladies than thereturn of the matriarchy, when women had sought no higher honor thanmotherhood? Of course, this caustic critique hardly took into account thevery substantial interest in matriarchal theories among socialist women, mostof whom were hardly leisured socialites. Drawing on a wide knowledge ofarcheology and anthropology, Pelletier bitterly denounced the fashionableinfatuation with mother-goddesses—such cults, she pointed out, had flour-ished in societies in which actual women had a very low status. “Future soci-eties may build temples to motherhood,” she concluded, “but only to lockwomen into them.”48

In Britain, as Carol Dyhouse has observed, the history of the familywas also a prominent theme of discussion in such avant-garde circles as theMen’s and Women’s Club, a mixed society of free-thinkers founded in the1880s, and the Fabian Women’s Group. Socialist writers such as Karl Pearsonand Edward and Eleanor Marx Aveling publicized Engels’ picture of a matri-archal prehistory.49 Mona Caird, a member of the Men’s and Women’s Clubwho was widely read in anthropology, took the discussion in a militantly fem-inist direction. She speculated that the mother-headed family had developedwhen “agriculture was women’s industry, while men went out hunting.”Accepting Bachofen’s idealized view of the matriarchy as a “golden age” ofpeace and harmony, she rejoiced that “at the very outset . . . something otherthan mere force was the director of the earliest human relations.”50 Cairdclaimed that the mother–child bond was the only familial bond that had beenand still was recognized by all human cultures and that paternity was a muchmore recent concept. “For many centuries after the father had become headof the family . . . he rested his claims upon the children solely on the fact thatthe mother was his property, not upon the fact of his fatherhood.”51 In an era

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when such forms of patriarchal power were on their way to extinction, Cairddemanded for the mother “a moral right to final authority over her children.”52

But Olive Schreiner, another member of the Men’s and Women’s Club whohad grown up in South Africa, responded to these claims with skepticism, forher observation of male supremacy among African peoples had convinced herof the universality of the patriarchal family.53

Another British milieu in which matriarchal theory flourished was theTheosophy movement, which gained many female devotees during thisera. Theosophy, pioneered in Britain by the colorful Russian immigrantHelena Petrovna Blavatsky and her disciple Annie Besant, promoted the cultsof ancient and modern mother-goddesses as an empowering alternative topatriarchal Christianity. Inspired by an idealized version of Hinduism andBuddhism, theosophists exalted the spiritual over the material aspects ofexperience, and some believed that the bygone era of matriarchy had beenguided by an ethic that rated chastity and spiritual communion above carnalsexuality.54

The suffragist leader Frances Swiney, president of the Cheltenham branchof the National League of Woman Suffrage Societies, became a Theosophistin 1900 and in 1907 founded a society, which she called “The League ofIsis.”55 For Swiney, who was a reader of Bachofen as well as more recentanthropological and ethnographic literature, the Egyptian goddess embodiedthe glories of a blessed age when the conditions surrounding marriage, sexu-ality, and childbirth had been infinitely superior to those of the modern era.Swiney’s best-known treatise, The Bar of Isis, invoked the authority of thegreat goddess, who had allegedly forbidden sexual intercourse during preg-nancy and lactation, to justify an ethical code that placed the welfare ofmothers and children above the sexual needs of men. In ancient Egypt, whichSwiney imagined as a matriarchal culture, the mother had chosen “her mate,the time of childbearing, and regulated under the strictest tabu the numberof her offspring.”56 The victory of patriarchy had brought with it the primacyof the “abnormal and fostered sexuality of the human male,” which hadundermined the health of women, children, and the population as a whole bymaking women’s bodies into the “refuse-heap of male sexual pathology.”57

Swiney, whose works were widely reviewed and translated, refuted thepopular argument that women who gained the rights of citizenship would beincompetent or unwilling mothers. “Poor biology, what illogical hypothesesare put forth in they name!” she exclaimed. Prehistoric mothers, she insisted,had been the best of citizens, whose wise rule had enabled the first people to“progress from the sub-human to the human.”58

Unlike their French contemporaries, who associated the matriarchal agechiefly with maternal nurture and social solidarity, British suffragists empha-sized the political and economic power that ancient women supposedly hadexercised. Another theorist who was widely cited in British suffrage periodi-cals was the American Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In an address entitled “ThePrimal Power,” published in the suffrage journal The Suffragette, Gilmanpainted a vivid picture of the free, skilled, and benevolent woman of the

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prehistoric age. “In those first, rude beginnings of humanity, it was thewoman who invented industry, the woman who began needle-work, basket-work, work in clay, the cradle of all industry as well as the cradle of the child wasin the hands of the woman. . . . In those days, she was a head.” Only “theoverturning of the order of nature” had precipitated “an artificial order inwhich, for the first time, the male ruled over the female.” Woman suffrage,Gilman explained, would restore women’s control over motherhood: “inhonor of her motherhood, she must be mistress of herself . . . By what law,by what right have the mothers of the world been made the servants?” Themothers of the future would “choose the best for the father of our children,”and create “a nobler motherhood than the world has ever seen.”59

Images of the matriarchal age raised the dread specter of female hegemony.A popular British novel of the 1880s, H. Rider Haggard’s She, featured anancient goddess, known by the formidable title of “She-who-must-be-obeyed,” who threatened to come to England and depose that rival matriarch,Queen Victoria—a horror that was averted by the valiant exploits of thenovel’s two British heroes.60 Another, Walter Besant’s The Revolt of Man, por-trayed a matriarchal dystopia of the future in which women subjected men toa reactionary and oppressively religious regime.61 The violent suffrage mili-tancy that broke out in Britain between 1909 and 1914—a terrorist strategythat called for damage to property, though not to people—could not but exac-erbate these fears. In his novel, Ann Veronica, published in 1909, the novelistH.G. Wells attacked the suffrage movement through the hysterical figure ofMiss Miniver, who incited orgies of vandalism with epic tales of warrior queensand Amazons. “The primitive government was the Matriarchate. TheMatriarchate!” she told her stone-throwing, window-smashing cohorts. “TheLords of Creation just ran about and did what they were told.”62

The debate on the origins of patriarchy gave hope to women even inSpain, where no organized feminist movement as yet existed. The CountessEmilia Pardo Bazan was a Spanish novelist, poet, and feminist who had trans-lated the works of John Stuart Mill and August Bebel. Many scholars, shewrote in 1892, now considered that the subordination of women wasnot ordained by God, but was only a “sad episode in the history ofprogress, in which each step forward is taken in blood and tears. . . . In thedark caves of prehistory, the bestial force of the male subjugated his femalecompanion . . . And the old tales and fables of the Amazons, Valkyries, andwarrior women . . . indicate that women did not always submit, and weresometimes ready to repay force with force.” She hoped that this liberatingknowledge would discredit the “somber and fearful pessimism” thatexcluded one half of the human race from the progress made by the otherhalf and denied to women “every kind of dignity and happiness, except as theadjunct of her husband and children.”63

“ Thus love began”: The Mother as Parent

But many feminists found the mythical mother-age unappealing—theirideal was not female supremacy, but gender equality. And they, too, cited

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Bachofen, who (along with many later researchers) had clearly designated theperiod of mother-right as a primitive stage in human development. In mostcountries, the majority of feminists insisted that the evolution of the familyshould not lead backward toward matriarchy, but lead forward toward equality.

The earliest example of a full-fledged debate on this subject occurred inthe Netherlands, where (as we shall see in chapter 2) the rights of unmarriedmothers and their children became a heated topic of discussion in the 1890s.Nellie van Kol, who had spent much of her life in the East Indies and wasthus familiar with the diversity of marriage customs among human cultures,wrote in a review of Bebel’s Woman in Past, Present, and Future that the timeof mother-right had been “a good time.” She held up the autonomy of theprehistoric mother as an inspiration to her modern counterpart: “independ-ence must be the watchword of women, for herself and for her child.”64

But Wilhelmine Drucker, leader of the major Dutch feminist organization,the Free Women’s Association (Vrije Vrouwenveriniging) and editor of theperiodical Evolutie, decisively rejected all such fantasies. A review of FrancesSwiney’s The Awakening of Woman, probably by Drucker herself, poured theicy water of common sense on Swiney’s overheated rhetoric. “The basis ofSwiney’s theory is motherhood,” stated the reviewer, “and the fact thatwomen have always been mothers, and have not gained the slightest advan-tage from this seems to make no difference to her at all.”65 Though shebelieved that all human societies had passed through a matriarchal stage,Drucker idealized neither the era itself nor its female rulers. Deploring themisuse of history by certain “exalted, womanly feminists,” Drucker objectedthat by nature mothers were no better parents than fathers—after all, in manyplaces and times (including, of course, the present) some mothers killed theirchildren. For both sexes, good parenting was an art, not an innate instinct.66

Moreover all systems—whether headed by women or by men—that placedchildren under the absolute power of their parents were for Drucker theexpressions of a “raw egotism” that must be superseded by a more enlight-ened approach to child-rearing. “The law . . . must place the welfare of thechild, and of the new generation, above that of fathers and mothers, andmust break with the old conception of parental rights and replace it with newstandards of parental duty, which oblige parents to provide for the needs oftheir children and grant powers of guardianship only to those who arethought competent to exercise them.”67 Drucker allotted parental responsi-bility equally to both mothers and fathers, who she believed should act as par-ents whether or not they were married to the mothers of their children. “Anindividual without a father,” she asserted, is “not imaginable . . . and wherenature, wild as it is . . . has neglected to identify the parental couple, it is theholiest task of the human race, which . . . has the responsibility and the will tomake laws, to come to its rescue and to fill this gap.”68 Parents performedtheir duty under the vigilant eye of the state: “the state should act asthe watchful guardian of youth and not only . . . of children born outsidewedlock, but of all children.”69

In Belgium, Louis Frank, a lawyer who was also a leader of the nationalfeminist organization, likewise used historical arguments to advocate gender

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equality. “Marital authority is not a natural institution that originated in aprocess of free consent and mature reflection,” he declared, “it is the productof a brutal reaction. It resulted from events that are unknown to our historicaltraditions.”70 Frank hoped that the abolition of this atavistic regime wouldresult in a more egalitarian form of marriage, which might also serve thatimportant policy objective, population growth. In the Anglo-Saxon nations,where women had made greater progress toward emancipation than on theEuropean continent, family life flourished. “It is there,” Frank claimed, “thatmarriages are most numerous, that men marry at the earliest age, and that fam-ilies produce the greatest number of children.”71

A more radical vision of gender equality and cooperation was developedby the influential author and lecturer Ellen Key. Key was born in Sundsholm,Sweden in 1849 and began her career in that country, but by the 1890s hadbecome an international figure who found a far more sympathetic receptionin the English- and German-speaking countries than at home. Key assertedthat most prehistoric women had not been matriarchs, but had been “on apar with domestic animals, well or ill treated as they.”72 But the prehistoricmother had nonetheless been an agent of progress. Like Bachofen, Key defined“the first ‘social order,’ ” as “the mother with her offspring. . . . The childbecame more and more the centre of her thoughts and her deeds.”73

Despite its disadvantages for women, Key believed that the evolution of thepatriarchal family had conferred many benefits, for it had created fatherhood:“a great forward step in his [the father’s] ethical development, in that itawoke in him a desire to protect those dependent on him.”74 And out of thisprotective impulse, the bond between the parental couple had arisen. “Thuslove began.”75 Heterosexual love was the basis of family life. Because existingmarriage customs did not always recognize the importance of love, Keydemanded their replacement by a new system that would give full freedom ofsexual choice to both sexes. Though she defended the right of single mothersto bear and raise children, Key’s ideal was always the two-parent household,with or without legal marriage. In the future, she confidently predicted, “wewill call a child who has received its life from healthy and loving parents andis raised with wisdom and love ‘legitimate,’ even if its parents live in a totallyfree union.”76

Key influenced the ideology and practice of an organization known as theLeague for the Protection of Mothers (Bund für Mutterschutz or BfM)which, although based in Germany, soon acquired an international visibility.The group originated in two separate initiatives: one by a group of prominentfeminist intellectuals that included Helene Stöcker, and the other by a formerschoolteacher who called herself Ruth Bré (her real name was ElizabethBonness). Stöcker, born in 1869 in Elberfeld, was among the first women toreceive the doctoral degree from a German university. She combined a careerin secondary-school teaching with membership in scientific and sexualreform associations, and traced her awareness of the sexual victimizationof women to a childhood reading of Goethe’s Faust: “it is no coincidence,”she wrote, “that the entire tragedy of human existence is revealed to

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Faust at Gretchen’s prison.”77 Dissatisfied with the reluctance of even theforward-looking leaders of the League of Progressive Women’s Organizations(Verband fortschrittlicher Frauenvereine) to confront the problems of repro-duction, motherhood, and sexual morality, Stöcker planned in 1903 to founda new organization dedicated to sexual reform.

These plans were pre-empted by Bré, who founded the League for theProtection of Mothers (BfM) in 1904. Herself of illegitimate birth, Bré calledfor the resettlement of unmarried mothers and their children on the land inmatriarchal communities supported both by their members’ own labor andby the state.78 Only through total emancipation from the patriarchal family,Bré declared, could the ancient “right to motherhood” be guaranteed.79

Though she joined Bré’s group, Stöcker considered its founder a “totallyundisciplined person” who was “a little crazy.”80 Disagreements among theleadership soon led Bré to withdraw from the organization, which Stöckerand her colleagues re-founded in 1905.81

Under Stöcker’s leadership, the group rejected Bré’s matriarchal utopianism.Stöcker explained that the transition from the matriarchal to the patriarchalage had brought mixed results: “it gave men the right and duty to support hislegitimate children, but condemned woman, who until then had enjoyed anequal status, to the most absolute subordination to men’s will.”82 In order toremedy this millennial injustice, the group called for a “new ethic” whichwould promote the equal rights of women, the welfare of mothers, and thedignity of female-headed families. But, as Stöcker stated in the introductoryeditorial to the first issue of the group’s journal, “the holy trinity of father,mother, and child” would always “be the highest ideal.” The League rejectedthe ethic of chastity that still predominated in the women’s movement andunabashedly affirmed heterosexuality, both in and outside of marriage. And par-enthood was the highest fulfillment of sexual love: “People will always lookbeyond physical pleasure and reproduction for a spiritual intimacy, a growingtogetherness, a common responsibility for children.”83

Further support for this “new ethic” came from some leaders of theGerman socialist women’s movement, many of whom were also members ofthe League for the Protection of Mothers. Among the most internationallyinfluential of all German feminist authors was Lily Braun, an aristocrat whoshocked her family by joining the Social Democratic Party in 1895. Braun’sbook, The Woman Question: Its Historical Development and its EconomicAspects, which was first published in 1901, was translated into several languagesand discussed by feminist groups, both middle-class and socialist, in manyWestern countries. Braun’s historical narrative, like that of Key, started withthe matrilineal family of prehistory but described this as a dark and primitiveperiod. The introduction of monogamous marriage and patriliny representedonly “a station on the way to the cross” for the woman, who became prop-erty along with her children.84 This subordinate position was no longeracceptable to the modern woman. “Once the female has turned into a humanbeing, that is, an individual personality, with views, judgments, and life goalsof her own, then she has been spoiled for the average marriage.”85

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Though she shared the aspirations of Stöcker and Key to an egalitarianform of marriage—“the union of two equal, intellectually and morallymature people”—Braun doubted that this ideal could be realized in practice.For, even if such a happy couple found each other, who could guarantee thattheir relationship would last? “Given the heightened possibilities for frictionin modern marriages,” Braun presciently feared that “their long durationwould become more and more exceptional.”86 Hundreds of questions arose,Braun concluded, “foremost, what happens to the children?”87

The German moderate feminist movement, consisting chiefly of the middle-class groups associated in the League of German Women’s Associations(Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, or BDF), regarded this critique of marriagewith suspicion. Not only did it offend the religious sensibilities of manymembers, but it also threatened the security of the great majority of womenwho depended on marriage for their economic survival. An alternative femi-nist history of the family was developed by Marianne Weber, a leader of theBDF whose scholarly volume, Wife and Mother in Legal History, was pub-lished in 1907. Both Marianne Weber and her famous husband, the sociolo-gist Max Weber, repudiated the League for the Protection of Mothers for the“crass hedonism” of its sexual ethic.88 Concerned that nostalgia for a matri-archal “lost paradise” might undermine marriage, Marianne Weber devotedan entire chapter to a refutation of Bachofen and Engels.89 Matrilineal familystructures, she argued, had not been universal at any stage of civilization, andwhere they had existed they had by no means ensured a high status or inde-pendent existence for women—on the contrary, matrilineal families wereusually headed by the woman’s male relatives. And marriage had not enslavedbut, on the contrary, advanced women by guaranteeing their own security asspouses and the legitimacy of their children as their fathers’ heirs. ButMarianne Weber nonetheless shared the assumption that patriarchy did notrepresent a God-given order, but an arrangement that had served its purposeand was now outmoded. She advocated a new, egalitarian form of the familythat guaranteed the equal rights of both partners to control of children andproperty and could be dissolved through divorce by mutual consent.90

In Austria, the debate took a similar course.91 The sexual reformer GreteMeisel-Hess, who before her move to Berlin was among the founders of theAustrian branch of the League for the Protection of Mothers, looked back tothe age of the Amazons, when “women had a kind of psychological inde-pendence of men that seems to us really fabulous,” but added that contem-porary Amazons aspired to cooperate with men rather than to conquerthem.92 Marianne Hainisch, a leading member of the League of AustrianWomen’s Associations (Bund Österreichischer Frauenvereine), acknowledgedthat patriarchy had brought the “most cruel sexual slavery,” but warnedagainst the “siren-song of free love” and advocated “a fair marriage law thatrespects the welfare of a child who has two parents.”93

A complex synthesis of these two positions was created by Rosa Mayreder,also a prominent member of the League of Austrian Women’s Organizationsand of the League for the Protection of Mothers. In Vienna, then a center of

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psychology and psychoanalysis, it was fashionable to see gender relations asthe expression of subconscious and instinctual drives. According to Mayreder,the deep-seated drive of men to dominate females arose from their uncertaintyabout paternity—an anxiety that the claims of modern women to self-determination could only exacerbate. The result, Mayreder feared, could wellbe a renewal in the present of the conflict described by Bachofen: “the longsuppressed struggle between fatherhood and motherhood, that ended withthe defeat of the female sex.”94 The only solution that she could offer wasthe transformation of the patriarchal family into a union of equals, in which thecontrolling patriarch would become a nurturing father. Mayreder concludedthat love would always be “the surest, the most valuable, the most reliableguarantee of paternity.”95

Thus whereas most feminists of this era agreed that the family had beenshaped by history, they disagreed on the course that its evolution should take.While some advocated a return to the female-headed households that theyassociated with the matriarchal stage of development, most looked forwardto further development toward a new, egalitarian form of the two parenthousehold. This can by no means be dismissed as a conservative defense ofexisting marriage customs, but on the contrary was often linked to a thor-oughly modern defense of the right to true love and sexual fulfillment, evenoutside the limits set by church and state. Certainly, the struggle against thestill formidable and pervasive manifestations of patriarchy would be long. Butits utopian goal was reconciliation, not victory: “we will then reach the apexof human potential,” said Stöcker, “where the silly, trivial quarrel of the sexeswill be silent.”96

The Destructive Mother

In the years before World War I, the great increase in the membership andinfluence of feminist organizations provoked a backlash against feminism.Among anti-feminists, Bachofen’s imaginative picture of a matriarchal ageand a war between men and women could arouse terror as well as fascination.The psychological theories of this era reconceptualized the battle betweenthe sexes as a conflict within each individual psyche, and Bachofen’s storyoften provided a metaphorical framework for the exploration of the humansubconscious. In the psyche, as in prehistory, Dionysus contended againstApollo, instinct against reason, id against superego, and indulgent maternallove against stern paternal authority.

Among this era’s best known texts was Otto Weininger’s Sex andCharacter, which was translated into at least ten languages and exercised aninfluence far beyond the author’s native Vienna. Weininger, a young philoso-pher who became famous not only for his misogynist and anti-Semitic classicbut for his suicide (at the age of twenty-three) soon after its publication, wasamong the first theorists to take the battle of the sexes from the historical intothe psychological realm. He warned gloomily that the moral fabric of Westerncivilization was menaced by the emancipation of women and Jews—groups

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which he associated with weakness, decadence, and sexual anarchy. Theseforces of disorder threatened the self-confidence of the Western male, andthus of Western civilization itself. Weininger implicated mothers in this sinis-ter threat, for beneath their professions of selfless devotion lurked a voraciouswill to domination. Quite unlike Bachofen, who had extolled the altruism ofthe mother–child bond, Weininger insisted that mother-love was a selfishurge to preserve “an unbroken connection between the mother and every-thing that has ever been umbilically linked to her,” and thus to destroy herson’s individuality. The mother was the enemy of growth, maturity, andrationality, and the price of her love was eternal childhood.97

This strange polemic may well have been directed at the Cosmic Circle,a group of academics, authors, and artists, some quite well known, who metin Munich between 1897 and 1904 under the leadership of the poets StefanGeorge and Alfred Schuler, the philosopher Ludwig Klages, and the classicalscholar Karl Wolfskehl. This group, who made Bachofen’s Das Mutterrechtinto their cult classic, called for the destruction of patriarchy, and with it therepressive and life-denying civilization of the West. These readers ofBachofen did not endorse feminism, which they rejected along with all theother trappings of modern civilization. In fact, they recommended thatwomen should return to their primordial roles as mothers, lovers, and priest-esses. Rather than to the powerful matriarchy, the Cosmic Circle looked backto the primal period of promiscuity, which they imagined as a golden age ofmen’s liberation—a time when a healthy and polymorphous sexuality hadflourished without the constraints of marriage, normative heterosexuality, orpaternal responsibility.

In carnival balls that were chronicled by the novelist Franziska zuReventlow, who was among its members, the group recreated the Dionysianrevelries and other ancient fertility rites, and guests appeared in drag asAphrodite and the Great Mother. As the symbol of a program that aimed torejuvenate Western civilization through a new paganism that would liberatethe bracing forces of sex, race, and blood, they chose an ancient sun sign, theswastika.98

The popularity of this group seemed to justify the fears expressedby Marianne Weber and others that matriarchal fantasies could serve anti-feminist purposes. But in an era when women’s movements approached theheight of their influence, even this reactionary discourse could be given afeminist “spin.” Otto Gross, a psychiatrist who was Freud’s most gifted pupil,was a prominent member of the Munich group and a reader of Bachofen andEngels. Gross turned his teacher’s doctrine on its head. Freud’s theory of theOedipus complex had shown that beneath its respectable surface the patriar-chal family was the scene of forbidden sexual wishes, tension, and conflict,all of which could have catastrophic effects on the child’s psychologicaldevelopment. But, his pupil charged, Freud had failed to draw the logicalconclusion—that patriarchy, the product of usurpation and violence, must beabolished and replaced by the mother-headed family that was “natural” tothe human race.99

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In 1908, Gross was treated for morphine addiction at a psychiatric institutionin Zürich, the Burghölzli, by the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, who at thattime was still a disciple—though an increasingly skeptical one—of Freud. Thetreatment seems to have changed the physician more than the patient, whosoon resumed his drug habit. Jung, the rebellious son of a Protestant pastor,was convinced by Gross that psychoanalysis, when rightly practiced, could liftthe curse of sexual repression and create a healthier approach to sexual moral-ity. Freud regarded the Oedipus complex—the (male) child’s incestuousattraction to his mother—as the basis of all personality development. Theprohibition of this desire by the boy’s father was the origin of the sexualrepression and guilt that tormented the mature man. But—as Jung askedFreud in a letter of 1912—was this really a universal, and thus inevitable, pat-tern? After all, it could not have existed in the matriarchal period of humancivilization, when no tie had existed between father and son: “in fact, therewas no such thing as a father’s son.”100

Freud, who had already rejected Gross, obviously feared that psychoanaly-sis might be co-opted by a sexual radicalism that he considered a threat tosocial order. He responded by asserting the universality of patriarchy. “Mostauthors regard a primordial state of promiscuity as unlikely. . . . It seemslikely that there have been father’s sons at all times.”101 During the years from1911 to 1913, which saw Jung’s decisive break with Freud, both menconstructed theories that made the conflict between maternal indulgence andpaternal order a central theme of psychology, as it was of prehistory andhistory.

Jung’s Wandlung und Symbole der Libido (published in English asPsychology of the Unconscious), published in segments from 1912 to 1913,provided an alternative to Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex byattributing the male patient’s fantasies about his mother not to an incest wishbut rather to a more general longing to escape the problems of adult life andto return to the blissful security of infancy. This seductive fantasy-world wasdominated by a powerful mother-figure, who appeared in mythology—which Jung regarded as the expression of a “collective subconscious”—as themother-goddess or Great Mother. Like Weininger, Jung regarded maternalpower with considerable fear and aversion. Too great an attachment to the“destructive mother” condemned whoever was too weak to resist it to per-manent infantilism and neurosis: “and there is no doubt,” Jung concluded,“that there is nothing that so completely enfolds us as the mother.”102 Onlyby overcoming this fatal attraction could the individual attain adulthood.

Meanwhile Freud defended the universality of patriarchy in a volume entitledTotem and Taboo, published in 1913. Like Jung, Freud based his conclusionson mythology, but also on the speculations of anthropologists about humanprehistory. He started from Darwin’s theory that human beings, like someother primate species, had originally lived in patriarchal groups where, in theabsence of an incest taboo, a dominant male had monopolized all the femalesand driven away the adolescent males. At some point the latter, crazed bydesire for the females, had combined to kill the father. Freud speculated that

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a short matriarchal interregnum might have followed the father’s death. Buteventually, stricken by remorse, the males had renounced sexual access to thefemales and elevated the murdered father to a god, whom they periodicallyappeased through a ritual feast.

Freud thus traced the origin of civilization to “this memorable criminal actwith which so many things began, social organization, moral restrictions,religion.” And civilization rested on patriarchy, for God had “always been, atbottom, just an exalted father.”103 In each individual, according to Freud,this “memorable crime” was replicated through the Oedipus complex and itsresolution. In fact, the stages of child development that Freud identified cor-responded to Bachofen’s stages of prehistory: a period of maternal nurture,permissiveness, and uninhibited sexuality (infancy) is ended through theimposition of the law of the father, in the form of the incest taboo, whichFreud and others identified as the primal law. The Freudian “id,” or instinc-tual subconscious, was in some sense the repressed matriarchy, and the super-ego the ascendant patriarchy. Only submission to patriarchy could completethe transition from infancy to adulthood.

But these new arguments for patriarchy were not left unchallenged. In 1913,the year in which Totem and Taboo appeared, the British suffragist CatherineGasquoine Hartley told the same story, but used it to demonstrate the evanes-cence rather than the necessity of patriarchy. Hartley, a former teacher andwidely read journalist, was as well qualified for this intellectual task as was Freud,for both were amateur anthropologists and both had read the same body ofliterature.104 Though accepting the same Darwinian picture of the primal familyas Freud, Hartley criticized the assumption, found in the books that both hadread, that the women of the group would have played a wholly passive role in thedevelopment of culture. On the contrary, she proposed that women, who musthave objected to the patriarch’s sexual molestation of their daughters, probablyenforced the first incest taboo. Through their unity and superior numbers, theywere able to oppose his “egoistical” authority and assume the leadership of thegroup. And thus, she continued, religion and morality must have developed inthe context of matriarchal rather than patriarchal rule. However, the matriarchsundermined their own benign regime by encouraging their sons to marrywomen outside the group. This led to the emergence of the nuclear family, inwhich males had gained the authority that they still exercised.

But Hartley pointed out that patriarchy was not a God-given order, buta transitional arrangement. And contemporary developments, especially thatof the women’s movement, paved the way for a new age of equality. “Westand in the first rush of a great movement,” she wrote in 1914. “It is the dayof experiments. We are questioning where we have accepted, and are seekingout new ways in which mankind will go . . . will go because it must.”105

The Intellectual

The matriarchal theories of this era have often been attributed to a meresentimental nostalgia for an era of female rule.106 But on the contrary, their

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impact was energizing. To be sure, the debate on the origins of the familyreached no definitive conclusions—it produced a multiplicity of discourses,both feminist and anti-feminist. However, the significance of the debate didnot lie in the answers, but in the very act of questioning. If the patriarchalfamily was not the permanent creation of God or nature, but the transitoryproduct of historical development, then it was open to revision like any otherpolitical arrangement. And if motherhood had not always entailed subordi-nation—if it had once even qualified women for leadership—then it wouldonce again be possible to combine the role of mother with that of worker,citizen, and autonomous individual. The hope that the maternal dilemmacould be resolved provided a new stimulus to feminist thought and intellectuallife. “It is the intellectual,” proclaimed an editorial in the French paperL’Entente, “who will free the Mother . . . It will be the intellectual who willopen her eyes to her abjection and servitude. It will be the intellectual whowill free her and make her into a citizen.”107

The new theoretical insights provided the basis for a more confident,innovative, and assertive political practice. “Our knowledge of historicaldevelopment,” wrote Helene Stöcker, “helps us to understand what we mustdemand today.”108 But the implications of this historical knowledge werecomplex and controversial. Should the family of the future be based on themother–child bond or on the married couple? Was the goal of legal and eco-nomic reform to make the mother independent, or to bind her more closelyinto the marital relationship? If the mother was to be independent, then whoshould support her family? She herself—in which case, who would care forher children? Or the state, which by assuming the guardianship of its childrenhad become what Wilhelmine Drucker called “a great family, which nowincludes all previously autonomous families and reckons among its membersall who live on its soil?”109 And psychologists—including Freud and Jung—raised further disturbing questions about the maternal role and themother–child relationship. Was mother-love the basis of civilization, as somefeminists contended? Or was it, on the contrary, a primitive and irrationalforce that might actually threaten civilized values? All of these questions will beaddressed in the chapters that follow.

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This German cartoon, entitled “Population Increase” (1913) uses figures of children to illustratethe population growth rates of Germany and England from 1871 to 1914. Berlin: Hofdruckerei,1913 (?): Poster Archive, Hoover Institution.


F P P :

F , M ,

L W E ,

–

T L F

If the fields of history and anthropology offered examples of strong and inde-pendent mothers, then feminists could hope that the maternal dilemma wasnot a permanent aspect of the female condition, but might be someday beresolved. The first step toward raising the status of mothers was to change thelaws that kept them in subjection. At the turn of the twentieth century thelegal status of wives and mothers was debated not only in legislatures, court-rooms, and feminist publications, but also in literary works which presentedtwo pictures of the feminist mother-heroine, the triumphant and the tragic.In the widely read Dutch novel, Hilda van Suylenburg, published in 1898,the eponymous heroine completed her legal studies, opened a feminist lawpractice, married her soul mate, and happily gave birth to their daughter,Jeanne. “Oh, Maarten,” she exclaimed to her husband in the novel’s closingscene, “it is no wonder that women are crazy about these little cherubs . . .maybe the emancipation of woman means the awakening of women to realspiritual motherhood.” To which he dutifully replied, “Emancipation is a bless-ing, because it has helped to make my Hilda what she is.”1 No such happyending was in store for Herminia Grant, the heroine of the notorious novelThe Woman who Did (1895), by the British author Grant Allen. Though shewished to become a mother, Herminia refused to marry her lover, Alan. “Myconscience won’t let me,” she insisted. “I know what marriage is, from what vileslavery it has sprung, on what unseen horrors for my sister women it is rearedand buttressed, by what unholy sacrifices it is sustained . . . I can’t embrace it,I can’t be untrue to my most sacred beliefs.”2 We do not know whetherHilda’s Jeanne will become a warrior maiden; but Herminia’s daughter,appropriately named Dolores, will suffer for her mother’s principled choice.This chapter will look first at the historical context in which the debate onmarriage laws took place and then at the debate’s two major themes: thestatus of the married and of the unmarried mother.


In their defense of women’s rights in the family, feminists used argumentsbased on both gender equality and gender difference. Although some histo-rians stress the discrepancy between these two approaches, in this case therewas no contradiction.3 The mother’s argument for equality rested on the factthat her role was different from, and complementary to, that of the father.Nature ordained that fathers could not produce children alone; culture thatmothers played the predominant role in child-rearing. But a partnershipthat was necessary both to nature and culture was disregarded by the law.“The law of this and most other countries,” wrote the British ElizabethWolstenholme Elmy, who was her nation’s foremost reformer of family law,“contravenes common sense, humanity and justice, by dealing with everychild as the offspring of one parent solely.”4

When the parents were married, the one parent who was recognized bythe law was the father. In 1900, legal systems in every country still con-structed the family as the private realm of the father: he alone controlled itsinternal affairs and acted as its public representative. Because paternity wasuncertain, the law had created an artificial certainty by linking paternity tothe formality of marriage. Within marriage, men were assumed to be thefathers of their wives’ children. Fathers controlled the minor child’s property,education, and employment and had the right to punish any transgression oftheir authority.5 Even if the mother survived him, the father controlled hischildren through an appointed guardian after his death. But when the par-ents were not married, the law made the mother the sole parent. Outside ofmarriage, paternity was denied (for paternity suits, where they were allowed,established a support obligation but no blood relationship). Unlike paternity,the law recognized maternity as a “natural” and certain fact. The “illegiti-mate” child belonged in most respects to its mother, who was alone respon-sible for its care.6 But this responsibility carried few legal rights—in fact, inmost countries, unmarried women were denied rights of legal guardianshipover their children.

By 1890 a new legal doctrine—the rights of the child—provided a newbasis for an assault on the solid citadel of patria potestas. Governments nowregarded children as a national resource, indispensable to economic growthand military strength, and for the first time actively intervened to create med-ical and social services to save infant life and to promote child development.This trend in public policy is often attributed to the panic caused by fallingbirthrates, which threatened military strength during a period of intensenational rivalry—a concern that was very important in the rival military pow-ers, France and Germany.7 But child welfare was also an important issue inthe Netherlands, which still had a high birthrate, and in countries such as theScandinavian states and Switzerland that were on the periphery of theEuropean great-power struggle.8

If children belonged to the state as well as to the family, then parental carebecame a public duty rather than a private right. “The child did not ask to beborn,” wrote the French child-rearing experts Odette Laguerre and Ida Sée,

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echoing the views of countless contemporaries. “The simple fact of havingbrought the child into the world does not give the parents any rights overhim. It creates only obligations. . . . Giving life is nothing. We have to workto make that life a benefit . . . This is why the essential duty of the parents isto assure that children have health and education, the conditions underwhich they can fully develop.”9 Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, lawsthat regulated child labor and required public schooling imposed the firstlegal limits on paternal authority. By the beginning of the twentieth century,the realm of the father was increasingly open to public scrutiny. Dominantconceptions of the parent–child relationship shifted to emphasize the rightsof the child and the duties of the parents, both mother and father.10

New legislation in many European countries made child abuse or neglecta crime that could be punished by the removal of parental rights. In Franceand Britain, laws that enabled the state to remove a child from an abusivehome were passed in 1889, in Germany with the adoption of the Civil LawCode in 1900; in the Netherlands as part of a series of measures known as the“Children’s Laws” (Kinderwetten) in 1901.11 Child-welfare activists such asLaguerre and Sée rejoiced that “the so-called rights of fathers, which so longwere held to be untouchable and sacred” were limited by the law.12

In fact, these laws applied to both parents, and because they were designedchiefly to control poor families, many of which were mother-headed, werefrequently enforced against mothers. Though they sometimes criticized thebiased application of the laws, feminist social reformers nonetheless playeda conspicuous role in advocating and enforcing them. For example, FriedaDuensing, a lawyer who was active in feminist organizations, headed the“Center for Youth Welfare” in Berlin and campaigned for a broader defini-tion of, and stiffer penalties for, child abuse.13 In the Netherlands, the Dutchaffiliate of the National Council of Women held a conference in 1904 toadvocate the strengthening of the laws that protected children.14 The tendencyof child-welfare advocates, many of whom also supported temperance move-ments, to identify alcoholism as the most important cause of child abuseshowed class bias, for this was a vice that was associated with working-classmen. Nonetheless, public support for laws against child abuse was not con-fined to liberal feminists or to the middle class—on the contrary, it was verystrong among socialist women. One of the most prominent of these, theGerman Lily Braun, attributed the fact that “the percentage of proletarianchildren who die in the first year of their lives is incomparably higher thanthat of the children of the affluent” to paternal vices as well as to poverty.“The children suffer silently, and yet the cry for help of hundreds of thousandsof unhappy children reaches the ear of those who bore them,” she exhortedwomen of all classes. “Oh, do not refuse to hear them.”15

While the new doctrines of children’s rights undermined paternal authority,they enhanced the public image of the mother. After all, the mother’s rolehad always involved obligations rather than rights, and the culture of the timeportrayed her as the custodian of the child’s best interests. Nation-states of

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the era now gave mothers and children a new priority. For the first time,mothers became major recipients of public services, including maternityinsurance, prenatal care, and child health services. Social reformers whoworked to moralize working-class behavior regarded the mother—describedby the Belgian lawyer Louis Frank as “sober, economic, orderly, and ceaselesslyat work”—as their natural ally.16 In Spain, where there was as yet no broadsupport for women’s political rights, political and cultural leaders nonethelessstressed the importance of educated, patriotic mothers to the welfare ofthe state.17 In Norway, the movement that won independence from Swedenin 1905 portrayed the new nation as a home headed by “strong fathers andhelpful mothers.”18

The feminists’ campaign to improve the status of mothers in and outsidemarriage had substantial support among social reformers, male and female,across the political spectrum. And the image of motherhood that these feministsconstructed often fit the preoccupations of these reformers: patriotism, familystability, the strong and provident state. At the same time, some of their moreutopian aspirations—which involved the restructuring of the family—clashedwith this sober agenda. As we saw in chapter 1, feminists developed twomajor ideas of the post-patriarchal family. The first envisaged an egalitarianmale–female couple; the second a matriarchal family unit consisting of a motherand her dependent children, in which the father played a peripheral role andfinancial support came from the state. In discussions of family law, thesetwo views overlapped and intersected.

“T L M P S”:T M M

“Despoiled of her noblest prerogatives and deprived of all rights over thefruits of her womb, who legally belong to the father . . . the lowest and mostpitiable of slaves.”19 The words in which the socialist activist Nelly Rousseldescribed the legal status of the French wife and mother could have beenapplied to her counterparts in all Western European societies at the turn ofthe twentieth century. The Napoleonic Code, a model for the legal codes ofFrance, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and some Swisscantons nominally recognized the rights of the mother by providing that“until majority, the child remains under the power of father and mother.”However, the Code immediately stipulated that “during the duration of themarriage, the father exercises parental power.”20 The limited authority thatthe mother was able to exercise was “masculine power deferred.”21 As awidow she exercised guardianship only with his permission, for he couldappoint another guardian in his will whom she was obliged to accept. If thewidow remarried, the Napoleonic Code required that a family council, com-posed of relatives from both sides of the family and a justice of the peace,should determine whether she would remain her children’s guardian.Needless to say, no such restrictions were imposed on a widowed father.A divorced or legally separated woman might be allowed the physical care of

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young children, but the father retained legal custody. “I do not exaggerate,”concluded a speaker at the 1908 National Congress for Women’s Civil Rightsand Suffrage in Paris, “when I say that the mother of a normal family who isnot a widow, nor separated, nor divorced, nor married to an insane or criminalhusband has no legal rights over her children.”22

This legal definition of parental roles was increasingly out of step with therealities of family life. Throughout the nineteenth century urbanization andindustrialization had removed men’s work from the home and enlarged themother’s de facto authority over children and household. Historians of cultureconclude that by the turn of the twentieth century the influence of middle- andupper-class mothers on their children, and especially on adult sons’ choice ofcareers, was on the increase.23 Lower-class mothers were often both the care-takers and the employers of their own children, who worked for them in homeindustries, and thus exercised considerable power.24 Most feminists fully sharedthe culture’s high estimation of the importance of the mother–child bond.

The demand for equality of parental rights dated back at least to the1830s—when a campaign initiated by Caroline Norton gained for Britishmothers who were legally separated from their husbands the right to care for(though not to have legal custody of ) their young children—and was includedin the programs of the earliest feminist organizations.25 The 1890s saw anupsurge of feminist organizing, including the formation of many newnational associations. Among the groups that campaigned for the rights ofmothers were the Swedish Fredrika Bremer Association (Fredrika-Bremer-Förbundet), founded in 1884, the French League for the Rights of Women(Ligue Française du Droit des Femmes), founded in 1892, the Belgian Leaguefor the Rights of Women (Ligue Belge du Droit des Femmes), founded in 1893,the Dutch Free Women’s Association (Vrije Vrouwenvereeniging), founded in1889, the Committee for the Improvement of the Social and Legal Status ofWomen in the Netherlands (Comité tot Verbetering van den Maatsc-happelijken en den Rechtstoestand der Vrouw in Nederland), founded in 1894,the German League of German Women’s Associations (Bund DeutscherFrauenvereine), founded in 1896, and the Swiss League of Swiss Women’sAssociations (Bund Schweizerischer Frauenvereine), founded in 1900.26 Thefirst generation of female lawyers—such as the Belgian Marie Popelin,the French Maria Vérone, the Swiss Emilie Kempin, and the German MarieRaschke27—played an active role in educating the public on the legal issues.The prominence given to the rights of wives and mothers reflected an impor-tant change in the demographic composition of women’s movements, whichin the nineteenth century had represented chiefly the minority of singlecareer women but now sought to recruit the majority who were married. Notonly the predominantly middle-class national women’s organizations, butalso the working-class women who were active in socialist women’s groups,supported the reform of marriage and the family. The issue of mothers’ rightswas high on the agenda of international feminist congresses such as the oneheld in Paris in 1896, which resolved that “the rights of mothers should beequal to those of fathers.”28

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Among the most conspicuous advocates of the rights of mothers was theBritish Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, who in 1886 prevailed upon JamesByrne, a Member of Parliament who was her political ally, to introduce a billon child custody into Parliament. In its original form, Elmy’s draft billprovided for “the equality of right and duty of both parents, of father withmother, of mother with father—in all aspects of child-rearing.”29 ButParliament, though willing to grant mothers the right of guardianship afterthe father’s death, insisted that families must have a head and refused to givemothers equal authority during the father’s lifetime.30 Thus the rights ofmothers continued to be a feminist issue. In a leaflet of 1913, the BritishNational Union of Woman Suffrage Societies recruited wives and mothersto the suffrage cause by pointing out that in California, where women hadthe vote, mothers and fathers now had equal rights over their minor chil-dren. “Many of the hardships under which wives and mothers suffer inGreat Britain may well be removed when our legislators are no longernegligent of or oblivious to the interests of women,” the author of this leafletconcluded.31

In Germany, a committee of experts who were charged with developinga uniform legal code for the newly unified nation submitted a draft forparliamentary approval in 1888. In 1896, as the final passage of this new legalcode drew near, the League of German Women’s Associations (Bund DeutscherFrauenvereine) created a Legal Committee to evaluate its section on familylaw.32 This committee’s report set off the group’s first mass protest campaign.The laws of Germany, proclaimed a leaflet addressed to “German women andGerman men,” still condemned the married woman to “powerlessness overher fortune, powerlessness over her children.”33 Though its language allottedthe responsibility to child-rearing on both father and mother, the GermanCode of Civil Law (like the Napoleonic Code) provided that in case of dis-agreement, the father’s will must prevail. Married women still languished inwhat the Swiss lawyer Emilie Kempin (who by this time had moved to Berlin)called “the rusty fetters of a thousand-year old tradition.”34 Even more thantheir single sisters, emphasized Marie Stritt, a member of the LegalCommission, wives and mothers deserved “full independence and civil equality”for the sake of family, state, and “all the new social obligations . . . that thewoman of the present is called upon to fulfill, and which she can only fulfillas a free human being.”35

In other European countries, some new codes of law likewise theoreti-cally recognized parental equality but in fact upheld paternal authority.In 1912, under pressure from women’s organizations, a new legal codethat created a uniform set of laws for the Swiss confederation substitutedparental for paternal power. But the Swiss code added what the legalexpert Gertrud Woker called a “fossilized rat’s tail”—that in case ofparental disagreement, the will of the father must prevail.36 Women’sgroups in Austria and Italy were not able to gain even these limitedconcessions.

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Though in agreement on their goal—parental equality—feminists disagreedon its ideological rationale. Some argued that the mother’s relationship tothe children was closer and more important than that of the father. “Thismother, who has played the principal role in the birth, this mother who canat no time and under no circumstances doubt her maternity—for paternity isonly an act of faith, based on confidence in a woman’s fidelity—this motherwho has carried this little creature for nine months in her womb . . . who hasformed it of her own flesh and blood . . . who has merged her life with itslife . . . who has fed it with her own milk . . . this mother must passively standby and submit to the acts and the deeds of the father,” exclaimed MariaDeraismes.37 Such reformers asserted that child-rearing was a uniquelyfemale vocation. By allowing the father’s will to override that of the mother,argued the German Olga von Beschwitz among many others, the Civil Codenegated “the experience and the understanding of the mother, which in thisarea is greater than that of the father, whose work often removes him fromthe home and the children.”38 The Swedish Maria Cederschiöld, who headedthe Legal Committee of the Swedish National Council of Women, noted that“in our day, the opinion gains ground that woman is more suitable than manfor the task of raising the new generation. The more the raising and educa-tion of children is entrusted to women, the more unnatural must it appearthat the mother does not have equal power with the father over all decisionsconcerning her children.”39

But others advanced a more gender-neutral definition of parental rightsand duties that emphasized democracy and equality of rights in the home aswell as the state. “Contemporary society, which is evolving toward the formof an egalitarian democracy, must be based on a family constituted accordingto the laws of equality, not the laws of despotism,” declared Louis Frank, aco-founder of the Belgian League for the Rights of Women.40 “The authorityof parents over children is much more of an obligation than a right . . . andthe organization of that power by the law must have as its sole end the inter-est and the happiness of the child,” stated Marie Popelin.41 In a pamphletwritten for the Italian National Council of Women (Consiglio nazionale delledonne italiane), Valeria Benetti-Brunella expressed her organization’s hopethat “the arguments from justice and civility which have brought down polit-ical absolutism will also overcome legal despotism in the family.”42 In Spain,Adolfo Posada, the scholar whose book entitled Feminism (published in1899) lent academic prestige to the cause of women’s rights, suggested that“power in the family should be in law as it is in fact in well-regulated families:a power of both spouses.”43

The feminists and their allies were among the agents of a transformationin family structure which, though still incipient, was of great importance inthe development of Western civilization. In law and in public consciousness,the old model of the family, in which the father alone possessed both rightsand authority, gradually gave way to a new model of a community of separateindividuals whose rights were guaranteed by the state. Of course, this model

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still met with much opposition. Paternal power was sometimes defended bywomen. At the French National Congress on the Rights of Women of 1908,a delegate objected that although mothers actually made most child-rearingdecisions, they relied on the authority of fathers to back them up.44

Some critics also questioned the new and untried notion of equal parentalrights. For what would happen if the parents disagreed? The German legalscholar and activist Marianne Weber, who was the author of an authoritativebook on the legal status of women, proposed that in case of disagreementbetween the parents the mother should make decisions about daughters, andthe fathers about sons.45 Other theorists invoked the authority of the state asguarantor of the rights of the child. In case of irreconcilable parental dis-agreements, they stipulated, both parents should submit to the authority of aguardians’ court.46 This was an unprecedented, and deeply controversial lim-itation of paternal authority. Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy remarked thatconflict between parents was perhaps unavoidable: “nature herself establishedthe Dual Control when she gave to every human child two parents.” She jus-tified the intervention of the courts by arguing that the welfare of the childshould go before the rights of the parents—a provision that was in the spiritof an age when “the dignity and worth of even the youngest child, as anindependent human being, is becoming gradually recognized.”47

These efforts to improve the status of the married mother met withconsiderable resistance from politicians and prominent public figures in thegreat European powers. Most of them did not accept feminist claims thatthe empowerment of mothers would promote family stability and the welfareof children. On the contrary, they regarded feminism as a subversive forcethat undermined the family, and with it population growth, and nationalstrength. For example Jacques Bertillon, influential leader of the French pop-ulationist movement, attributed declining birthrates partly to the erosion ofpaternal power, which he proposed to reinforce by the payment of a subsidyto fathers who produced large families.48

But on the periphery of the European great-power struggle there wasmore room for change. In Portugal, where a revolution temporarily con-ferred influence on women’s organizations, the revisions of family law weresomewhat more substantive. In 1908 Ana de Castro Osorio and her col-leagues founded a new feminist organization, the Republican League ofPortuguese Women (Liga Republicana das Mulheres Portuguesas). In 1910,after the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic, theLeague successfully lobbied for new laws on marriage, divorce, and the pro-tection of children. These laws stipulated that “the marriage relationship isbased on freedom and equality,” and provided that at least one importantfamily matter, the decision to permit the marriage of underage children,should require the authorization of both parents, or a judicial decision in casethey could not agree.49

The greatest progress toward equality of parental rights occurred in theScandinavian countries. All except Finland were constitutional monarchies,where representative bodies were elected by a democratic franchise which in

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Finland as of 1906, in Norway as of 1913, and in Denmark as of 1915 includedwomen.50 The early success of woman suffrage movements gave publicvisibility and support to the reform of marriage and the family. In 1909, aScandinavian Committee for Family Law, which included members from allthe Nordic countries, was formed to set guidelines for a new legal code. Inthe ensuing discussions, women’s organizations played a conspicuous advi-sory role. A model code equalized parental responsibilities in all areas ofchild-rearing except the control of children’s property, which in all countriesexcept Finland was reserved for fathers until the 1950s. Although the newlaws were not passed in any Scandinavian country until the 1920s, they tracedtheir origins to the turn of the twentieth century.51

Organizational programs emphasized that the goal of the woman’s move-ment was not (as was often charged) to discredit, but to redeem marriage.“The unity of marriage must rest on both spouses’ acknowledgment of eachother as equal partners,” stated the program of the League of GermanWomen’s Associations in 1907.52 “The ideal form of marriage,” wrote theimmensely influential Swedish author, Ellen Key, “is a free union between aman and a woman, who wish through their love to benefit each other and thehuman race.”53

But in each country, minorities dissented from this dominant view. Theyinsisted that the two-parent family, though the most common, was by nomeans the only possible family structure. Substantial numbers of feministsfavored a return to what they considered the original and “natural” form ofthe family—the mother–child unit. This tendency was particularly strong inFrance, where important groups such as the French Group for FeministStudies (Groupe français d’études féministes), and highly visible activists suchas the suffrage leader Hubertine Auclert and the socialist Nelly Roussel calledfor the recognition of the mother-right family. Auclert declared that the childshould bear the name of the mother; why, she asked, should the woman“who has formed the child in her body be less entitled to give the child itssocial identity than the father?”54 “To center the family on uncertain paternityrather than certain maternity,” said Roussel, was “to exalt the easy contribu-tion of the father above the painful and sacred work of the child’s true creator.”55

The British author Mona Caird, who claimed that the law based the father’spower over his children only on “the fact that their mother was his property,”likewise insisted that “the mother has a moral right to final authority over herchildren.”56 These arguments for the mother-right family arose in the contextof the heated discussion, of the status of the unmarried mother and her child,and to this controversy we shall now turn.

“C D T”:T S M

However disadvantaged the position of the married mother, she was fortu-nate by comparison to her unmarried sister. “An invisible mark of disgrace,inflicted upon them by an unjust and harsh morality, divides them from the

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others,” remarked the German social reformer Adele Schreiber of unmarriedmothers. “Ashamed and humiliated, they must defy all natural laws and denytheir motherhood.”57 In many literary works, the unmarried motherappeared as a martyr (in the words of the Italian poet Ada Negri, “A saint,not a sinner . . . crowned with diadem and thorns”) to the hypocrisy andinjustice of the patriarchal family and of the Christian code of sexual morality.58

The status of the mother in marriage had been a constant, but fairly subduedtheme in feminist politics; by contrast, that of the unmarried mother becamea pivotal issue around which coalitions rallied and fractured.

Unlike the laws on the status of the mother in marriage, which were basicallysimilar throughout Western Europe, the laws on “illegitimacy” differedwidely according to country, and will therefore be examined separately. Butone feature was common to all: the denial of a familial relationship betweenthe child of unmarried parents and its father. Unless a father chose to recog-nize a child born to him outside of marriage (in Britain, not even then), thechild had no right to use the father’s name, to belong to the father’s family,or to inherit from this family. Even paternity suits, in countries (chiefly thoseof Germanic language) where they were allowed, could not definitely estab-lish biological relationship and its attendant rights. These laws were oftenattributed to the inexorable will of nature, which had made paternity uncer-tain, but in fact expressed the all too human interest of men in protectingthemselves from the embarrassing and costly consequences of their premaritaland extramarital relationships. The laws were also intended to discipline sex-ual behavior—not that of men, of course, but that of single women. If pater-nity suits were made easy, objected a German jurist in 1862, the result wouldbe not only the “undermining of the morality of the female sex,” but thedisruption of respectable households by “shameless wenches and their mis-begotten brats.”59 In an era of high birthrates and high death rates, whenstatistics on infant mortality were not even recorded, the children themselveswere considered expendable.

But this point of view changed conspicuously in the latter two decades ofthe nineteenth century, when children were perceived as an important anddwindling national resource. Concern for the survival of children turned theattention of public health authorities to rates of illegitimacy, which (due tocultural differences that were far too complex to explain here) varied widely:around 1900 about 3 percent of all births in Ireland and the Netherlands,8 percent in Germany, 9 percent in France, 12 percent in Sweden, and14 percent in the German-speaking part of Austria were to unmarried par-ents. These figures (low by comparison to those of the late twentieth century)do not convey the scope of the problem as seen by child-welfare activists,most of whom worked to provide services in large cities. Because of the ten-dency of pregnant girls from the countryside to migrate to cities in search ofsuch services, rates of illegitimate birth were extremely high in many cities: in1911, about 20 percent of all births in Leipzig, 22 percent in Copenhagen,24 percent in Paris, and 30 percent in Munich and Stockholm were to singlemothers.60

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By all statistical measures the situation of these children was catastrophic.Around 1900, when the mortality rate for all infants under one year of agewas high, “illegitimate” infants died at half again the rate of their “legitimate”age mates. In Germany in 1901 19 percent of all “legitimate” but 33 percentof all “illegitimate,” in Denmark 10 percent of all “legitimate” but 20 percentof all “illegitimate,” in Italy 16 percent of all “legitimate” but 23 percent ofall “illegitimate” children (and 37.5 percent of the mostly “illegitimate” childrenplaced in orphanages) died during their first year.61 Those who survived wereconsidered likely to become the vagabonds, criminals, and prostitutes whoformed the “army of evil” so feared by urban reformers and social-purityadvocates.62 The modern state could no longer consider these childrenexpendable, for it needed, in the words of the French author and humanitarianAlexandre Dumas the younger, “all the human beings whom nature indiffer-ently creates and destroys.”63

The need to change the laws that affected unmarried mothers and childrenwas thus widely acknowledged, but the complexity of their situation madesolutions difficult. Assuming that premarital sex was taboo for women, feministnovelists usually portrayed middle-class single mothers as unconventionalfeminist heroines and their working-class counterparts as the victims of richand heartless seducers.64 In fact, most were neither heroines nor victims, forthe moral code of the urban or rural working-class cultures from which theycame often condoned sexual relations between unmarried people as long aspregnancy resulted in marriage. The fact that the expected marriage had nottaken place could be due to many causes, not just to the father’s intentionaldesertion—in many cases, he simply could not afford to found a household.Some unwed mothers lived, or wished to live, in two-parent families, in whichthe father was known. In other cases, the mother headed her own family andhad, or wished to have, no contact with the father.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, the plight of the single mother,once an all but unmentionable topic, became a prominent theme of feministpublications. The Austrian feminist newspaper, Neues Frauenleben (New Lifefor Women) publicized a case of a governess who was turned out on the streetby her employer when she went into labor and then refused admission to thelocal hospital; “and so occurred an unbelievable event, which brings shame toour era—she gave birth without help on the steps of the house, on an eveningwhen the temperature was fifteen degrees.”65

Public awareness of this problem was highest in France. In the 1890s,some Parisian maternity hospitals allowed women to give birth withoutrevealing their names, and the Mothers’ Mutual Societies (MutualitésMaternelles), insurance plans that were organized and funded by women’slabor unions, gave help to married and unmarried mothers alike.66 In theNetherlands, a pamphlet written in 1897 by a young woman who signed her-self only “Amalasuntha” urged her compatriots to follow the French example.She pointed out the injustice of the moral standards that punished mothersfor sexual behavior that was tolerated and condoned in men—even assum-ing that the unmarried mother had made a mistake, she deserved help, not

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rejection.67 In 1897, a group of reformers that included many feministsfounded the Mutual Society for the Protection of Women (OnderlingeVrouwenbescherming), which provided various forms of assistance to destitutemothers. By 1902, this organization had eight branches in various citiesand by 1911 it supported several homes for unmarried mothers and theirchildren.68

The German League for the Protection of Mothers (Bund fürMutterschutz, or BfM), founded in 1904 (its early history was reviewed in theprevious chapter), sponsored shelters and other services for single mothersand children, and by 1908 had branches in ten German cities and a membershipof 3800 (very large for such a radical group). Affiliates of the League werefounded in Austria in 1908, and in Sweden in 1911.69 In Switzerland, agroup that called itself the Association for the Protection of Women andChildren (Verband für Kinder- und Frauenschutz) began in 1911 to providesimilar services.70 The members of these and many other groups realized thatthese charitable measures were by no means sufficient, and launched highlyvisible campaigns for the reform of the laws that condemned single mothersand their children to an outcast existence.

In Britain, a reform campaign began and ended in the 1890s. British lawswere harsh indeed: the child of unmarried parents was “filius nullius,” theson of no one, who belonged legally neither to the mother’s nor to thefather’s family, and was entitled to inherit from neither side. The mother,who acted as guardian, was permitted to sue the father only if her ownresources were inadequate and then for only a very small fixed sum, whichwas not in any way related to his income. Unlike that of any other nation,British law did not permit the legitimation of the child, even by the subsequentmarriage of the parents.71

In 1893, an association that called itself the Legitimation League wasfounded by a group of anarchists and feminists with the ostensible purpose ofadvocating legal reforms, which would permit the legitimation of childrenborn outside of marriage. But in fact the group was much less interested inthe welfare of children than in the defense of nonmarital sexual relationships,or “free love.” “We do not believe that the State has any concern with therelations of the sexes in the first place; and in the second place, we do notconsider—even if it were right for the State to interfere—that it should makethe contract binding for life,” declared the group’s secretary, OswaldDawson.72 The League gained notoriety by supporting Edith Lanchester, aformer teacher who openly set up housekeeping with her lover and was there-upon kidnaped by her father and committed to an insane asylum. Physiciansattributed her obvious insanity to “over-education” and perhaps also to thepernicious influence of the best-selling novel, The Woman Who Did.73

Most British feminists were exceedingly skeptical about this group andabout “free love,” which they identified with promiscuity. As ElaineShowalter points out, Allen’s controversial novel met with more skepticismthan approval within the women’s movement. The prominent suffrage leader

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Millicent Garrett Fawcett condemned the tendency “to link together theclaims of woman to citizenship and social and industrial independence withattacks on marriage and the family.”74 Female letter-writers to the LegitimationLeague’s paper, The Adult, often expressed concern about the consequencesof nonmarital relationships for children. The Adult responded with a sympo-sium entitled “The Question of Children”—a question which a frequentcontributor, R.B. Kerr, admitted that “some advocates of sex freedom” were“inclined to shirk.” As a solution, Kerr proposed that the state must grant asubsidy to every mother of dependent children. “For maternity is a greatpublic service,” he insisted. “Nothing will do but to make maternity a pro-fession; to pay it as liberally as other professions are paid; . . . and to make thewoman who practises it entirely independent of the vagaries of any individualwhatsoever.”75

A female contributor, Mary Reed, called this a hare-brained scheme which,if put into effect, would be more likely to benefit irresponsible fathers thantheir wretched children. She pointed out that under existing conditionsa woman who entered a nonmarital union “has now the choice of remain-ing childless or of accepting the final responsibility of the children she bears.Is this a solution?” she skeptically asked.76 In fact the Legitimation Leaguelasted only a few years and at its dissolution in 1898 had done nothing for thestatus of illegitimate children. Until World War I British feminists gave thisissue less attention than those of other countries. The rate of illegitimacy inBritain was low (about 5 percent of all births), and the absence of militaryconscription, which made the sheer numbers of the rising generation lessimportant than on the European continent, diminished the impact of thenatalist arguments that buttressed continental campaigns on behalf ofthe “illegitimate.”

In the countries whose legal systems were based on the Napoleonic Code,the issue gained much higher public visibility. For unlike the British legalcode, which at least in theory allowed paternity suits, the Napoleonic Codeforbade them; “la recherche de la paternité est interdite,” declared the infa-mous Paragraph 340. During the nineteenth century, legal systems based onthe Code were in force in France and in many nations that had earlier beenincluded in the Napoleonic empire: Belgium, the Netherlands, the westernlands of Germany, several cantons of Switzerland, Spain, Italy, and Portugal.Thus the debate on this provision was international in scope.

In the 1870s, French legislators who were appalled by their country’srecent defeat by Germany claimed that the law forbidding paternity suits con-tributed to the high rates of infant mortality that, combined with lowbirthrates, sapped military strength. All of the French feminist organizationsfounded in the 1890s made the “recherche de la paternité” one of their mostprominent issues. Opposition to Paragraph 340 was a cause that transcendedclass lines. The middle-class French Group for Feminist Studies took thelead in formulating alternative legislation, and socialist leaders such asLéonie Rouzade, Aline Valette, and Nelly Roussel missed no opportunity to

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excoriate the “bourgeois morality” that victimized unmarried mothers andtheir children.77 Between 1883 and 1900, Gustave Rivet, a left-wing radicaldeputy from Grenoble, introduced four proposals to modify the law intothe Chamber of Deputies (the last of which, in revised form, finally becamelaw in 1912). Rivet was supported by male colleagues—among them RenéViviani, Paul Strauss, and Maurice Viollette—who denounced the law as adisgrace to the French nation.78

But how should the law be modified? On this question, French feministsdisagreed among themselves and with their male allies. For the latter, the goalwas the encouragement of marriage, two-parent families, and responsiblemale behavior. They insisted that fathers must take responsibility for theirillegitimate children by giving them, insofar as possible, the same status aschildren born into marriage, including the right to bear the father’s name andto inherit from him. Paternal recognition conferred paternal authority, whichempowered the father to remove the child from the mother’s custody (in 1907,this law was changed to give parental power to whichever parent recognizedthe child first, but if both recognized the child simultaneously, the authoritywas given to the father). The laws proposed by these legislators assumed maleinnocence and female mendacity, and thus set high standards of proof. Theyall required plaintiffs to give evidence of rape, kidnaping, a false promise ofmarriage, or a paternal relationship acknowledged in writing. Mothers wholed a “notoriously immoral life” were not regarded as credible plaintiffs. Andthe proposed laws made an exception for married men, whom they did notrequire to support children conceived in adultery. The purpose of the law,said its proponents, was to encourage new marriages, not to disrupt exist-ing ones by violating the rights of “legitimate” wives and heirs. Children ofincestuous unions were also excluded.79

Most French feminists objected that these provisions were intended toprotect fathers more than mothers and children. A vocal minority set off aheated debate by objecting that the legalization of paternity suits was not thebest solution to the problems of the unmarried mother and her child. At aninternational conference held in Paris in 1900 Maria Pognon, a foundingmember of the National Council of French Women (Conseil national desfemmes françaises), declared that “this research into paternity is a violation ofthe mother’s dignity,” and would “force the man to defend himself by black-ening the reputation of the mother.” A better solution, she proposed, wouldbe to establish a national maternity fund which would directly subsidize themother and child.80 Although Pognon’s proposal was rejected by the major-ity of this conference, some influential feminist leaders agreed with her.Paternity suits, remarked Nelly Roussel, could only be a provisional measure,for their ultimate effect would be to “consolidate patriarchy.” “Only mater-nity is certain,” she insisted “Therefore, the child belongs to the woman, andshould carry the name of the mother and depend only on her.”81 The Frenchgovernment took an important step toward supporting mothers by passing alaw in 1904 that provided some financial assistance to indigent unmarriedmothers.82

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But most French feminists still believed that the delinquent father, thoughunworthy of the name or the powers of a parent, must be induced to supporthis child. In 1903 a group of feminists led by the National Council of FrenchWomen (Conseil national des femmes françaises) and the French Group forFeminist Studies introduced an alternative legislative proposal, which requiredmerely a reasonable presumption (based on the existence of a sexual relation-ship with the mother at the time of conception) rather than a “proof” ofpaternity, gave the child a monetary support payment rather than rights ofinheritance from the father, did not exclude children of adultery and incestand, most importantly, left parental power with the mother.83 Similar to thelaws that were current in some Germanic-language countries of Europe, thislaw would have made the unmarried mother the head of a matrilineal house-hold. The feminists’ political allies in the Chamber of Deputies, however,objected that such a law would not serve their purpose: to encourage mar-riage and responsible fatherhood.84 The law that was passed in 1912 requiredwritten proof of paternity, forbade the recognition of children of adultery orincest, and in addition provided for a heavy penalty for the plaintiff whoseattempt to prove paternity was unsuccessful, and who therefore was auto-matically suspected of perjury.85 This law could benefit only a small minorityof illegitimate children.

In Belgium and the Netherlands, both of which had legal codes based onthe Napoleonic Code, the debate on the paragraph forbidding paternity suitsfollowed a similar path. In 1894–95 the Belgian lawyer Louis Frank, a co-founder of the Belgian League for the Rights of Women, gave a course onwomen and the law at the University of Brussels.86 Frank called the statuteon illegitimacy in the Belgian civil code a “barbarous violation of the rightsof the child” and a “revolting injustice toward the mother” who bore “all theresponsibility for an act committed by both parents.”87 The first programformulated by the Belgian League for the Rights of Women in 1897demanded the right to investigate the paternity of children born to unmarriedwomen. A law of 1908 allowed paternity, including inheritance rights, to bejudicially recognized in cases that involved rape or abduction, and requiredsupport payments in other cases. As in the French law, men who were marriedat the time of the alleged pregnancy were immune to paternity suits: here,too, the rights of the “legitimate” family took precedence over those of childrenborn outside it.88

In the Netherlands, the issue of paternity stimulated a broad debate onsexual morality and family structure. In the journal De Vrouw, a group led byMarie Mensing and Nellie van Kol asserted woman’s right to free love and tomotherhood outside of marriage. This group, which historian SelmaSevenhuijsen associates with an “autonomous” form of feminism, urged thatno mother should be forced to undergo the humiliating procedure of suinga delinquent father for child-support. Instead, she should be supported eitherby a community of women (as in the French Mothers’ Mutual Societies) orby the state. All children, insisted van Kol, were members of the “greatnational family, which is as legitimate as any other.”89

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But Wilhelmina Drucker, the editor of the journal Evolutie and the headof the major Dutch feminist organization, the Free Women’s Association(Vrije VrouwenVereeniging), called this approach romantic and irresponsible.Drucker, born in 1847, was a child of unmarried parents who had beendeserted by her father and knew from personal experience how much economichardship and social discrimination were suffered by the “illegitimate.”90 Sheinsisted that the real issue was the welfare of the child rather than the rightsof the parents. “Parental duty,” she wrote, “defines the position of two indi-viduals, who have merged their identities in a third human being.”91 Druckerbelieved that the child had a right to know its father, partly because an aware-ness of heredity and blood relationship served individual and social interests.She argued that the unmarried mother must be legally required to reveal thefather’s name, and that the father should assume the same responsibility as hewould have toward a child born in wedlock.92

In 1908, a new Dutch law required support payments from men whocould reasonably be presumed to have fathered children, but did not makethe child a member of the father’s family. Guardianship over the child couldbe exercised by the father or the mother (whichever recognized the childfirst) or by the state. If he could prove that other men might reasonably havefathered the child, the putative father could escape support obligations.93

This outcome did not meet the expectations of feminists.Reformers in other countries where laws were derived from the Napoleonic

Code also raised the issue of unmarried paternity. In Italy, Anna Maria Mozzoni,the founder of the League for the Promotion of Women’s Interests (Lega perla promozione degli interessi femminili) in 1881, had by the 1890s become asupporter of the Italian Socialist Party. But the male leadership of the Partywas not sympathetic to her version of feminism. As a member of a committeeformed to propose a law permitting the investigation of paternity, Mozzoniwas disturbed when some of her socialist colleagues declared that such lawswould be only a provisional measure, to be superseded by a “matriarchalutopia” in which motherhood was supported by the state rather than by indi-vidual fathers. “That mothers do, and must do, everything possible for thewelfare of their children is clear,” remarked Mozzoni, “but my opponentshave not shown me why they want to emancipate men from their responsi-bilities.”94 In 1909 a reform proposal was introduced into the Italian parlia-ment with the backing of the Italian National Council of Women, whodenounced the “egotism of the male, which has not yet developed into theconscience of the father,” and urged Italian legislators to restore theirnation’s honor by following the example set by so many other nations.95 Butthe revised measure was not passed. In Portugal, under the influence of theRepublican League of Portuguese Women, the law was modified to permitsome paternity suits in 1909.96

In Switzerland, where each canton had its own legal code, only those thathad belonged to the Napoleonic Empire—chiefly French-speaking cantonsin the West—prohibited paternity suits. When the first unified legal code was

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drafted for the Confederation, feminist organizations launched a majorcampaign for the reform of these statutes. Their success was very limited: thenew legal code of 1912 allowed paternity suits in some cases, but (like theFrench law) exempted married men and those who alleged that the child’smother had led an “immoral life” from support obligations.97

The Germanic legal traditions of Europe gave the unmarried mother andher child a marginally higher status than did the Napoleonic Code and thenational codes derived from it. According to the laws of Germany (as of1900) the unmarried mother was entitled to sue the putative father for thepayment of the expenses of her delivery and for the support of the child untiladulthood, usually until the age of sixteen. Such a claim required only thepresumption, rather than the proof, of paternity: a man who had sexual rela-tions with the woman at the time of conception could be identified as thefather, and the burden was placed on the man to disprove paternity ratherthan on the woman to prove it. Unlike the French law that made member-ship in the father’s family the result of a successful paternity suit, theGermanic laws ruled out any blood relationship to the father, but defined thechild as a full member of the mother’s family. Some French feminists admiredthese laws, but their German colleagues pointed out that they provided fewreal advantages. For the support obligation was low—usually based on themother’s, rather than the father’s standard of living––and easy to evade.According to a principle cumbersomely known as the exceptio pluriumconcumbentium (“exception in the case of many partners”) a man couldevade a support obligation by proving that other men might possibly havefathered the child. In this case, the child was punished for the mother’salleged misbehavior by being deprived of support.98

In Germany as elsewhere, debates on this issue split the feminist movement.In 1896 the League of German Women’s Associations, which representedthe mainstream woman’s movement, gave special mention to these laws intheir protest against the provisions of the new Civil Code. “The unfavorablecircumstances under which these unfortunate children live,” stated Olga vonBeschwitz in her summary of the organization’s position, “results in the earlydeath of a very large number, and the moral corruption of others.” Theorganization demanded that fathers be held accountable: support paymentsshould be set according to the father’s rather than the mother’s standard ofliving, support must continue until the child was twenty-one rather than six-teen years of age, and above all the pernicious exceptio plurium must berepealed.99 The putative father, remarked the legal scholar Marianne Weber,could hardly complain if he were burdened with the support of someoneelse’s child, for he had assumed that risk when he entered the relationshipwith the mother.100 The organization also demanded that the guardianship ofthe child, which was assigned to the maternal grandfather or to a publicagency, should be granted to the mother herself, but that she should be provided with an advisor to support her paternity suit.101 Most moder-ate feminists stopped short of integrating the child into the father’s

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family—a measure that they feared would threaten the rights of “legitimate”wives and children.

But the League for the Protection of Mothers took a more radical position.The group’s founder, Ruth Bré, who was herself of “illegitimate” birth, declaredthat unmarried mothers must be saved from the indignity of paternity suitsby admission to an all-female community, supported by private funding andif necessary by the state. Like the Dutch Wilhelmina Drucker, however,Helene Stöcker refused to consider a revival of the archaic mother-headedfamily. “A woman and a child,” she declared, “can never be a completefamily.”102 But rather than defend the existing form of the two-parent house-hold, legal marriage, Stöcker and her colleagues reconfigured the discussionby discarding the entire concept of “legitimacy.” Parenthood, they asserted,should not require the permission of church and state, and the child’s rightsshould in no way depend on the marital status of the parents. Why, afterall, should some children receive more support from their parents thanothers? The organization’s manifesto demanded that children, whether borninside or outside marriage, should have the same rights in regard to bothfather and mother, and that no member of such a family should be subject tolegal discrimination or social ostracism.103

The leaders of the League combined a strong defense of individual libertywith an expansive vision of the state. Children were the nation’s future, thegroup’s manifestoes declared, and public policy should place the survival andwelfare of the new generation above the protection of an outmoded andcruel religious morality. To the claims of physicians that the children ofunmarried mothers were likely to be genetically inferior, Stöcker and hercolleagues responded that, on the contrary, these children were “a powerfulsource of national strength,” because most were born to lovers who were “inthe bloom of youth and health.”104 The group called upon the Imperial,state, and local governments to aid these families through social insurancebenefits, which should be distributed without regard to marital status.

The League’s defense of free love and unmarried motherhood was bitterlyrejected not only by conservative pastors and politicians, who sometimessummoned the police to prohibit public appearances by the group’sspokespersons, but by the more respectable feminists of the League ofGerman Women’s Organizations. The leader of that organization, HeleneLange, reproached Stöcker and her colleagues with undermining the familyand the very foundations of social order: “The women’s movement, withinwhich women have become conscious of their responsibilities,” she declared,“can only emphasize one point. It will always regard the strengthening of themoral and social position of women, who are more devoted than men to theideal of restricting sexual activity to marriage, as the solution of the ‘sexualquestion.’ ”105

A similar debate was carried on in Austria, where the law corresponded tothat of Germany except that theoretically all the men who came into questionas fathers could be made to support a child. The mainstream League ofAustrian Women’s organizations (Bund Österreichischer Frauenvereine) which

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was headed by Auguste Fickert, demanded that the child of unmarriedparents should have rights of inheritance from the father and that nonmaritalunions should have legal recognition.106 Both philanthropic and practicalwork on behalf of unmarried mothers and their children was carried out bythe Austrian League for the Protection of Mothers, which was founded in1911.107 However, in neither Germany nor Austria did these campaignsresult in significant improvements in the legal status of unmarried mothersand their children during the prewar period.

In Scandinavia, campaigns to change the laws regarding “illegitimacy”met with greater success. Since the latter years of the nineteenth century,Scandinavia had been a center of child-welfare activism. In Sweden FridaSteenhoff, who was the first to announce the “century of the child,” insistedthat every child must have a right to life, health, and education, regardless of themarital status of its parents. Another Swedish woman, Ellen Key, declaredthat every healthy woman, married or unmarried, had the right to become amother, and carried this controversial message to a wide international audiencein Europe and North America.108

Norway, where women won the right to vote in 1913, was the first countryactually to pass a new law on the status of “illegitimate” children and providedan important example for other Western countries. The Norwegian law wasintroduced into the legislature 1909 and finally passed in 1915. It was namedthe Castberg Law for its author, the social-democratic Minister JohanCastberg, who was influenced by his relative, the activist Katti Anker-Møller.109

She herself favored state support for all mothers, regardless of marital status.110

But other Norwegian feminists were reluctant to let the father evade hisresponsibility, insisting that (in the words of a spokesperson at the 1910International Congréss of Women in Toronto) “before the duty of themunicipality goes the duty of the father.”111 And in fact the legislation, whenpassed in 1915, represented a compromise between these two positions thatwas weighted toward paternal responsibility. In cases where paternity couldbe established, the “child of unmarried parents” (deliberately so named toavoid the pejorative term “illegitimate”) was entitled to carry the father’sname and to inherit from him. The father could be identified either by themother herself (who was legally required to give his name to the authorities)or by other evidence that he had sexual relations with the mother at the timeof impregnation (this term was used instead of the usual “conception” tostress the father’s responsibility). If several men came into question, all wereresponsible for paying a portion of the child’s maintenance. The child’s statusdiffered from that of a “legitimate” child in only two important ways: thechild normally lived with the mother, who was responsible for its care,and was entitled to financial support from the mother as well as the father.In the Germanic legal tradition, the Norwegian law integrated the child intothe mother’s family.

In most respects, the Norwegian legislators validated the new ideal of theegalitarian couple who shared responsibility for the children in their care—aresponsibility that was guaranteed by the state, which assumed some aspects

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of legal guardianship.112 An innovative aspect of the Norwegian law was thatthe responsibility for establishing and collecting support payments was givennot to the mother herself, but to the local governmental authorities, whowere empowered to enforce compliance. Recognizing that in some casespaternity would be impossible to establish, the law also provided for a municipalsubsidy for indigent mothers and children.113

In this survey of international debates among feminists on the statusof the unmarried mother and her child, we have seen that two discoursesoverlapped and conflicted, one centered on a matrilineal and mother-headedhousehold, and another on an egalitarian parental couple, which even in theabsence of legal marriage shared responsibility for their children. As both theNorwegian and the French cases suggest, the latter tendency prevailed.Lawgivers placed the major support obligation on fathers, and involved thestate chiefly as the enforcer of that obligation.

Most feminists affirmed this solution; only a few pointed out that itwas often the least realistic of all. Among these was the level-headed legalCamilla Jellinek, who in 1902 had founded a network of counseling centers(Rechtsschutzverband für Frauen) in which female volunteers provided legaladvice to women throughout Germany. Jellinek had assisted with hundredsof paternity suits, and had come to the conclusion that the notion of paternalresponsibility “was fine in theory, but in fact a fantasy.” In the vast majorityof cases, she complained, the father “cannot be found, or if he is found, hasonly enough money to support himself, or he has gotten married andhas only enough to support his family, or even if he is required to pay, hechanges his address so often that collection becomes impossible.”114 Jellinekapproved of the role that the Norwegian law allotted to the state in collectingchild support payments from fathers. But she was exceedingly skeptical aboutthe provisions that established the child’s rights to support and inheritancefrom the father’s family. Most of these fathers, she pointed out, were not richseducers, but as young and poor as the mothers of their children, and wereunlikely to be able to fulfill their obligations. Jellinek concluded that for thesake of the children, who should not suffer for the imprudence of their parents,some form of state support for such families was the only solution. Even if thefather never repaid the state, she concluded, “fully recovered mothers andhealthy children would fully compensate the state for its support.”115

During the prewar period, feminists in several Western European countriesjoined a campaign that had two objectives: to transform marriage into anegalitarian and cooperative relationship, and to raise the status of unmarriedmothers and their children. They hoped that both of these reforms wouldcontribute to the resolution of the maternal dilemma by rescuing mothersfrom the subjection of marriage and the outcast disgrace of “illegitimate”child-bearing and recognizing them as free citizens. But this era’s debatesalso raised problems which would continue to beset policymakers throughoutthe twentieth century. For given that motherhood was now a public concern,how should the state support mothers? Indirectly, by encouraging monogamous

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marriage, vindicating the rights of married women, and enforcing paternalsupport obligations? Or directly, by recognizing and subsidizing mother-headedhouseholds? And which of these arrangements would do the most to pro-mote the freedom and dignity of mothers? These questions would becomeeven more important in the context of the debate on the economic basis ofmotherhood, which will be the subject of the next chapter.

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The kindergarten of the Pestalozzi-Froebel House, an educational institution in Berlin. (Photograph from Clara Richter, Bilder aus demKinderleben des Pestalozzi-Froebel Hauses, Hamburg, 1904.)

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T D M ,

–

L W

Legal equality was an important goal, but it meant little without economicindependence. Mothers who depended on their male partners for their ownsubsistence and that of their children could hardly develop into autonomousindividuals or responsible parents. Though women’s dependence and domes-tic servitude were age-old problems, the new century brought the hope ofnew solutions. In the mid-nineteenth century, when families were large,births were spaced throughout the woman’s reproductive period, and aver-age female life expectancy was less than fifty years, motherhood might well bea lifetime task that excluded any other occupation. But at the turn of thetwentieth century, changes in women’s lives called this traditional patterninto question. Must motherhood consume an entire life? Or was it a limitedcommitment that could coexist with other forms of work, including paidemployment? For some, this latter possibility seemed to point the way to amore fully human existence, in which work might confer not only economicindependence but also self-esteem. “What women who have fully thoughtout the position want, is not this forced alternative between activity in thehuman world, and control of their own economic position on the one hand,and marriage and children on the other, but both,” wrote the British socialistMabel Atkinson in 1914. “Women do not want either love or work, butboth, and the full meaning of the feminist movement will not develop untilthis demand becomes conscious and articulate among the rank and file of themovement.”1 This ideal of emancipation through a combination of family lifeand paid work would engage successive generations of feminists throughoutthe twentieth century and into the twenty-first.

This innovative, indeed radical redefinition of the maternal role isoverlooked by many recent historical accounts. For example, the prominenthistorian Ute Gerhard associates “first-wave” German feminist movementswith a traditional ideal of motherhood that “left the prevailing gendereddivision of labor intact, adapted itself to the patriarchal order, and could on


many occasions be used against women.”2 On the contrary, prominentfigures of this era challenged both the conventional division of labor and thepatriarchal order that lent its moral sanction to domestic slavery. Theyproposed two new ways of combining motherhood with economic inde-pendence. The first, which I shall call “employment,” was to enable womento combine paid work and child-rearing. Isolde, heroine of Helene Böhlau’snovel, Halbtier (A Lower Form of Life), dreamed of “a child and work,” andclaimed that all women needed “work to broaden their minds, and a child tomake their hearts rejoice” in order to realize their full potential.3 Proponentsof maternal employment called upon the state to assume many tasks tradi-tionally performed by mothers, including child-care and some forms ofhousehold work. The second solution—which I will call “endowment”—wasto regard motherhood itself as a kind of profession, to be remunerated by thestate for the substantial but limited period when children were young. Theeponymous heroine of H.G. Wells’s widely read novel Ann Veronica, lookedforward to a period when motherhood itself would be recognized as a valu-able form of work. “Across that world was written in letters of light:‘Endowment of motherhood’. Suppose in some complex yet conceivableway women were endowed, were no longer financially and socially dependenton men.”4

These debates on the economic status of mothers laid the foundation forthe welfare state, which made the well-being of mothers and children a pub-lic concern. Much recent historical research has examined the issues raised bymaternal employment in relation to public policy.5 This chapter, though itdraws heavily on these works, will focus less on the state than on the maternalrole itself. For whatever their utopian hopes, feminists acknowledged thatprogress toward public policies designed to solve the problems of the workingmother was slow indeed. Meanwhile, the individual woman who strove to com-bine love and work faced practical difficulties, painful choices, and emotionalconflicts—in fact, the maternal dilemma.

The combination of paid work and motherhood was old—it had shapedthe experience of women for centuries—but it had not usually been perceivedas a dilemma. Traditionally, mothers had worked in agriculture and in familyworkshops, but such work was not generally distinguished from maternalduties. The removal of some industrial work from the family economy in thenineteenth century brought some mothers into workplaces outside thehome. In the opinion of most nineteenth-century commentators, this wasnot a dilemma to be solved but an evil to be eliminated. These moralists wereconcerned less for the actual welfare of mothers or children than for theintegrity of the family, which according to conventional moral notionsdepended for its stability on the father’s control of his household.6 Thehardships suffered by the working woman, and especially by the workingmother, were attributed not to material factors such as low wages andunhealthy surroundings but to the moral disorder caused by the removalof women from the “natural” authority of father or husband. With femaleindependence were associated a host of other evils. In a famously extreme

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version of the argument, the French socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhonreduced women’s career options to two: housewife or harlot.7

These moral claims served the material interests of employers and workersalike. By deploring married women’s work as an evil, employers resisted pres-sure to improve such workers’ pay and conditions or to provide benefits suchas child-care. Similarly, labor unions, most of which were male-dominated,became zealous opponents of married women’s work and partisans of domes-ticity. Underlying this ideology was the fear that the availability of womenworkers, whose willingness to accept low wages was notorious, would undercutmen’s claim to a “family wage” sufficient to support a wife and children.8 Evennineteenth-century women’s movements, which were disproportionatelysupported by unmarried professional women, regarded paid work as a survivalnecessity for single but not for married women. John Stuart Mill, a hero ofnineteenth-century feminism, approved of the “common arrangement”which defined men as breadwinners and women as full-time domestic workersand mothers—a division of labor which he believed gave the mother “notonly her fair share, but usually the larger share, of the bodily and mental exertionrequired by their joint existence.”9

While ostensibly idealizing mothers, this discourse in fact made their workinvisible. The contrast so often invoked by moralists between the employedmother torn from her children by the factory bell and the serene mistress ofhearth and home was misleading on both sides. Few married women, andthus few mothers were engaged in full-time work. In 1907 in Germany only26 percent of married women were classified as employed, and only 21 per-cent of female industrial workers were married.10 In 1901 only 10 percent ofBritish married women were classified as full-time employees. The figure wasmuch higher in France, where in 1911 48 percent of married women weredescribed as “occupied,” but because of the much lower birthrate of Frenchfamilies many of these were not responsible for dependent children. Butalthough most mothers did not work full time, they did not enjoy a purelydomestic existence that was free of paid labor. For many mothers were forcedto work for pay, and when excluded from factory work they turned to stillmore exploitative and underpaid forms of employment such as domesticindustry, which because it was done in the home was invisible to policymakers.

Also invisible was the arduous labor of child-rearing. Economists differen-tiated between reproduction and production and asserted that only the lattercounted as economically valuable work. But mothers often regarded this dis-tinction as artificial, and ascribed economic as well as emotional value to theiroccupation. British working-class mothers of the early twentieth centurywere proud of their accomplishments, writes Ellen Ross, and “saw themselvesas workers for their husbands and children: productive rather than emotionalfunctions were at the center of female identity.”11

At the turn of the twentieth century the discourse on motherhood, work,and the work of mothers was transformed by a new view of health, andchild welfare as concerns of the state and not simply of the family.Maternity, though still regarded as a moral duty, was also re-conceptualized

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as a productive activity that manufactured the most important commodity of all,citizens. “Men make tools, but women bring new people into the world; menforge weapons, but soldiers grow up in the arms of their mothers,” declaredthe progressive German politician Friedrich Naumann.12 As Kathleen Canningobserves, the focus of the discussion shifted from moral to medical issues—how did various forms of labor affect the female body and its all-importantreproductive functions?13

This change in the climate of opinion presented both new possibilities andnew problems to feminist speakers, who at the turn of the century assumed anever more prominent role in the discussion. Although demands for the exclu-sion of mothers from industrial workplaces continued, maternal employmentwas now presented less as a moral evil to be forbidden than as a medicalproblem to be managed.14 Moreover, another development—the increasednumber of educated women who aspired to professional advancement—brought the issue of maternal work into the center of feminist agendas. In thenineteenth century, most professional women remained unmarried and thiscelibate way of life was regarded, both by the women themselves and by thesurrounding culture, as an acceptable alternative to marriage and mother-hood. But during our period, natalist propagandists attacked both thecelibate professional woman herself and the sinister forces that had estrangedher from her maternal duties. “The human race and our culture need themost numerous possible offspring, and from the most capable and intelligentwomen,” wrote the Dutch sociologist S.R. Steinmetz, “thus feminism, whichopposes this goal, must be condemned.”15

As Karen Offen points out, feminists in all Western countries protestedthat the emancipation of women would not undermine but encourage theircommitment to motherhood.16 Some—especially sexual reformers—agreedthat the celibate life of the professional woman was indeed unsatisfactory.“Only in the relationship between man and woman can the complete personemerge,” argued the German teacher Maria Lichnewska, and motherhoodwas the “strongest instinct” of the healthy woman.17 But Lichnewska andothers insisted that even this deprived existence was preferable to that of thedependent and powerless wife and mother. The “new woman” would consentto become a mother only if she could escape domestic servitude and preserveher economic independence. Some feminists created a new female role model:the tired but happy superwoman who combined career success and familialbliss. But others, including the prominent Ellen Key, objected that this over-valuation of work outside the home implicitly degraded the value of woman’smost important task, motherhood.

Only a glimpse into their life stories can reveal the full complexity of theissues confronted by these women, whose conflicting commitments tomaternity and professional or political engagement plunged them into insol-uble dilemmas. Whereas their rhetoric emphasized patriotism and the needsof the state, their own decisions, whether painful or joyful, resulted fromhighly personal considerations. Some, who had accepted the traditionalchoice between motherhood and career, felt disappointed and deprived: “for

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years I could never look at children without being painfully reminded of mylost hopes,” wrote Alice Salomon, a founder of the profession of social workin Germany.18 Others had the opportunity for marriage and motherhood,and reluctantly refused it. Helene Stöcker turned down a proposal from herlover, Alexander Tille, who was a widower with two young sons. “I hadgrown up in a large family,” she wrote later, “and I had always thought itnatural to include love, marriage, and children among my most importantgoals. But not yet, I pleaded inwardly. For my drive toward intellectual devel-opment, toward the development of my personality, was just as innate andnatural.”19

Some well-known leaders who did marry, such as the Dutch physicianAletta Jacobs and the British author Olive Schreiner, were devastated by theearly deaths of their children. “But, looking back, despite all the sorrow,”wrote Jacobs, “I still count myself lucky that I know how it feels to be amother, that I have held my child in my arms, even though it was for but oneday.”20 Some, such as the German socialist Lily Braun, were happy tobe mothers and struggled to reconcile activism with child-rearing. “Since thebirth of my child,” reflected the heroine of Braun’s autobiographical novel,“the problems of women’s emancipation were no longer just theories. Theycut into my own flesh—and I was not a factory worker, I did not have towork from morning to evening in the factory, far from my darling. I shudderedto think that anything like that should be possible, let alone necessary.”21

French feminists often proudly portrayed themselves as devoted mothers.For example, the autobiography of the French socialist Nelly Roussel pre-sented her as a “loving and loved spouse” and the “happy mother of twocharming children.” But according to her biographer, Elinor Accampo,Roussel’s frequent speaking tours prevented her from playing much of a rolein her children’s upbringing.22 These dilemmas were, of course, not limitedto these elite circles; for example, Kathleen Canning describes how femalefactory workers invoked “the simultaneity of work and family in shapingwomen’s identity” to differentiate their own lives from those of the men oftheir class.23 Feminists asserted the liberty of all mothers to make the choicesthat were most appropriate for them.

“O S H S UH T”: T W M

Advocates of women’s emancipation challenged virtually all conventionalnotions of female difference, whether of physical strength, intellectual acuity,or emotional stability, that were invoked to bar women from various kinds ofwork. During the prewar era, the British Olive Schreiner claimed for women“our share of honoured and socially useful human toil, our full halfof the labour of the Children of Woman” as an indispensable condition ofgender equality.24 But, argued the German socialist Lily Braun, feministsnow faced a “great problem, how to reconcile this equality with thedifferentiation of the sexes.25 Without provision for that major form of gender

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difference, motherhood, the rights of women in the workplace could never besuccessfully won.26

In a climate of opinion that regarded the employment of married womenas an evil to be avoided or a social problem to be solved, some feministsshocked public opinion by presenting such work in a positive light. Thoughthey admitted that employment outside the home often brought morehardship than satisfaction, many also saw it as an essential condition forwomen’s emancipation. They expanded the critique of the laws of marriagediscussed in the previous chapter by pointing out that an egalitarian marriagerelationship was impossible for a woman who was economically dependent.During the nineteenth century, this was considered a problem chiefly for theunmarried women, who without a vocation often had no choice but to marrya man whom she did not love. But some influential authors, such as thesocialists Friedrich Engels and August Bebel, declared that the dependency ofthe married woman was equally degrading. In the socialist state of the future,wrote Bebel, the married woman would “choose an occupation suited to herwishes, inclinations and abilities, and work under the same conditions as aman.” Released from the “sex slavery” of marriage, she would be economicallyand socially independent, “and the children that she will have will not impairher freedom, they will only increase her pleasure in life.”27

This analysis appealed across national boundaries to feminists, chiefly butnot exclusively those of socialist or radical tendency. The British novelistMona Caird, whose novel Daughters of Danaeus portrayed the soul-destroyingeffects of marital dependency on a talented woman, declared bitterly that “tobe maintained, however luxuriously, without earning anything over whichthere is undisputed control, is to be, in so far, in the position of a slave. . . . Itwill be seen that the married woman is exactly in this position, inasmuch asher work in the home does not procure her independence. She is the workingpartner in a firm in whose profits she has no share.”28

Several theorists who gained international recognition offered appealingvisions of a brighter future. Chief among these were the American CharlottePerkins Gilman, the British Olive Schreiner, and the German Lily Braun.Gilman’s central work, Woman and Economics, was translated into at leastsix European languages—German, Dutch, French, Polish, Hungarian, andRussian—and her translators included prominent figures such as AlettaJacobs in the Netherlands and Marie Stritt in Germany. Jacobs, who alsotranslated Schreiner’s book, Woman and Labour, considered that bothauthors had laid a new scientific foundation for the women’s movement.29

Both Gilman and Braun were widely discussed in Hungary, and although noEnglish translation of Lily Braun’s The Woman Question (Die Frauenfrage)seems to have existed, the British Fabian Women’s Group was sufficientlyinterested in her ideas to commission one of their members to report onthem in 1910.30 British feminists also admired Gilman: the Englishwoman’sReview called Gilman’s Women and Economics “more calculated to stimulatethought than any book that has appeared of recent years.”31 In 1904, Gilmanspoke at the International Women’s Congress in Berlin and looked forward

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to a utopian future when married women would be economically independentand “man and woman will stand together as free people.” By all accounts,the speech was received with great enthusiasm by delegates from manynations.32

Braun, Gilman, and Schreiner adopted a historical and anthropologicalperspective on the relationship of motherhood and work. From the prehis-toric period to the early modern era, they claimed, industry had been basedin the household, and married women had engaged in productive as well asreproductive work. Only very recently had the industrial revolution removedproductive work from the home—two-thirds of the world’s work, Schreinerspeculated, had thus been removed from the hands of women.33 This trendhad not elevated married women to an idealized domestic role, but hadrather reduced them to a harmful state of idleness and economic dependencywhich Schreiner called “sex parasitism.” The consequences, she warned, werelikely to be disastrous to a new generation born to mothers who werephysically, morally, and psychologically debilitated. Gilman likewise assertedthat the degrading dependency of the married woman was physically as wellas psychologically harmful to her children: “the more absolutely woman is seg-regated to sex-functions only . . . the more pathological does her motherhoodbecome.”34

Some critics of Schreiner’s book pointed out that the notion of “sex para-sitism” was highly specific to the leisured housewives of the middle class andhardly applied to the overburdened women of the working class, who mightbenefit from being relieved of their employment.35 But Lily Braun and othersresponded that, on the contrary, employment was of great importance to theworking-class woman, for it transformed her from a “conservative elementin society” to a “struggling and thinking human being.” Work alone,Braun insisted, was “the great emancipator, that leads her out of slavery tofreedom.”36

Activists in many countries cited these popular works to support theexpansion of women’s economic opportunities. Singled out as particularlyunfair were the so-called marriage bars or celibacy clauses that forcedwomen in civil service occupations to give up their positions when theymarried. Though they applied to all married women, these laws were justifiedby arguments that maternal employment damaged children and families, andthus targeted chiefly working mothers. As critics pointed out, such sentimentaltributes to motherhood thinly disguised the self-interest of male professionalswho hoped by this means to eliminate women from desirable jobs. InGermany, where such a clause applied to teachers, many delegates to a teach-ers’ conference held in 1904 asserted that the career woman who was fulfilledby her work was a better mother than the woman whose world was limited toher four walls. Hildegard Wegscheider-Ziegler, a teacher who had beenordered out of her classroom when she was pregnant, declared that “childrenneed mothers who are role models. A teacher who has to work hard will bean example to her children and a valuable mother.”37 Several members of theBritish Fabian Women’s Group likewise deplored “the stultifying, paralyzing

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effect on children in the first years of their life of the mother whose activitiesare confined within the two or three-roomed homes of our great towns” andasserted that independent mothers raised healthier and happier children.38 Andthe Swiss Gertrud Woker, a university lecturer who was a disciple of Schreinerand Gilman, stated (along with many other theorists) that celibacy clausesactually discouraged motherhood, for many civil servants could not afford tomarry and have children without the income from their employment.39

But if mothers were to be employed, the workplace must be adapted totheir special needs. By contrast to the vanishing household system so nostal-gically described by Schreiner, Gilman, and Braun, the modern workplacewas structured for men and made no allowance for women’s reproductiverole. In 1890, an international conference called in Berlin by the newGerman emperor, Wilhelm II, recommended several measures designed toprotect women from the vulnerabilities imposed by pregnancy and child-bearing, including a ban on night work and a shortened workday for womenworkers. During the succeeding two decades, these and other restrictionswere legislated in many Western countries. Protective legislation gave rise tomany protracted debates, the details of which were too complex to concernus here, within and among feminist organizations.40 Socialist women generallyjoined their male colleagues in supporting protection for women, while somemiddle-class leaders such as the Dutch Marie Rutgers-Hoitsema andWilhelmine Drucker, opposed it as a limitation on female workers’ libertyand earning power.41 But even those who normally opposed protectionconceded that some form of social support for pregnancy and childbearingwas the indispensable condition for women’s participation in work, whichotherwise they would be forced to leave when they became mothers. Thosewho took this position were faced with a theoretical problem of immensepractical significance: how to redefine maternal obligations so that they couldbe combined with full-time work. Their solution to this problem was a min-imal definition of motherhood that limited full-time maternal care to theperiod required for pregnancy, childbirth, and breast-feeding, and thus calledfor only a short interruption in the mother’s employment. ThroughoutEurope, feminists demanded that this short period be covered by a maternityleave—which many believed should be made compulsory—and supported bygovernment-sponsored maternity insurance or some other form of publicsubsidy.

The need for maternity leave was documented by the research of Frenchphysicians such as the gynecologists Adolphe Pinard and Blanche Edwards-Pilliet and the pediatrician Pierre Budin, who gained an international follow-ing.42 Their findings were confirmed by colleagues in other countries, forexample, by the Germans Christian Klumker and Gustav Tugendreich, theNorwegian Katti Anker Møller, the British Caleb Saleeby, and many others.Childbirth had traditionally been defined as a danger to the woman herself,but these physicians redirected public concern to the health of her child.They pointed out that when economic pressures forced mothers to return towork soon after the birth, the infant was more likely to be artificially fed and

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was thus (given the difficulties of obtaining pure milk and clean water) muchmore likely to die of malnutrition or digestive diseases. Most medical opinionfavored the extension of the maternity leave for at least six, and ideallyeight, weeks after the birth. Pinard, whose practice included prenatal care,also declared on the basis of research conducted throughout the 1890s thatmothers who rested from work for the final three months of pregnancyproduced healthier babies than those who worked to term.43

In many Western European countries governments used these data tojustify laws that made maternity leave compulsory for some categories ofworkers. In 1877 Switzerland became the first European country to mandatea leave for four weeks before and four weeks after the birth; in 1878 Germanymandated a leave of three weeks after the birth (which in 1908 was expandedto a period of six weeks, two weeks before and four weeks after the birth); in1879 Italy required a leave of two weeks (later expanded to four). Austria(1885), Hungary (1884), Belgium (1889), Holland (1889), Norway(1892), and Denmark (1901) also mandated maternity leaves of varyinglength.44 Ironically France, the country most concerned about infant mortal-ity, was among the last countries to decree a compulsory maternity leave,partly because of legislators’ reservations about state interference in thefamily. In 1913, the Strauss Law (Loi Strauss, named for Paul Strauss, a physicianand legislator who was the most conspicuous advocate of protection formothers) mandated a four-week leave following childbirth for all motherswho were employed outside the home.45

By 1900 the view that the survival and health of children were publicconcerns was so widely accepted that only a minority saw such measures as arestriction on the freedom of women to control their own working lives.Indeed, motherhood was often compared to military service, which alsorequired a break from employment. Maguerite Durand, the editor of themain French feminist newspaper La Fronde, declared that the state had asmuch right to protect its children as to draft men into the army.46 But likemilitary service, reformers added, motherhood deserved some form ofcompensation. “As motherhood is a social function,” explained Lily Braun,“the state must take it under its protection and ensure to all needy mothersthe best possible care.”47

A model for such public assistance was provided by the work of privatewomen’s organizations, which starting in the 1890s sponsored insurancefunds to help working women through the economic hardships imposed bypregnancy and childbirth and to enable them to take additional time off inorder to breast-feed their babies. In 1892, a garment makers’ union(Chambres syndicalistes des industries de l’aiguille) in Paris created the firstsuch fund, known as a Maternal Aid Society (Mutualité Maternelle), which inreturn for premiums paid by mothers guaranteed a subsidy for six weeksbefore and six weeks after the birth.48 The concept rapidly spread to Italy,where in 1894 the socialist Paolina Schiff persuaded a Milan women’s organ-ization, the League for the Defense of Women’s Interests (Lega per la tuteladegli interessi feminili) to set up a maternity insurance fund for working

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women. The funds were financed both by premiums from the members and bycontributions from wealthy benefactresses. Soon, many such local funds wereestablished in Italian cities. The brochure that advertized the Turinfund expressed the hope that such efforts would unite “well-to-do mothers andneedy mothers, whom nature has made equal in the joys and suffering of moth-erhood.”49 The founders of organizations such as the Dutch Mutual Society forthe Protection of Women (Onderlinge Vrouwenbescherming) and the GermanLeague for the Protection of Mothers (Bund für Mutterschutz) providedcharitable services that often included support to needy mothers for childbirthand breast-feeding, with a particular emphasis on the unmarried mothers thatmore conventional charitable organizations often sanctimoniously rejected.

But such private efforts could not suffice to solve the huge problem ofmaternal poverty. All these organizations called for public assistance, usuallyin the form of a state sponsored social insurance fund to support the com-pulsory maternity leaves which otherwise, they persuasively argued, merelydeprived mothers of needed income.

Such a demand raised complex questions about the maternal role.Insurance was based on the concept of “risk,” but whom did motherhoodplace “at risk”? All working mothers, all mothers, all potential mothers,families including fathers, the entire society? And to what other “risk” couldmaternity be compared? The closest analogy seemed to be illness. But manyreformers argued that pregnancy and childbearing were not illnesses, buthealthy and normal states that contributed to the general welfare. Theyshould thus be supported by special insurance funds that were funded, not justby women or by mothers, but by all members of the society that depended forits survival on women’s willingness to bear and rear the next generation.

The maternity funds that were founded in the prewar era hardly lived upto these ambitious claims. In 1912, a state-sponsored maternity insurancefund was founded in Italy, largely at the urging of the feminists who had beenso active in founding private maternity funds. But because Italy had nocompulsory public insurance system, no mechanism or precedent existed forextending the responsibility to the entire society. The fund was narrowlywritten for women industrial workers and supported only by the contribu-tions of the women themselves and their employers. The covered workersimmediately protested against this equation of “women” and “mother,” formost women who had been forced to pay into the fund while they wereemployed quit their jobs when they became pregnant and thus were notentitled to claim the benefits! In this predominantly rural economy,moreover, industrial workers constituted a small percentage of the femaleworkforce. Neither the large group of women who worked in agriculture anddomestic service, nor the still larger group who did not work for wages werecovered. And the fact that the fund covered unmarried as well as marriedmothers gave rise to a popular protest that was instigated by the clergy, whocharged that such godless innovations encouraged immoral conduct.50

A similar fund was proposed by legislators in Sweden, another countrythat was still largely rural and lacked a compulsory public insurance system.

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There, as in Italy, the insurance fund was designed to cover only femaleindustrial workers, and to be supported only by their contributions and thoseof their employers. Feminists of both liberal and socialist persuasionsobjected vociferously to the essentialist assumption that all women workersran the “risk” of motherhood, and must therefore carry the main financialburden. In Sweden as in Italy, many women resigned their jobs when theybecame mothers and thus never benefitted from their premiums. A still moreimportant objection to this ill-conceived scheme focused on gender equality,a principle often forgotten amid the high-flown tributes to the glories ofmotherhood. “Fathers are not mentioned in the proposal,” protested afemale trade-unionist in 1912. “Does the child have only a mother and nofather?”51 Some opponents also believed such subsidies, especially to unmar-ried mothers, encouraged fathers to be irresponsible. Others pointed out thatthe limitation of coverage to the small group of industrial workers ignoredthe needs of the majority of mothers who did not belong to this category.Largely because of these objections, the proposal was withdrawn, andSwedish mothers had to wait for the passage of a comprehensive socialinsurance plan in the 1930s to gain coverage for maternity leaves.

Slightly better remedies were available in the few countries that alreadyhad compulsory social insurance systems that covered sickness, accidents, andold age. Unlike Sweden and Italy, Germany was a heavily industrializedcountry where women, though a minority of all industrial workers, werenumerous in a few industries. Germany was the first country to establish astate-mandated compulsory insurance program (funded chiefly by workersand employers), which classified maternity as an “illness” and financed maternityleave for workers in the occupations that were covered. In 1883 new motherswho worked in industry were given coverage for three weeks after childbirth; in 1892 this period was extended to four weeks, and in 1903 tosix weeks.52 In Austria, where a state-sponsored insurance system was establishedin 1888, some working mothers were entitled to insurance coverage forfour weeks.53

These systems insured maternity on the same terms as illness or injury, ata rate—one-half to two-thirds of the normal wage—that was designed todiscourage malingering. Critics pointed out that this low rate of coverageoften forced women to return to work (sometimes illegally) before the end ofthe mandatory rest period. In 1901 Lily Braun, who was influenced byPaolina Schiff and by the Belgian reformer Louis Frank, called for the cre-ation of a separate insurance fund that would cover all mothers for four weeksbefore and eight weeks after birth at the level of the average wage and wouldprovide free medical treatment, drugs, and home care for mother and child.Braun specified that the cost must be borne not by mothers alone but by alltaxpayers, especially the single people and childless couples who she believedled “a much more carefree life than married people with large families.”54

By 1907 both the League of German Women’s Associations (BundDeutscher Frauenvereine) and socialist women’s groups advocated government-subsidized maternity insurance. But they reluctantly decided that the

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improvement of the existing coverage through the reform of the healthinsurance system was a more practical goal than the creation of a separatematernity fund.55 In 1907 the League for the Protection of Mothers, whichhad placed maternity insurance at the center of its program, addressed a peti-tion to the Reichstag that asserted that the employment of mothers was nota social evil to be abolished but “a necessary result of our economic develop-ment.”56 The petition demanded financial support for mothers, married andunmarried, in all occupations (not just the industrial occupations that werecurrently covered) and for the female dependents of male workers for sixweeks before and six weeks after the birth. In addition, the petitiondemanded that the services of a midwife or physician be provided if necessary,and that cash payments known as “nursing premiums” (“Stillprämien”) beissued to mothers who undertook to breast-feed their infants after the periodof coverage expired. These campaigns gained limited results—in 1911 theterm was extended to eight weeks, the granting of medical benefits was madeoptional, and coverage was extended to groups such as agricultural anddomestic workers not previously covered.

In Austria, feminist groups launched a petition in 1907 for the extensionof maternity coverage to twelve weeks. But such efforts brought few resultsuntil the war years.57 At the urging of the League of Swiss Women’sAssociations (Bund schweizerischer Frauenvereine), Switzerland includedsix weeks of maternity coverage and four additional weeks’ allowance formothers who breast-fed in a state-financed health insurance system that wasfounded in 1912, but because membership was voluntary a limited numberof women received benefits.58 In 1911, partly due to the campaign waged byorganizations such as the Women’s Cooperative Guild, Great Britain’s newsocial insurance system allotted a small maternity allowance to a limitedgroup of wage-earning industrial workers. In 1913 the French law that madematernity leave compulsory also afforded a small government-financedallowance to mothers below a certain income.59

As many historians of social policy point out, these and other reforms,however limited, were highly significant as first steps toward the developmentof the welfare state. But they also illustrated the many problems involved in amodel of motherhood that was confined to the biological functions ofpregnancy, childbirth, and lactation. Despite feminists’ protest against thispejorative language, maternity insurance schemes classified motherhoodnegatively as an illness, which like other illnesses must necessitate only a shortbreak in the woman’s employment. They did nothing for mothers who werenot employed, and for the many employed women—such as those engagedin domestic or agricultural work—whose occupations did not fall into thecovered categories. And the problem became even more serious when thesocial as well as the biological aspects of motherhood were considered.Obviously, child-rearing responsibilities did not end after one or two monthsof breast-feeding, when the infant was almost as much at risk as on the day ofits birth. But to campaign for the lengthening of the compulsory maternityleave might play into the hands of those who proposed the exclusion of all

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married women from industrial or civil-service jobs. “A return to the old ideaof ‘motherhood or work,’ ” warned the German Alice Salomon, wouldendanger the livelihood of the many mothers who “depend on their work tosupport themselves and their children.”60

If full-time motherhood was to be limited to such a short period, then thecare of children must obviously be entrusted to someone other than thebiological mother. In wealthy households, this assistance was provided byservants. But some utopian dreamers, most of whom were inspired by Braunand Gilman, looked forward to more fair and egalitarian solutions. Gilman,herself a divorced mother who had made the heart-breaking decision torelinquish custody of her child to her ex-husband, insisted that the prevalenttendency to idealize “mother-love” actually demonstrated a boundlesscontempt for the difficult and complex work of child-rearing. Mothers toooften lacked both the natural talent and the specialized knowledge for thistask, which Gilman recommended be left to experts. Both Gilman and Braunenvisaged a reorganized form of the family in which the collective householdwith central kitchen, laundry facilities, and cleaning services would replacethe scandalously inefficient labor of the housewife. Such households wouldprovide child-care centers equipped with a playground and gymnasium andstaffed by teachers trained in kindergarten methods. “It is no new and daringheresy to suggest that babies need better education than the individualmother now gives them,” Gilman explained. “It is simply a little furtherextension of the steadily expanding system of human education which iscoming upon us, as civilization grows. And it no more infringes on themother’s rights, the mother’s duties, the mother’s pleasures, than doesthe college or the school.”61

In the Netherlands the ideas of Braun and Gilman gained high prestigethrough the support of such leaders as Aletta Jacobs and WilhelminaDrucker, head of the Free Women’s Association (Vrije Vrouwenvereeniging).This organization’s newspaper, Evolutie, championed the collective house-hold and claimed that children would be much better off with qualifiedkindergarten teachers than with their unqualified mothers, to many of whommotherhood was a “game, and the baby a toy.”62 The cause was also taken upin Britain, where both the socialist Fabian Society and the Society for thePromotion of Cooperative Housekeeping, led by Alice Melvyn, were instru-mental in the provision of facilities for “cooperative living” in several newcommunities (or “garden cities”). In Germany, a dwelling along the linesproposed by Lily Braun was built in the new suburb of Hellerau, outsideDresden.63 And in Berlin, reported a correspondent for the Austrian feministjournal Der Bund in 1909, several cooperatives were in the process of beingfounded by groups who “aimed to create a new culture of the home toreplace the individual household . . . run by dilettantish housewives anduntrained servants.”64

The supporters of these alternative communities joined in a polemicagainst traditional maternal practices, which they roundly condemnedas ignorant, irresponsible, and often positively lethal. “It is impossible,”

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complained the British Mona Caird, “to go into the nursery of an averageChristian household without being struck by the extraordinary ignorancethere displayed of the simplest laws of hygiene, physical, mental, andmoral. . . . The whole race is brought up in a manner that offends not onlyscientific acumen, but the simplest common sense.”65 Child-rearing, saidthe British socialist Ada Nield Chew, should be regarded as a vocation likeany other: “women who are specially talented for taking care of babies shouldbe employed by the state to mother the babies of the womenwho . . . though passionately loving and beloved mothers. . . . are quiteunfit . . . to tend young children. Why should we always make such a virtueof putting square pegs in round holes?”66 To critics who charged her withplotting to destroy family life, Braun responded petulantly that conventionalchild-rearing methods too often produced “spoiled little tyrants,” who mightwell learn from the experience of communal living “that their little egos arenot the center of the universe!” Their mothers, satisfied by their work, wouldexercise a far more positive influence than the full-time housewives whomBraun described with biting contempt as “prematurely aged, stupidwomen . . . who are able neither to be a parent and educator for theirchildren nor a companion for their husbands.”67

Among the most influential of the era’s experiments with collectivechild-rearing was that of the Italian physician and social reformer MariaMontessori. Montessori, born in 1870, was one of the first Italian women toqualify as a physician. Her life-long concern for children probably arosepartly from her own difficult experience of single motherhood. In 1898 shebore a son by a colleague, Giuseppe Montesano, who later acknowledgedpaternity. Montessori named her child for herself—Mario Montessori—andmaintained a relationship with him, but did not acknowledge him publiclyuntil he was an adult and her own reputation was sufficiently secure towithstand even the stigma of single motherhood.68 Montessori gained promi-nence both as a specialist in the field of child development and as a feministwho represented her country at the International Women’s Conference inBerlin in 1896.

In 1907 Montessori was appointed the director of a day-care facility in anew apartment block in the poorest section of Rome. The owners of thebuilding had set up the day-care center less to educate the children, for whosemental capacities they had little esteem, than to prevent damage to the prem-ises during the time when parents were at work. Montessori had developeda pedagogy based on educational toys designed to develop the cognitive,motor, and social skills of retarded children. She found that this methodproduced even better results in children who were of normal intelligence.Her pupils showed an unexpected capacity for concentration, and even themost rambunctious were attentive. They were, she reported, “filled with life,and resembled those who have experienced some great joy.”69 Like othersocial reformers of her class, Montessori deplored the sanitary standards ofthe poor and added instruction in basic hygiene, which she encouraged thechildren to transmit to their parents. “Actually, these poor people became

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cleaner and tidier. . . . window panes began to sparkle, and geraniums beganto blossom in the windows facing the courtyard.”70

Montessori’s work gained immediate attention in Italy, where similarcenters, known as Children’s Houses (Case dei Bambini), were founded byphilanthropic organizations in several cities. A speaker at the National Congressof Italian Women of 1914 saw in this pedagogical innovation “the basis ofa new organization for the housing of the working classes.”71 Montessori,like feminist reformers in other countries, regarded communal child-care as avital step in the “socialization of the home,” which would give even poorwomen a freedom to pursue work or other interests that was now availableonly to those who could afford nurses and governesses. Very possibly herown experience had made her painfully aware of how difficult it was to rec-oncile career and child-care obligations. “We are, then, communizing a‘maternal function,’ a feminine duty within the home. We may see here inthis practical act the solution of many of woman’s problems.”72

But though they appealed to a minority of feminists, these visions wereunlikely to gain wide public support. The Berlin cooperatives soon fell intofinancial difficulties. In France, despite a high rate of employment amongmarried women, communal living found few advocates. Madeleine Pelletierremarked with her usual acerbity that bourgeois Frenchwomen regardedchild-care centers, known in France as “crêches,” as unsuitable for people oftheir class, and were “full of prejudices about the duties of mothers to theirchildren.”73 In Germany, Lily Braun’s picture of the communal householdwas ridiculed by the conservative press as the “hamster-cage of the future,where family life is limited to the bedroom,” by the liberal press as “thebarracks as domestic ideal,” and by her socialist colleague and rival ClaraZetkin as a frivolous utopian fantasy.74 In the socialist periodical SozialistischeMonatshefte, Edmund Fischer scornfully remarked that upwardly mobile work-ing-class families were sick and tired of crowded “barracks-like” dwellings andlonged for a private space where the housewife, relieved of wage-earning,could devote herself to “child-rearing and the cultivation of family life.”75

Jeanne Schmahl, who was herself one of few French disciples of Gilman,likewise observed that the workers for whom the collective household wasprimarily designed tended to regard it with a “marked antipathy” and to clingstubbornly to the “beloved intimacy of the home.”76

In fact, utopian visions of collective family life and child-rearing were notonly impractical for the near future—the few institutions that were foundeddid little to solve the social problems affecting mothers and children—butunappealing to the majority of women who were not employed outside thehome. These women, who often took pride in their household and child-rearing skills and considered their contribution to their families as valuable asthat of the breadwinner, had every reason to feel disrespected by reformerswhose professions of concern for mothers were punctuated by complaintsabout their ignorance, irresponsibility, and backwardness. Therefore, a femi-nism that extolled the dignity of domesticity and full-time motherhood alsofound an audience, and to this movement we will now turn.

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“T H A H L”: T E M

In 1895, the Swedish author and activist Ellen Key gave a lecture entitled“The Misuse of Women’s Energy” before several women’s groups in Sweden.Key struck a sensitive nerve when she charged women with misusing theirnewfound emancipation in a futile struggle to imitate men while denying thedeepest needs of the female personality. “For the real woman,” she insisted,“the need to fulfill herself in personal relationships reaches its highest inten-sity in the activity which is also the highest aim of her life: motherhood andlove.”77 The “truly free” woman of the future would recognize motherhoodas the highest fulfillment of her individual potential, and would not “dreamof a desire to be ‘liberated’ from the foremost essential quality of herwomanhood—motherliness.”78 Key was only one of the many reformers of thisera who urged the state to recognize motherhood through financial subsidiesand social services that would ensure the health and well-being of bothmother and child.79 The solution to the demeaning dependency imposed by“marriage as a trade,” these reformers argued, was not to combine motherhoodwith paid work, but to remunerate the work done by mothers.

The idea that motherhood in itself could or should become a professionmight appear to be traditional, but in fact it was distinctively modern.80

Traditionally, motherhood had been regarded more as a natural destiny ormoral duty than as a form of self-realization, and notions of maternal dutycentered more on children’s physical survival than on their psychologicaldevelopment. As we have seen, the new view of motherhood arose in partfrom concerns about declining rates of population growth. A still moreimportant factor was the deeper investment in the individual child that wasmade possible by the smaller families of the early twentieth century.Psychologists of the era, including Key herself, insisted that children’s needsincluded not only physical care but also the opportunity to develop as uniqueindividuals. The task of child-rearing was so intense, sensitive, and time-consuming that only a full-time mother, who had (in Key’s words) “a dailyopportunity to observe the child’s nature, in order by consistent action toinfluence it, encouraging certain tendencies and restraining others,” couldperform it adequately.81

This view of child-rearing was widely debated in feminist circles—forexample, in the British Fabian Women’s Group. “Let the child be as wellcared for physically as may be, there is lacking the intangible but all-importantelement in child life, that emotional atmosphere created by the particular andspecialized care of the mother,” remarked a member of the group in 1910.“The baby needs its mother not only when it wants to feed or sleep, but forstimulus and response in its amazing life. No woman I have ever met would,without the push of economic necessity, leave her young children and go toregular daily work, as it is arranged today.”82

Underlying this praise of mother-love was an anxious fear for the survival,not only of infants, but of Western culture itself. To be sure, a minority of

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feminists had rejoiced in the decline of the family, which according toMadeleine Pelletier brought to all its members only “servitude, rigidity andboredom.”83 But many others valued family life as a refuge from the mecha-nization and impersonality, which they feared had overtaken male-dominatedsociety. Gertrud Bäumer, who as president of the League of German Women’sAssociations (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine) and co-editor of its journal DieFrau, set the ideological tone for the mainstream German woman’s movement,was a single, professional woman who was well acquainted with the economicnecessities that compelled some women to work outside the home. Sherejected Key’s definition of professional work as a “misuse of women’s energy”and defended the freedom of all women to control their working lives. Butshe nonetheless believed that “the sensitive dedication to personal life that thecare of a child demands” was an important ethical commitment.84 For the sakeof civilization as well as the individual family, she contended that maternitymust be “an absolute obligation that sets limits to the absorption of woman ineconomic life.”85 In the Netherlands, Bäumer influenced a group of feministswho characterized themselves as “moderates” and opposed the tendency ofsome of their colleagues to identify emancipation will full-time work, insistingthat the maternal vocation was fully compatible with gender equality.86

The role proposed by such reformers for the mother was summed up bythe French term “mother-educator” (“mère éducatrice”).87 Key emphaticallyrejected institutional care for children below school age, for no day-carecenter could “show the concern for a child’s individuality, or furnishthe peace and freedom for the development of a talent, that an average mid-dle-class home can.”88 Even activists in the field of public child-care oftenshared this negative view. For instance Pauline Kergomard, the educator whohad done more than anyone else to reform and extend the French system ofpublic early childhood institutions (écoles maternelles), declared emphaticallythat “no school, however merry, will ever match the little room where thechild receives its mother’s kisses, and the title of teacher will always be lessintimate than that of ‘maman’.”89 Likewise Paul Strauss, a great advocate ofpublic “crêches” designed to save the lives of infants, nonetheless referred tothem as a “pis-aller,” or merely palliative measure.90

But this was not an “essentialist” view of motherhood as an innate instinctor life-long destiny. Though they prescribed a longer period of maternalinvolvement than the advocates of socialized child-rearing, these reformerstoo imagined “active motherhood” as a temporary phase in a woman’s life.Considering the reduction in family size, proposed the Austrian socialistWally Zepler, “we can reasonably anticipate a time of ten to twelve years asthe average length of that period of a mother’s life that is occupied primarilyor exclusively with motherhood.”91 And however they might extol the “nat-ural” mother–child bond, reformers of the prewar era were not prepared toleave child-rearing to instinct. On the contrary, the institutional education ofmothers gained a new popularity and prestige.

Education for motherhood was not a new idea—in fact, the petitioncomposed by German feminist leader Helene Lange for the expansion of

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girls’ secondary education in 1888 had suggested that training in child-care,which could be useful to the future wife or to the future teacher, be providedin a kindergarten attached to each girls’ school. But though generalpedagogical training might be acceptable, training in infant care had beenanxiously avoided for fear it might lead girls to ask embarrassing questionsabout where babies came from.92 Among the pioneers in the area of maternaleducation was the French educator Augusta Moll-Weiss, who founded thefirst French School for Mothers (École des Mères) in Bordeaux in 1897 andmoved it to Paris in 1903. Moll-Weiss scorned the “atavistic prejudice thatconsidered instruction in baby care unsuitable for young girls.” Her schooltaught maternal skills, including infant care, to a student body that sheclaimed came from a wide class spectrum and aspired to professional careersin child-care as well as domestic work.93

The well-known French gynecologist Adolphe Pinard believed that “alittle institute of child-care (puériculture)” should be attached to all girls’primary schools. Pinard gave his first demonstration class in 1903, and by1909 the textbook that he designed for such classes appeared on theapproved reading lists of about 30 percent of French school districts.94

The influential text emphasized first the desirability of breast-feeding, andsecond the obligation of mothers to follow scientific principles rather thantraditional practices. “If all mothers did their duty,” Pinard concluded, “themortality of babies would be reduced greatly.”95 Meanwhile the Pestalozzi-Froebel House in Berlin, which since its founding in 1882 had specialized inkindergarten training, added courses on infant care and hygiene. And inBritain, too, feminist activists founded new institutions dedicated to theeducation of future mothers and of mothers themselves. For instance, theBabies’ Welcome and School for Mothers was opened in London in 1907.Supported by a committee including the physician Mary Scharlieb, thereformer Alys Russell, and the temperance activist Lady Henry Somerset,the school offered educational, medical, and nutritional services to newmothers. British child-welfare activists petitioned the London school boardto incorporate baby-care into school curricula.96

But motherhood could hardly be professionalized as long as it was unpaid.Nothing angered most feminist reformers more than the forced economicdependence of the mother on the father of her children, which exposed her inthe best case to a humiliating subservience and in the worst to abandonmentand destitution. In order to be a viable career, they insisted that motherhoodmust be remunerated. But how and by whom? Some believed by the hus-band: for example, the German Käthe Schirmacher and the AustrianMarianne Hainisch, both prominent figures in their countries’ mainstreamwomen’s movements, argued that wives should be entitled to a share of theirhusbands’ income.97

To many other feminists the idea of direct payment for wifely “services”(as opposed to shared management of the household) was distasteful.98 Butthose who portrayed service to husbands as demeaning often exalted serviceto the state as a proud distinction. “The woman who shrinks from feeling

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that her wifehood is a means of livelihood,” said the British Fabian MaudePember-Reeves, “will proudly acknowledge that her motherhood is a serviceto the state.”99 Motherhood as a “social function” was often compared tomilitary service. “The mother who assures the perpetuation of the species,”wrote the French suffrage leader Hubertine Auclert, “should be treated likethe soldier who assures the security of the territory: that is, she should belodged and nourished during the period of her maternal service.”100 A directstate subsidy for childbearing avoided what many considered the problems ofmaternity insurance, for theoretically it would cover all mothers rather thanonly the minority that were employed outside the home.

Among French feminists, support for state-funded maternal salary was allbut unanimous and transcended political dividing lines. As Karen Offen hasexplained, the political environment of the Third Republic was highly favorableto the notion of “maternity as the patriotism of women”—a conviction thatwas shared by feminists with their progressive male allies.101 Male populationactivists such as Jacques Bertillon, founder of the influential National Alliancefor Population Increase (Alliance nationale pour l’accroissement de la populationfrançaise) had already defined the production of children as a service to thestate that should be rewarded by tax deductions and other benefits. He andother male activists designated fathers as the recipients of these subsidies—a proposal that had already been put into practice by some patriotic Frenchcorporations, which began in the 1890s to pay family benefits to theiremployees (the majority of whom were men).102 The main challenge facingadvocates of women’s rights was therefore to designate the state’s largesse asa “maternity budget” (Caisse de la maternité) that should subsidize mothersdirectly rather than through benefits to male breadwinners. This demandwent back at least to the International Feminist Conference of 1896, and itwas repeated at many national and international conferences and taken upinto the programs of a diverse spectrum of organizations.103

As Marilyn Boxer has noted, the “maternity budget” found even moreenthusiastic support among French socialists who claimed to speak for work-ing-class constituencies than among the leaders of middle-class groups.104

Léonie Rouzade, who in 1880 had founded the first socialist women’sorganization in France, affirmed that “the first law of the collectivity and ofall intelligent governments is that children should be raised at the expense ofsociety . . . There is the greatest public interest in sparing no resources on thedevelopment of future citizens.”105 Rouzade affirmed that citizens of bothgenders must engage in useful work, but motherhood should be included inthat category.106 Nelly Roussel advocated financial allowances to mothersfor two reasons: “first, to treat all mothers, married and unmarried, equally,and then because it seems just and logical that this reward for fertility shouldgo to the producer of children.”107 Liberal reformers concerned with children’swelfare often agreed that the state must support motherhood. In 1913, asubsidy to poor families with numerous children (usually paid to the father)was a first step toward the recognition of the state’s obligation to support itsoffspring.108

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In other European countries, the state-funded “maternal salary”—whichthe British called the “endowment of motherhood”—was supported chieflyby socialist groups, who insisted that working-class women had no desire toadd employment to their already crushing household responsibilities. Sucha mother, argued the British socialist Mabel Atkinson, often demanded “notindependence and the right to work, but rather protection against theunending burden of toil which has been laid upon her.”109 A state subsidyto mothers with children under five was advocated by the Fabian Society,a British group that favored the gradual introduction of socialism by thestate. “It follows that motherhood,” wrote H.G. Wells, a flamboyant Fabianspokesman, “is regarded by Socialists as a benefit to society, a public dutydone.”110 Women of the British Labour Party debated the issue in 1909, butreached no definite conclusion.111

In Scandinavia some female activists supported Ellen Key’s demand forstate support for all mothers for the first four years of their children’s lives.The Norwegian Katti Anker Møller, who like Pinard also wrote textbooks forschool courses on child care, believed that motherhood should be made aprofession and should be subsidized on the condition that the motherrefrained from work outside the home.112 In Germany, the remuneration ofwomen for their services to what Käthe Schirmacher, who had spent time inFrance, called “the great national population industry” had a few advocates.For example, the suffragist Anita Augspurg called for a maternity pension forevery mother which would last eighteen months, well beyond the periodcovered by maternity insurance.113 However the leadership of the mainstreamGerman women’s movement, which consisted almost entirely of unmarriedprofessional women, showed no such overwhelming enthusiasm for theconcept of “motherhood as a social function” as did their French counter-parts.114 German socialists, too, tended to favor the socially supportedemployment rather than direct remuneration of mothers.

And indeed, the model of motherhood as a profession or paid serviceposed many problems. For like most social reformers, the proponents ofthe “endowment of motherhood” had little respect for the objects of theirbenevolence, in this case mothers themselves. They always made it clear thatthe award of benefits must be contingent on the rigorous observance of reg-ulations concerning work, breast-feeding, child-care, and medical supervi-sion. Ellen Key insisted that the recipients of her proposed subsidy tomothers meet high standards: she required them to be of appropriate age, topresent a health certificate to local authorities, to have completed a year oftraining in child-care (designated as “female military service”), and to carefor their children at home.115 The French physicians Paul Strauss and JustSicard de Plauzoles insisted that breast-feeding must be made compulsory—Sicard even asserted that a mother who refused to breast-feed should beprosecuted as a criminal.116

And governmental assistance also involved surveillance. As the historianYvonne Knibiehler has observed, a new era of state-regulated motherhoodwas at hand.117 The French Loi Strauss that provided a subsidy for maternity

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leaves also required “lady visitors” (“dames visiteuses”) to supervise the child-rearing practices of the recipients. Such services, which were providedby private and public agencies in many countries, were supported by the middle-class women to whom they provided employment but often resented by theirlow-income clients.118 And some proponents of endowed motherhood moreor less explicitly discouraged women’s newfound educational and economicambitions. The reorganization of maternity as a “national service,” predictedSicard de Plauzoles, would not only give France a future but provide “a solu-tion to a great portion of the Woman question.”119 Some male French social-ists reveled in utopian fantasies of a state that removed women from the laborforce and returned them to their “natural” profession of motherhood.120

H.G. Wells hoped that the “monstrous absurdity of women discharging theirsupreme social function . . . while they ‘earn their living’ by contribu-ting some half mechanical element to some trivial industrial product, willdisappear.”121

Therefore the notion of state-subsidized motherhood was highly contro-versial among feminists of this era, and many rejected it. At the Paris conferenceof 1908, the French activist Camille Béllilon suggested that the “maternitybudget” should be re-named the “children’s budget” because otherwisemen, assuming that women were provided for by the state, would feel justi-fied in denying them professional opportunities.122 In Britain, a group ofcontributors to the radical periodical, The Freewoman, engaged in a spiritedpolemic against H.G. Wells’ proposal for the “endowment of motherhood.”Did the idea that motherhood was a service to the state imply that thegovernment could determine how many children each woman must bear?And if so, on what criteria would this allotment be based? Who would beconsidered qualified to perform this important public service? And if motherswere to be selected, then why not fathers too? Should marriage be a conditionfor child-bearing, or would eugenic fitness be sufficient? What, exactly, wasthe difference between such a “service” and the sexual relations traded formoney by prostitutes? To whom would the resulting child belong—theparents or the state?123

Many commentators objected that the “endowment” scheme left outfathers and might discourage responsible paternal behavior. Perturbed by thesocialist overtones of “endowment,” German liberal feminists prescientlywarned of the dangers of opening the private sphere of the family to controlby the state. “Motherhood and fatherhood are not only social functions,”wrote Alice Salomon, “but they are familial functions in the most exact senseof that word.” And what if the state took the notion of motherhood asnational service to its logical extreme and “laid on women only the duty, orthe right, to bear children for the society and the state, without giving themany power over the child’s upbringing. Then mothers might well go onstrike.” The rights of mothers, she concluded, must depend on “the drawingof a careful boundary between parental and state responsibilities.”124 In Italy,the veteran feminist Anna Maria Mozzoni warned her socialist sisters thatthe utopian visions of state-endowed motherhood invoked by male socialist

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leaders could reverse educational and professional gains and turn marriageinto the “greatest and best employment opportunity for women.”125

A N D

Both proposed routes to economic independence—employment andendowment—rested on some of the same highly untraditional assumptions.Mothers were to be independent of male breadwinners and the state wasassigned some functions that were traditionally performed by the family. Andadvocates of employment and endowment alike insisted that motherhood wasnow a phase in the life of the modern woman, who after a limited period offull-time mother-work could also aspire to other activities, including paidemployment. According to the British socialist Mabel Atkinson, the family ofthe future “would probably not consist of more than three or four children,and even if one made the assumption that the woman should devote herselfentirely to the care of her children until the youngest reached school age,there would still remain many years of her life during which she would bestrong and fit for work.”126 In the prewar period we see the first step towardthe redefinition of maternity from a lifetime identity to a role.

This new definition of the maternal role had many implications, bothliberating and confining. Feminist movements contributed to an importanttrend in twentieth-century culture—the popularization of motherhood,which was now held out as an option for all women, even those who aspiredto economic independence and professional success. In fact, emancipationwas increasingly defined as a combination of career success and familial,specifically maternal and heterosexual, fulfillment. Like every other politicalideology, this one created invidious distinctions. It often justified a negativeview of the woman who, for whatever reason, chose a single or childless life—an option that was once respected, but now carried the stigma of abnormality.The spinster, wrote a contributor to The Freewoman, was a “barren sister, awithered tree, the acidulous vestal under whose pale shadow we chill andwhiten.”127 Some single career women responded that they felt no regrets.“All this talk about how the single and celibate life is harmful to women istotal nonsense,” wrote the German teacher Elisabeth Schneider, “and I amthe proof of that—I’m healthy.”128

Although they defined a new ideal, feminists of this era could chart noclear path to its fulfillment. To be sure, they produced many inspiring visionsof new forms of family and household, new ways of organizing professionalwork and child-care, and a new respect for motherhood. But ultimately themother was placed before several unpalatable alternatives: home as domesticprison or impersonal commune, child-care as maternal smother-love orinstitutional regimentation, parenthood as service to the patriarchal familyor to the bureaucratic state, work as domestic slave or exhausted super-woman. In their search for fulfillment, remarked Ellen Key, modern womenwere haunted by a “dualism that is based in nature and difficultto resolve.”129 “In most professions,” wrote the German socialists Adele

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Gerhard and Helene Simon, “the conflict between intellectual and artisticwork and the fulfilled life of a woman is unavoidable.”130 In their search for anew female life-plan, feminists succeeded chiefly in defining a new dilemma.And its resolution was left to the individual woman: the “free woman” of thefuture, prophesied the German Hedwig Dohm, would realize that “eachwoman has to decide the question—job or no job—for herself.”131

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A warning from a British women’s organization, the Women’s Total Abstinence Union, againstthe perils of drinking. (Leeds: Petty and Sons, 1914–18 (?). Poster Archive: Hoover Institution.)


“ T R C C

P ” : M

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P w E

Legal equality, economic independence—these were indispensable bases forthe reconstruction of motherhood on the basis of gender equality. But eventhe achievement of these ends could not relieve a still more basic form ofservitude. “For what is poverty, what is all the misery of industrial exploita-tion,” asked the leader of the League of German Women’s Associations,Marie Stritt, in 1910, “compared to the cruel sexual exploitation in which thegreat mass of women live today?”1 “Dependence, in short, is the curse of ourmarriages,” wrote the British Mona Caird, “of our homes and of our chil-dren, who are born of women who are not free—not free even to refuse tobear them.”2 The claim to a right to refuse might at first glance seem to con-tradict the prevalent definition of motherhood as a contribution to the pub-lic welfare. But in fact it reinforced that definition, for mothers had power aswell as responsibility—they could make or break the state, and thus wieldeda formidable political weapon. “What they forget, in all this talk about popu-lation, is that in order to produce children, you have to have mothers,” wrotethe French journalist Maria Martin, editor of the Journal des Femmes.“Children will become the pride of every household when mothers arerespected by the law. Until that day, we fear that women will not be suffi-ciently patriotic to make children for the fatherland, which rewards them someagerly.”3

Here again was the familiar rhetorical strategy, which claimed women’srights as an appropriate “reward” for the performance of patriotic duties, andespecially for the production of new citizens. Karen Offen and others havepraised the efficacy of this strategy, and it worked well as an approach to theissues discussed in chapters 2 and 3.4 Clearly, mothers who were legallyempowered and economically secure would be better able to care for theirchildren: in these cases individual and social interests could be presented asidentical. But when applied to issues concerning reproductive rights, the


ideology of the patriotic mother-citizen was fraught with problems andinconsistencies. For here, individual and social interests seemed to conflict.The state needed more citizens, but falling birthrates indicated that individ-ual parents—including mothers—were unwilling to produce them in thenumbers required. “Meanwhile all facts point to the conclusion thatVOLITIONAL LIMITATION OF THE FAMILY is the chief and vastlypredominant cause of the decline in birth-rates which is taking place in somany countries,” wrote the British physician Arthur Newsholme in 1911,and his opinion was shared by commentators across the political spectrum.5

In this context, the claim made by so many feminist activists that motherhoodwas, or should be, a “social function” raised intractable difficulties. For ifmotherhood was indeed a service to the state, did the state have the right toregulate it by dictating who must become a mother and how many childrenshe must have? And if so, then how could this claim to public recognition bereconciled with the mother’s right to individual liberty? This, of course, wasno abstract question—government leaders all over Europe responded tofalling birthrates with new measures designed not only to save the lives ofchildren already born but to raise birthrates by limiting access to birthcontrol and abortion. In this as in other areas, feminist ideologies of this erastressed the need to reconcile the freedom of the individual with the needs ofthe community. But was this possible? Or were the conceptions of mother-hood as public duty and private right inherently contradictory? After sketchingin the historical context, this chapter will trace this discussion as it focused onfour issues: sexual education, the reproductive rights of women, eugenicpolicies, and the so-called birth strike through which some activists proposedto demonstrate the political power of mothers.

Feminists formulated their positions on reproductive issues in a politicalenvironment that sent them very mixed messages. In all the WesternEuropean nations, population and birthrates became dominant politicalissues. To be sure, the emphasis differed from country to country: in Francethe chief concern was for population numbers regardless of social class; inBritain, more for the class composition than for the numbers of the newgeneration; in Germany and Scandinavia, for both.6 But all these nationsinitiated new policies focused on the welfare of mothers and children. And allsaw what Karen Offen has called a “surge of anti-feminism,” which pilloriedwomen—and especially middle-class women, who were considered particularlysusceptible to the dangerous doctrines of feminism—for their neglect of theirmaternal responsibilities.7 The challenge facing feminists was not to advocatethe restriction of births, but to create a more positive “spin” on a trend thatwas now well established. Women’s opposition, they argued, was not tomotherhood itself, but to motherhood as a coerced service to a patriarchalfamily and state, and when free to control their own reproductive decisions(a freedom that was defined in many different ways), women would willinglybecome mothers.

But reproductive self-determination was a revolutionary concept that hadlittle basis in any existing ethical, legal, or political system. It could not be

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defended by any existing doctrine of individual rights, for in the realm ofsexuality and reproduction no such rights were accorded to women. Rightsin this area belonged only to men, who according to the laws of marriagecontrolled their wives’ bodies and their fertility. Neither could it bebuttressed by appeals to individual privacy and liberty, for there too the lawunambiguously favored men by protecting the household against state inter-ference. Privacy laws did not protect women and children, but made themvulnerable to abuse. Moreover, the prudish secrecy surrounding sexual lifedeprived women of the information that they needed to control their ownfertility and to protect themselves against disease. The Italian physicianMaria Montessori, who made her mark not only as an educator but asan advocate of maternal and child health, referred to the “terror” which“goes by the name of shame and modesty.”8 The partial lifting of this tabooin the late nineteenth century was a crucial factor in the spread of knowledgeabout birth control that enabled couples to limit their families.9 Far frominvoking the right of privacy, therefore, many feminists of this era werewilling (as we see in retrospect, too willing) to open the private realm of thehousehold to public scrutiny. In the words of the British ElizabethWolstenholme Elmy, “only those who are called in to help and advise sufferingwives,” could know “what unspeakable infamies are sometimes hidden by theveil of legal marriage.”10

Lacking in credibility as a moral norm, reproductive self-determinationhad to be defended through instrumental arguments as a means to someother end—most frequently, the survival and well-being of children. Thoughmore novel, the doctrine of the rights of the child was more popular andmuch less controversial than that of the rights of women—and the child’smost important rights were to life and health. Rates of infant mortality werestill high: around 1900, fourteen of every hundred infants in Britain, thirteenin France, and eighteen in Germany died before the age of one year.11 Thesefrightening statistics could be used to show the dangers of excessive andunplanned childbearing under conditions of poverty and disadvantage. InBritain, an editorial in Common Cause, organ of the moderate NationalUnion of Woman Suffrage Societies, charged that a recently compiled Reporton Infant Mortality was “a dry record of the most tragic things in life—outraged, desecrated, unwilling motherhood, maimed, diseased, unwantedbabies . . . Could there be a more inconceivable desecration of all that isdivine in us than reluctant motherhood?”12 The Dutch feminist periodicalEvolutie likewise presented infant mortality as a consequence of bearingchildren “too young, too often, and in too rapid succession.”13

It was easy enough to argue that mothers who were empowered to plantheir pregnancies would be more likely to bear and raise healthy children, andwould thus cut back rates of infant mortality and morbidity. But opponentsalways objected that this gain in population numbers would be more thanoffset by the tendency of such women to bear fewer children—a choicethat would further exacerbate the population crisis. Feminists respon-ded by distinguishing between the sheer numbers and the “quality” of

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offspring—a concept that was often invoked but never defined. A contributorto the suffrage paper The Vote declared that “the awakened woman is learn-ing that quality is at least as important as quantity.”14 Influential theorists inmany other countries insisted that parents who limited their families couldprovide (in the words of Ellen Key) both “better living conditions and bettercare. These children do more to raise the quality of the population than amass of badly developed children.”15

These rhetorical strategies facilitated alliances between feminists andpowerful political and medical elites. In 1899, British military authoritiesnoted with alarm that one-third of all volunteers for military service in theBoer War had been rejected for health reasons. Their disabilities were attrib-uted not just to the social conditions of a wealthy country where one-fourthof the population were living in poverty, but also to the consequences ofwidespread moral depravity.16 Public health authorities identified alcoholismand venereal disease, both associated with congenital defects, as the two“racial poisons” that produced widespread illness and death among children.

In this context, feminists formulated another argument for reproductiveself-determination, this time as a principle of social morality. They never tiredof pointing out that the “social scourges” of drunkenness and disease resul-ted chiefly from male behavior and victimized women as well as children. Andthey cultivated links to the very broad spectrum of organizations—maleand female, socialist and conservative, religious and secular—that headedcampaigns against the evils of drink and regulated prostitution. Decliningbirthrates were often attributed not only to female but to male behavior.“People say that the women of the wealthy classes avoid the duties ofmotherhood,” admitted Marianne Hainisch, leader of the League of AustrianWomen’s Organizations, “and far be it from me to defend them; these indeedare signs of degeneration, but I am concerned not only about the degeneracyof women but that of men.”17

The search for ways of reconciling women’s interest in reproductive self-determination with society’s interest in a healthy and flourishing populationled some feminists to one of this era’s most popular intellectual fashions,eugenics. This movement, which was loosely based on Darwinian biologyand given its name by the British scientist Francis Galton, had as its aim theimprovement of the quality of the human race by the application of scienceto reproduction. The most basic principle of the eugenics movement was thatthe transformation of parenthood from an accident to a conscious commitmentwould benefit society by improving the quality of the new generation—aprospect that could seem attractive to those who wished to improve thestatus and the material conditions of mothers.

The attraction of feminists of this era to eugenics is often mentioned butseldom explored by historians. Admirers of the women who will figure in thischapter usually do their best to dissociate them from eugenics. Detractorsinclude them in a general condemnation of eugenics and all its allegedresults: the horrors of imperialism, National Socialism, the Holocaust, andthe two world wars.18 Only a few historians, chiefly of the English-speaking

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world, present a more complex and differentiated view. Among these isDaniel Kevles, who distinguishes between two large groups of eugenicists:the “mainline” group, which emphasized the differences among the humanraces, and the “social-radicals,” many of whom belonged to progressive andleft-wing parties, who disavowed racism and focused on improvement of thehuman race as a whole. Most of the women and men to be discussed herebelonged to this latter group, and though some shared the racial attitudesthat were typical of their time and place, racial difference was not amongtheir chief concerns.19 Feminists often played an assertive and independentrole in the movement by disputing the misogynist ideas of male leadersand appropriating the fashionable new vocabulary in the service of femi-nist goals.20 Though the eugenics movement was international, its organiza-tional structure and the participation of women differed across nationalboundaries.

The new science was promoted by two organizations founded in Germanyin the year 1905: the Racial Hygiene Society (Gesellschaft für Rassehygiene)under the leadership of the biologist Alfred Ploetz, and the League for theProtection of Mothers (Bund für Mutterschutz, or BfM), led by a collectionof sexual reformers of both genders. Politically these organizations were farapart. Whereas Ploetz, despite his socialist background, had by 1905 movedso far to the right of his movement that he refused to admit most feminists tohis organization, the BfM developed a highly original synthesis of feminismand eugenics, which it exported to several Germanic-language countries. TheInternational League for the Protection of Mothers and Sexual Reform(Internationale Vereinigung für Mutterschutz und Sexualreform), foundedunder the leadership of the German group in 1911, included branches inSweden and Austria as well as in Germany.21

Unlike its German counterpart, the British eugenics movement integratedwomen from the outset. When the Eugenics Education Society was foundedin 1907, women constituted one-half of the first board of directors and aboutone-third of the membership.22 Although the male leadership was generallyunsympathetic to feminism, the group often sent speakers to lecture tofemale audiences of varying political persuasions on topics such as “Womenand Economics in Relation to Eugenics,” and “Eugenics and Women’s SocialWork.”23

The French Eugenics Society (Société Eugénique), which was founded in1913, included very few women, in part because one of its leaders, the promi-nent physician Adolphe Pinard, considered that reproduction up to andincluding conception was a male, and only after conception a female, concern.24

However despite such discouraging advice French women had taken an inter-est in issues concerning hereditary disease and reproduction since the 1890s,and the lectures sponsored by the Eugenics Society attracted a considerablefemale audience. Women who had brought children into the world with somuch pain, claimed an article in the Society’s periodical, “would never con-sent to the degeneration of this precious product . . . Eugenics will alwayshave women on its side, and it will appreciate the honor.”25

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Because of its later role in National Socialist ideology, eugenics is oftenassociated with the political right and with hostility to the working class. Andfeminist eugenicists did indeed often condemn the poor for sexual and repro-ductive behavior that they found irresponsible. However (as Daniel Kevleshas pointed out) eugenic theory was also popular on the political left, andoften attacked the mores of the upper classes. After all, upper-class men weremore likely than workers to be the patrons of prostitutes and to spreaddisease to their trusting and ignorant wives and innocent children.

The health of the next generation was often pictured as a female concernthat transcended class. “A coerced maternity,” declared the reformerElizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, “is a crime against the child, whose first rightit is to be well-born . . . The offspring of uncontrolled and selfish lust on theone side and abject subservience on the other is ill-born, no matter uponwhat external prosperity it may be ushered.”26 Socialist women, too, openlycondemned husbands who exercised their “marital rights” without consider-ing the consequences. “No amount of State help can help the suffering ofmothers,” wrote an anonymous working-class woman to the British Women’sCooperative Guild, “until men are taught many things in regard to the rightuse of the organs of reproduction, and until he realises that the wife’s bodybelongs to herself, and until the marriage relation takes a higher sense ofmorality and bare justice.”27 Anna Bergmann has documented the sameattitude among German, and Ida Blom among Norwegian working-classwomen. And the historian Wally Secombe points out that despite theirlimited education these women often used both a feminist and a medicalvocabulary, which enabled them to think of uncontrolled childbearing as“a preventable malady.”28

Did this scientific discourse achieve its purpose—to legitimize women’sclaims to reproductive self-determination? The following chapter will showthat its effects were problematic. Feminists assumed that scientific knowledgewould reinforce a moral claim—the right of mothers to respect, dignity, andempowerment in heterosexual relationships. This claim rested on a maternaliststereotype that pictured women as models of sexual prudence and self-restraint—in short, as the morally superior sex. In fact, the new scientificapproaches undermined this stereotype by removing sexuality and reproductionfrom the domain of morality and placing it firmly in that of nature, whereboth male and female participated in the same natural processes andwere motivated by instinctual drives that they shared with other animals. Weshall see how this transition affected feminist views of sex education, birthcontrol and abortion, and eugenic legislation.

T O B S: T C S E

During this period, the lifting of the taboos that had long inhibited thediscussion of sexuality and reproduction was widely recognized as the firststep toward the empowerment of women in the family and the marital

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relationship. The responsibility for initiating that discussion was placed onmothers themselves, who often proved unequal to the task. “May I say, firstof all,” wrote another anonymous correspondent of the Women’s CooperativeGuild, “that lack of knowledge causes, in nearly every case, much unnecessarysuffering . . . I might say that I was very ignorant when I was married; mymother did not consider it at all proper to talk about such things.”29

Literature and drama often attributed all the sexual and marital misfortunesof young women to their mothers’ culpable silence. “Tell me, dear mother,”begged Wendla, the heroine of Frank Wedekind’s drama, Spring’sAwakening. “I’m ashamed of myself. Please, please speak. . . . how does ithappen? . . . You cannot expect that I, who am fourteen years old, still believein the stork.”30 Wendla later died of a botched abortion.

But was the mother, herself raised in ignorance, qualified to impart the sav-ing knowledge to her children? On this issue, contemporary commentatorsdivided into two groups, designated by the historian Claudia Nelson asmaternalists and professionalists. The first group held to the traditional viewof woman as the moral center of her family, who by both precept andexample taught self-restraint and chastity to her male and female children.But the second group wished to shift the responsibility of sexual education tothe state, which through its qualified teachers could present the subject withscientific accuracy and objectivity. This was a very radical proposal; few sexeducation courses existed in schools in any country during this era.31

Among the maternalists was the British Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, whoattracted international attention both as a crusader for the reform of marriagelaws and as the author (with her partner, Ben Elmy) of books for children onthe facts of life. Elizabeth Elmy believed that the right kind of sex educationwould strengthen women’s position in the family by teaching children torespect their mothers. She assigned no educational role to fathers, contributingto what Nelson calls the “growing sense that adult men could contribute littleto child-rearing in the home.”32 The Elmy couple’s most famous book, BabyBuds, was written for small children and published in 1895. The narrator tracedher authority directly to her personal experience: “and in telling you how babywas born, I shall also be telling you how you yourself came to me as a baby, overfour years ago.”33 Starting with the plant and animal kingdoms, the storyplaced human parenthood in the context of the natural world. Mothersthroughout nature were shown choosing their partners and controlling therearing of their young. By contrast, animal and human fathers were shown inroles that were decorative or domestic, but always subordinate, and theirprocreative role was never explained: “how this truly comes about,” the youngreader was warned, “you can scarcely understand until you are older.”34

Sex education was also a prominent theme of discussion among Dutchfeminists. Some dismissed it as a new and deplorable fad. “Isn’t it bad enoughthat men speak and write so coarsely?” wrote Elise van Calcar. “Must womentoo step forward without blushing and tell the public about things thatour mothers and grandmothers whispered to their daughters in theirboudoirs?”35 However, a more positive attitude was shown by the organizers

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of the National Exhibition of Women’s Work, held in Amsterdam in 1899,where a session was devoted to the theme of “moral education.”36

The best-known Dutch promoter of sex education for children was theteacher Nellie van Kol, whose illustrated book entitled Mother and Child(Moeder en Kind) was published in 1898 and by 1900 had been reprinted insix editions. Like Elmy, van Kol framed her story as a private discussionbetween mother and child, which started with the animal kingdom and con-cluded with the human mother. In an article in the feminist periodicalEvolutie, van Kol argued on the basis of her own experience that childrenrespected mothers who told the truth. Even more important, however, wasthe child’s loving response. “And my little angel realized how much pain shehad caused me and embraced me tenderly. So a flower of love and gratitudegrew out of the fertile soil of truth.”37 Some educators warned that suchimages of maternal martyrdom might have the undesirable effect of deterr-ing young girls from motherhood.38 In the Netherlands, where most pub-lic schools were church-affiliated, school based sex education found fewsupporters.

In France, where public schools were secular, the professionalist view ofsex education—which called for its inclusion in school curricula—hadstronger support. Lydie Martial, founder of an organization entitled“Women’s Philosophy” (“La Pensée féminine”) insisted with considerablebravado that courses on the responsibilities of fatherhood should be held notonly in schools but in other public settings, including military barracks.39

However, others feared that this might undermine the authority of mothersby transferring the responsibility for sex education from the home to themale-dominated school environment. This question featured prominently onthe agenda of the conference of the International Council of Women, held inParis in 1913. Some delegates, for example, Marguerite De WittSchlumberger, insisted that sex education should be left to mothers, whocould be expected to care the most about protecting daughters from“masculine immorality” and teaching sons to respect women. However, theprestigious gynecologist Dr. Pinard, who as a male ally participated inthe discussion, placed the authority of the state above that of the mother,charging that few mothers had the scientific expertise to convey the informationcorrectly.40

The prominent educator Pauline Kergomard, who took a leading role inthis discussion, was torn between maternalist and professionalist approaches.She argued that the enlightenment of children was “the right of the mother,”but that many mothers (particularly those of the working class) lacked therequisite time and knowledge. Kergomard proposed that each school shouldoffer a course to both boys and girls that emphasized both factual knowledgeand “self-respect and respect for the other sex.” However, she had strongreservations about leaving this instruction to regular classroom teachers, whowere too often men and thus (in her view) unqualified to teach such sensitivematerial to mixed classes. She was also convinced that the introduction of sexeducation into the schools would provide the Catholic Church with an

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additional rationale for its already virulent opposition to secular publiceducation. The conference as a whole thus rejected a resolution calling forsex education in school, and instead offered a compromise: “parents shouldconsider the sexual education of their children as a duty,” but “if the mothercannot educate her children, this function should be performed by otherpeople.”41 The inconsistency between the references to parents and mothersexpressed a real ambivalence—never openly discussed—about the possiblerole of fathers in the task of sex education.

Though she agreed that mothers often lacked scientific knowledge, theSwiss educator Emma Piecynska did not believe that sex education must beleft to professional teachers, but rather that mothers must be educated. Bornin 1854, Emma Reichenbach was the daughter of a wealthy Swiss family whowas raised in Paris and married the Polish Count Piecynski, from whom shelater separated. Her original ambition—to become a physician—was thwartedby an illness that left her permanently deaf. Having been introduced tofeminism by her life partner Helene de Mulinen (who later headed hercountry’s largest feminist organization, the League of Swiss Women’sAssociations, Bund schweizerischer Frauenvereine or Alliance Nationale desSociétés Féminines), Piecynska became a supporter of the InternationalAbolitionist Federation, which campaigned to abolish state-regulated prosti-tution and to encourage responsible sexual behavior. In 1895, she taughtcourses to adults on “the laws of reproduction and the education of human-ity on this subject” in Geneva and Bern, and later published her lecturesunder the title The School of Purity (L’École de la Pureté). She defied theconventional prejudice that confined the scientific study of reproductionto (mostly male) experts but denied it to mothers themselves. “It is not thescientists and philosophers who have the most important right to this infor-mation,” she wrote. “We [women] cannot leave it . . . to specialists.We are the specialists.”42 Piecynska became a popular lecturer who spoketo female secondary-school students as well as to adults, and receivedmany letters from her admirers asking for advice on sexual and maritalproblems.43

In Germany, the land of scientific progress, the professionalist standpointwas strongly represented. To be sure, many works on child-rearing that werewidely read in Germany, including Ellen Key’s The Century of the Child, hadcalled on mothers, to teach “the facts of life.”44 However the League for theProtection of Mothers (BfM) took a position that was strongly influenced bythe new scientific field of sexology. The leader of this field, Havelock Ellis,had considerably more influence in Germany than in his native Britain.Ellis and his German admirers proposed a compromise solution: motherswere the natural educators of small children in sexual as in other matters,but they lacked the scientific qualifications to instruct older children—a taskthat would be better accomplished by qualified teachers of both genders.45

The professional teachers who made up a substantial portion of theLeague’s membership strongly favored a state-mandated program of sexeducation.

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In 1906, the BfM petitioned the cultural ministries of all the Germanstates to include the subject in school curricula. Maria Lichnewska, a leaderof the organization who was also a teacher, justified the petition by arguingthat the trend of the times was to make “education into a public concern andto remove it from the sphere of the home.” She cited a scandal in Hamburg,where in 1906 a teacher had been disciplined for giving factual informationto a schoolgirl, to underscore the need for instruction in schools.46 By con-trast, the leader of the League of Austrian Women’s Organizations, MarianneHainisch, rejected school-based sex education: though teachers might bequalified to dispense scientific information, parents must retain their authorityon moral questions.47

In Scandinavia, individuals and groups who were affiliated with InternationalLeague for the Protection of Mothers and Sexual Reform, particularly theSwedish Frida Steenhoff and the Norwegian Katti Anker Møller, likewisecampaigned for sex education. And the newly enfranchised women of Norwayincluded it in their political program. The Norwegian National Council ofWomen compromised on the vexed issue of parental versus school based sexualeducation. In 1913, the organization opened a competition for “medicalwomen and men for the best book on this subject, which can be used by theteachers or by the parents in their homes. Women are the most awake to thequestion of how to keep the young boys and girls pure and healthy—how toprotect the fountain of life.”48

It was in Britain that the controversy between maternalist and professionalistapproaches to sex education caused the most open conflict. In 1913 anelementary school teacher, Miss Outram, who was an advocate of botheugenics and woman suffrage, gave her religion class some texts that sheclaimed to have received from America. The first adapted the Biblicalcreation story to include a rather imprecise account of human reproduction.The second consisted of a conversation between father and son on “themysterious feeling that men have for women and women have for men.”49

The parents of the school district responded with outrage that the teacherhad usurped their prerogatives and undermined their authority. “It is toodisgusting for the children to know—they have not the same respect for theirparents when they know that,” complained a mother.50 However the localschool authority, the Derbyshire Education Committee, refused to dismissOutram, and the controversy was broken off without any decisive resolutionby the outbreak of war in 1914.

Feminist views of sex education thus reflected a broader transition frommaternalist to professionalist views of sexuality. And the results did not fulfillfeminists’ hopes that scientific learning would enhance the prestige and sta-tus of mothers. Maternalist educators had exalted the primacy of themother–child relationship. “All human love has sprung in the first place fromthe love between mother and child,” Elmy wrote.51 Van Kol accorded moth-ers the dominant role in mate-selection and reproductive decision-making.“What happens to plants unconsciously, becomes a conscious process inhuman beings. . . . The woman gives herself only to the man whom she judges

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worthy to become the father of her child.”52 By contrast, professionalistsdowngraded the mother for her lack of scientific expertise, and recommendedthat the responsibility for sexual enlightenment be transferred to the statethrough public school systems. And in place of the moral principles taught bymothers—chastity and self-respect—scientific educators looked to eugenicsfor their guiding principles. Sex education, wrote Henriette Fürth, musttransmit the message that “each human being must strive to become sostrong, beautiful and perfect that they are worthy to be the bearers of a newand better generation.”53

An educational literature that was framed in the austere language ofscience could hardly be expected to gain the popularity to which the educatorsaspired. But a far more appealing approach would soon be initiated by MarieCarmichael Stopes. Stopes, who was born in Edinburgh in 1880, hadattained a doctorate in a scientific field, paleo-botany, and was thirty-one yearsof age when she married a fellow scientist in 1911. Her wide reading ofscientific literature had included even works of sexology, but had apparentlyleft her without some basic knowledge. According to her own account, afterseveral years of marriage she was unable to understand why she had not yetbecome pregnant until she found out from a physician that she was still a vir-gin. Whatever the truth of this story—which her husband contested—itenabled Stopes to divorce him for non-consummation. And she felt deeplydeprived—of maternity but even more of sexual fulfillment. In her best-sellingbook, Married Love, published in 1918, she deplored the plight of “oureducated girls, composed of virgin sweetness shut up in ignorance.”54 Stopeswould later popularize both birth control and sex education by extolling notonly eugenic principles, but also the joys of heterosexual love.

“D D J A”:T P P

Despite the taboos on women’s knowledge and discussion of sexuality, theright of women to decide on the number and timing of pregnancies wasadvocated in most feminist groups by 1900. As Carol Dyhouse points out,the topic was usually placed in the general context of “feminine autonomywithin marriage and of mutual desire and respect as preconditions of thesexual union.”55 These discussions were marked by the same tension betweenmaternalist and scientific approaches to sexuality as we have seen in the areaof sex education. Maternalist feminists upheld values such as chastity and self-restraint, which though formulated in secular language were closely linked toChristian moral principles. Perceiving women as the custodians of suchvalues, they unabashedly advocated female supremacy in the marital relation-ship. Birth-control activists, influenced by scientific fields such as sexologyand eugenics, asserted both the ability and the right of both women and mento enjoy sexual relations, the joint responsibility of the couple for reproductivedecisions, and the use of contraceptive technology to separate sex fromreproduction.

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Most British feminists of this era, aroused to anger by campaigns such asthat of Elizabeth Elmy against marital rape, tended toward the maternalistposition and called for the liberation of women from, not into, heterosexual-ity. Theorists such as Olive Schreiner, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, FrancesSwiney and Elmy herself, all very influential in Britain, asserted that existingforms of heterosexuality were not designed to serve the biological purpose ofreproduction—in fact they were harmful to the health of mothers andchildren—but rather the political purpose of perpetuating male supremacy.Elmy speculated that even such biological functions as menstruation wereenvironmental in origin, produced by women’s enslavement to her sexualfunction at times when it served no reproductive purpose.

On woman falls that heritage of woe,And e’en the virgin feels its dastard blow.For long ere fit to wield maternal cares,Abnormal fruits of birth her guiltless body bears.56

The novelist and playwright Cicely Hamilton likewise saw heterosexuality asa form of slavery: “in sexual matters, the whole trend and tendency ofwoman’s relation to men has been to make refusal impossible and to cutoff every avenue of escape from the gratification of his desire.”57 If given theirchoice, these theorists assumed, women would surely confine sexual inter-course to the minimum necessary for rational and planned reproduction.58

The modern birth-control movement can be said to have originated inBritain in 1877, when William Bradlaugh and Annie Besant were tried forselling a “dirty, filthy book” on the history and techniques of contracep-tion.59 The result of the famous trial was the founding of the Neo-MalthusianLeague, which justified birth control chiefly through an economic doctrinethat attributed poverty to uncontrolled reproduction and large families.Some feminists and other social reformers objected to the class bias that wasbuilt into a doctrine that blamed poverty on the poor themselves rather thanon social conditions. As the Fabian socialist Maude Pember Reeves remarked,if the poor had only the number of children that they could afford, the resultcould only be “the dying out of all poor people.”60 Others feared that theuse of mechanical contraception might provide a “morally degrading”encouragement to male lust and self-indulgence.61

Therefore, only a few feminists supported the efforts of activists to popu-larize birth control among British working-class people in the prewar years.62

These women and men modified Neo-Malthusian ideology to emphasize thewell-being of families rather than the dismal science of economics. Drawingon the results of recent research in sexology, they suggested that chastity wasas unnatural for women as for men. “Let us admit our joy and gratitude forthe beauty and pleasure of sex,” wrote Stella Browne in the Freewoman in1912, and Jane Hume Clapperton declared that “the average woman hassexual needs of commanding importance to be met and satisfied.”63 Evenmore important was the happiness of children: “it is the birthright of the

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child,” wrote Charles Drysdale, “to have been longed for by his motherbeforehand.”64 And that of the couple: “sexual and parental love,” saidClapperton, “is bursting into fuller life. It is radiating forth new influ-ences . . . and preparing for the reign of universal brotherhood.”65 However,the efforts of these and other activists, such as Drysdale’s partner AliceVickery Drysdale, to organize women in support of birth control provedunsuccessful in the prewar years.

In the Netherlands the birth-control movement gained a degree of legitimacyin the 1890s that was unmatched in any other country. The historian HugoRöling attributes this success to the weakness of populationist movements ina country where birthrates were still robust. In 1880 the newly qualifiedphysician Aletta Jacobs traveled to London, where she met Bradlaugh,Besant, and the other Neo-Malthusians who (as she later recollected)“had caused an uproar in the sanctimonious England of the day.”66 In 1882,having learned that a German physician, Dr. Mensinga, had developed abarrier contraceptive for women, Jacobs opened a clinic to prescribe thedevice—the first birth-control clinic in the world. The clinic chiefly servedpoor women. Having joined the Dutch Neo-Malthusian League (Nieuw-Malthusiaansche Bond, founded in 1881), Jacobs promoted contraception asa means to the happiness and well-being of mothers, couples, and their care-fully nurtured children. “No child should come into the world,” she wrote,“whose coming is not deeply desired and joyously awaited.”67 She opposedthe common practice of abortion, which she hoped that the spread ofcontraceptive technology would make obsolete.

Jacobs became a leader of the fledgling Dutch feminist movement, whichfor a while actively supported Neo-Malthusianism. Wilhelmina Drucker, theeditor of the journal Evolutie, cited scientific research to prove that bothwomen and men had sexual needs. Rejecting abstinence as a means ofcontraception, she considered it unfair to expect “two beings who havesworn to live their lives together and to share everything, except the mostintimate companionship, that unites them with the sweetest bond . . . Whata mockery of marriage!”68 In the Netherlands, the Neo-Malthusian Leaguebecame an officially recognized organization in 1895.

Emilie Claeys, a textile worker from Ghent who became a leader of thesocialist woman’s movement and the editor of its journal De Vrouw, began in1893 to inform Belgian readers of the work of the Dutch birth controllers.By 1909, clinics sponsored by the Neo-Malthusian League in three Belgiancities—Malines, Antwerp, and Louvain—prescribed contraceptives, gaveadvice, and distributed literature.69

But after the turn of the century, fears of declining birthrates, especiallyamong social elites, increased opposition to Neo-Malthusianism in bothHolland and Belgium. Jacobs herself, who had become a prominent suffrageleader, withdrew from her public role as a birth-control advocate for fear ofdiscrediting the suffrage movement. The Dutch women’s movement grew toinclude a more diverse constituency that included religious women whofeared that technological contraception would degrade women by making

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them “the playthings of men.” The leaders of the Malthusian League,Johannes Rutgers and his wife Marie Rutgers-Hoitsema, responded with themedical argument that sexual abstinence caused mental and physical illness inboth sexes.70 However, new laws that were passed in 1911 that regulated thesale of contraception and broadened laws against abortion met with littlefeminist protest.71 In Belgium, the passage of a similar bill proposed in 1912was prevented by the outbreak of war in 1914.72

In France, the majority of feminists strongly supported maternalist viewsof sexual morality. Those who campaigned for the recognition of maternity as“a social function” promoted voluntary motherhood, but not family limita-tion. As we have already seen, many French feminists held men responsiblefor low birthrates, and insisted that women, when given the rights of citizen-ship, would become willing mothers.73 Like their British counterparts, theybelieved that reproductive decisions should be made by women. “Womendream of an ideal union—to be united in ideas, in supreme thought—tobe the mistress of the mind of man, to direct him,” wrote the influentialintellectual Céline Renooz, and Lydie Martial likewise declared that “the enlightened woman” (“la femme consciente”) was the “natural sexualregulator . . . who knows how to endow sexual life with order and temperancefor the happiness of both sexes.”74

Swiss activists, who were closely allied with their French colleagues, tooksimilar positions. Emma Piecynska served with the legal scholar Louis Bridelon the editorial board of a journal entitled Social Morality (Morale Sociale),which in 1901 published an article by Johannes Rutgers, the head of theDutch Neo-Malthusian Society. A response to Rutgers by Piecynska expressedthe journal’s editorial position on the vexed question of birth control.Though she conceded that contraception might help mothers who were sick,exhausted, or victims of abuse, she asserted that most women had seriousreservations about practices that seemed to affirm male supremacy in its mostodious form. Piecynska protested that women were “indignant about theprerogatives exercised by male sensuality over the freedom, the health, andthe entire destiny of women.” She proposed an educational program for bothmen and women that emphasized the advantages of sexual self-restraint—aprogram for which her own course had provided a model—as a solution tothe problem of unwanted pregnancy.75

In the French-speaking world, birth control found its chief supportersamong anarchists such as Paul Robin, who founded the League for HumanRegeneration in 1896.76 Female activists who aspired to respectabilityremained aloof from this group because of its radical leadership. Neo-Malthusianism attracted only a small group of French feminists, but thesewere among the movement’s most original thinkers. They shifted theiremphasis from the economic theories that fascinated their male colleagues tothe liberation of mothers, the health of children, and the harmony of families.Nelly Roussel denied that declining birthrates were a sign of national weaknessand declared that they showed progress toward a higher level of civilizationin which mothers were free and children were wanted and cared for. Among

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the bravest and most isolated apostles of birth control was the physicianMadeleine Pelletier, who asserted that women also had sexual needs: “thesexual instinct also speaks in her.”77 Pelletier, who was of working-classorigin, defended the right to abortion—a practice that was widespreadamong working-class women but considered by middle-class reformers to becrude and repulsive.78 Pelletier demanded the legalization of abortion in thefirst trimester of pregnancy.79 She looked forward to a new form of the familyin which “the raising of children will be the responsibility of both parents.”80

Roussel, herself the mother of three children, harshly criticized malesexual behavior: that of the worker who “after a drunken binge impregnateshis wife without any thought for the future” and that of the wealthyman about town.81 But she declared that “love is a noble and complex emotion . . . and feminism must rehabilitate it.”82 And Gabrielle Petit, editorof the Neo-Malthusian journal La Femme Affranchie, predicted that if thefather was “a beloved, well-chosen companion,” he would “cooperate withthe mother, with all his heart, in the upbringing and education of theircherished children.”83

But it was in Germany that the new ideology of birth control and sexualreform found its strongest support among feminists, for reasons that wereboth organizational and intellectual. The BfM, which by comparison to theFrench and British Neo-Malthusian groups was a very large organization (atits height in 1908 it boasted about 3800 members), included many promi-nent intellectuals. As we have seen, Germany was a center of research insexology, and many leaders of this field belonged to the BfM and wrote forits journal. In addition, birth control was debated in the German socialistparty, where the ideas of the French anarchists had won wide acceptanceamong the rank and file, though not among most of the leaders.84 TheGerman socialist Adele Schreiber, for example, was an admirer of NellyRoussel, whom she sought out in Paris in 1910.85

Helene Stöcker melded these diverse intellectual currents into a newideology that combined the emancipation of women, the pursuit of eugenicquality, and an egalitarian ideal of parenthood. Motherhood, she insisted,must be the free choice of a free woman and it must enhance rather thanarrest the development of her personality. Sexual gratification and love,moreover, were as important as reproduction. “We will not allow ourselves tobe deprived of the love of men,” she insisted, “or of the love of children.”Stöcker hoped that shared sexual pleasure would bring an end to genderconflict, and exhorted men and women to “work together toward the devel-opment of both, so that man and woman do not face each other as enemies,but begin to understand that one sex cannot exist without the other.”86

Although Stöcker’s radical ideology was never endorsed by the majorityof German feminists, it briefly gained considerable visibility within theirumbrella organization, the League of German Women’s Associations (BundDeutscher Frauenvereine, or BDF). From 1899 until 1910 Marie Stritt,who was a member of the BfM and a birth-control activist, served as presi-dent of the BDF. In 1908 the BDF’s Committee on Legal Reform, also

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headed by Stritt, drew up a general proposal for the reform of the criminallaw code of the German Empire, where access to contraception was limitedby obscenity laws and abortion was forbidden. The proposal includedthe complete elimination of penalties for abortion (Paragraph 218 of thecriminal code). The debate on this proposal at the annual meeting of theBDF in 1908 pitted maternalists against birth controllers. Opponents ofthe proposal asserted that the legalization of abortion would deliver womenover to the rapacious male sex drive. Throughout nature, objected the anti-prostitution crusader Katharina Scheven, the sexual act was intended forreproduction, and only the human species had diverted it from its properpurpose and made it “a source of physical pleasure, completely devoid ofconsequences and responsibility.”87 In defense of the proposal, the legalexpert Camilla Jellinek claimed right to “the freedom of the personality, towhich above all belongs the disposal over one’s own body.”88 But Jellinek didnot rely on this controversial claim, but hastened to add that the nation, too,would be strengthened by the birth of children who were wanted, healthy,and carefully nurtured.

The BDF, which had recently admitted a large and conservative religiousorganization, the League of Protestant Women (Deutsch-EvangelischeFrauenbund), to membership, voted down the resolution of the LegalCommittee—an action that has sometimes been interpreted as a triumph ofconservatism that was consolidated by the succession of the moderateGertrud Bäumer as president in 1910.89 But in its willingness even to discussthis issue, the BDF was unique among all contemporary national feministorganizations. Moreover, the majority did not uphold the existing prohibi-tion, but voted to legalize abortion in cases of rape or fetal defect or toprotect the life of the mother—indications that they proposed should beestablished by a committee upon which women were represented.90

The compromise resolution, reported by Marie Stritt in person, was receivedwith approval by the League of Austrian Women’s Associations (BundÖsterreichischer Frauenvereine).91 Of course, German lawmakers did not acton this proposal. The leaders of the BfM continued to support birth control,in 1911 by attending the International Neo-Malthusian Congress, and in1912 by changing the subtitle of its periodical, The New Generation (Dieneue Generation), to read “The Publication of the International Associationfor the Protection of Mothers and Sexual Reform and the InternationalNeo-Malthusian Committee.”92

The influence of the BfM spread to Scandinavia, where Frida Steenhoffheaded a Swedish branch and Katti Anker Møller tried unsuccessfully tofound one in Norway. Møller declared in 1910 that the use of contraceptionfor family planning would ensure the happiness of families and the rightof all children “to expect that they are welcome.”93 But she found littlesupport for this position from the mainstream feminists of her country,the Norwegian National Women’s Council, who agreed to publish hertextbook for women on sex education in 1915 but deleted the chapter oncontraception.94

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In the area of birth control, as of sex education, maternalist idealsof chastity and self-restraint were gradually superseded by more scientific theoriesthat affirmed sex as a natural need and glorified heterosexual love as the rightof both sexes. But this raised urgent ethical and philosophical questions.Maternalists had assumed that gender alone conferred upon women themoral authority to guide sexual relationships. Because the woman could“never forget the final end of sexual union, the child,” wrote EmmaPiecynska, she was “more likely to take a sane and moral view of the conjugalunion.” And many combined feminism with strong religious convictions.“What woman wills, God wills,” concluded Piecynska.95 But a more scientificand secular view of sexuality discredited claims both to innate female virtue andto religious authority. By what ethical principles, then, would sexuality andreproduction be guided? Helene Stöcker remarked that the “old tables ofthe law are broken, but the new tables are only half written.”96 Could newethical guidelines be derived from science itself? Some feminists soughtthe answer to this question in the field of eugenics—a problematic quest thatwe will now consider.

“A C A S”: F E

In her international best seller, The Century of the Child, Ellen Key pro-claimed the “right of the child to choose its parents.”97 Key and othersclaimed that traditional religious morality had sacrificed the health and well-being of children as well as women to the Moloch of patriarchal marriage.The “new morality,” she said, “must deem no common living of men andwomen immoral, except that which gives occasion to a weak offspringand produces bad conditions for the development of that offspring.”98 Thisargument, which was widely used by feminists of the prewar era, shifted thebasis of sexual morality from religious conceptions of sin to scientific normsof prudent reproduction and sound nurture.

The new vocabulary of science reframed an older issue—the moral andlegal basis of marriage—and was used to justify a wide variety of positions.Some highly visible figures criticized prevailing customs that encouragedyoung people and their parents to value the financial and social status overthe health and fitness of the prospective spouse—a custom that oftenpromoted dysgenic unions. And they added that the fit, among them manyindependent professional women, were often deterred from matrimony.Some drew the conclusion that maternity should be separated from marriage.The declining birthrates of the Western countries, speculated the Austriantheorist Grete Meisel-Hess, signaled a “sexual crisis” which would initiatea new moral order that condoned temporary sexual relationships and child-bearing by unmarried women.99 George Bernard Shaw’s play GettingMarried featured the suggestively named Lesbia, an independent spinsterwho (for unspecified reasons) disdained heterosexual love. “I ought to havechildren,” she declared. “I should be a good mother to children. . . . But the

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country tells me that I cant have a child without a man in the house, so I tellthe country that it will have to do without my children.”100

But most feminists, though willing to countenance the single-parentfamily under some circumstances, were unwilling to accept it as an ideal. Touse a man as a mere means to the end of reproduction, said Ellen Key, was anexploitative and vindictive action that would unfairly deprive the child ofa father.101 The mother and her well-born child, said Helene Stöcker, coulddevelop optimally only amid the “full, warm, rich life” of the well-matchedcouple.102

While accepting and even glorifying marriage, however, large groups ofactivist women argued for significant changes in its ethical and legal basis—changes that would protect the health of mothers and children against theconsequences of male vices. This agenda was dramatized in one of the era’smost popular plays, Les Avariés (The Syphilitics) by the French playwrightEugène Brieux.103 Censored in Paris while still in rehearsal in 1901, the playwas later a hit not only in France but in several other countries, includingBritain, where it was given the English title Damaged Goods. The protago-nist, George, was informed by his physician on the eve of his marriage that hehad contracted syphilis and was therefore morally obliged to call off hiswedding at least temporarily. “I will tell you this,” said the physician, “if youmarry before three or four years have elapsed, you will be a criminal.”104

When George, unwilling to violate social convention, went ahead with themarriage and infected his wife, his child, and the child’s hired wet-nurse, hisfather-in-law expostulated that “the law provides no arms against the manwho takes an innocent, confiding young girl in sound health, knowinglybefouls her with the heritage of his debauchery, and makes her the motherof a wretched mite whose future is such that those who love it most donot know whether they had better pray for its life or for its immediatedeliverance!”105

This play was received enthusiastically by some feminists, including theBritish suffragette leader Christabel Pankhurst. She acclaimed Brieux forsupporting the central assertion of her pamphlet, The Great Scourge and Howto End It, that marriage often put women in danger, but added that “awoman’s play would be stronger still.”106 Many women activists presentedmen as villains and women as their innocent victims. Maria Montessorilamented the plight of the woman who had “neither the knowledge nor thepower to avoid being made the instrument for the birth of weakly diseased ordegenerate children,” and charged that the subordination of women inmarriage was an “enormous crime against the species and against humanity.”107

Birth controllers justified women’s use of contraception as a means of resist-ing abusive or diseased husbands. Women, said Roussel, had the right todecide “if and when they will become mothers, and any time that they are notable, without undue suffering, to bring into the world children who arephysically and morally sound . . . they have the right, I would almost saythe duty, not to bear children.”108

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But the emphasis shifted from the victimization of the mother to the jointresponsibility of the couple. If the production of sick or defective offspringwas no longer simply a misfortune but the predictable outcome of imprudentsexual behavior, then the mother too must be held accountable. ThePortuguese League of Republican Women (Liga Republicana das MulheresPortuguesas) mixed condemnation with pity: women who “had children byalcoholics do not deserve the name of mothers; they are ignorant or criminal,unless deceived.”109 And some legal reformers advocated laws penalizingsexual irresponsibility in men and women alike. For example, in countrieswith police-regulated prostitution, they often recommended that policeaction against prostitutes should be replaced with gender-neutral laws againstthe spread of venereal disease by anyone, male or female. The Scandinaviancountries—Norway in 1906 and Denmark in 1912—were the first to passlaws that criminalized the knowing transmission of venereal diseases.110

In their debates on these controversial measures, feminists struggled tofind the proper balance between the welfare of society and the liberty ofthe individual. In Gemany, the BDF included a law that criminalized theknowing transmission of venereal disease in its proposals for the reform ofthe German criminal code in 1909. But this proposal met with criticism fromthe organization’s leading legal expert, Camilla Jellinek, who objected that itwould actually work to the disadvantage of women. She pointed out thatwomen would be more hesitant than men to bring lawsuits for fear of dam-aging publicity, and that prostitutes were less likely to sue their customersthan to be sued by them. “Naturally, women have a keen interest in measuresto promote public welfare and public health,” she concluded, “but whenthese come into conflict with . . . the preservation of women’s dignity, thenwe are not called upon to sacrifice the latter for the former.”111 KatharinaScheven, a conservative social-purity activist, acknowledged that the lawswould be difficult to enforce but defended them nonetheless because of theirdeterrent effect on unscrupulous men. The proposed law was turned downby the governmental committee charged with the reform of the legal code in1909 because, the members objected, it would encourage blackmail and falseaccusations.112

Among feminists in several countries, the most popular eugenic measurewas the requirement of a health certificate for marriage. On this issue someFrench feminists were far in advance of their country’s Eugenics Society,which did not lobby for a premarital health certificate until 1926.113 In 1896,the International Feminist Conference held in Paris passed a resolution, intro-duced by the French participant Marya Chéliga, that “in order to protect thefamily against the horrible scourge of hereditary and contagious diseases,future spouses should be required to present a health certificate at the cityhall.”114 In 1908, the Stavanger branch of the Norwegian Women’s NationalCouncil sent a petition to the Storthing (Parliament) requesting a debate onthe issue.115 As in other areas of marriage and family law, the Scandinaviancountries led the way. The draft of a new uniform marriage law, to which

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women’s organizations made an important contribution, required healthcertificates for male and female candidates for marriage and prohibited marriageto those afflicted with a few diseases.116

Contrary to the picture of eugenics given by many historians, who emphasizeits coercive aspects, most feminist legislative proposals avoided compulsionand emphasized voluntarism and individual responsibility. In 1906, Ellen Keyurged prospective spouses to obtain a certificate because “in the interest ofthe individual and of the human race we can demand that no one be forcedto make an uninformed choice.”117 But she recommended that the certificatebe shared by the physician only with the couple themselves, and that thedecision to marry be left to them. The International Women’s Congress in1913, held in Paris, recommended against making the certificate publicbecause the revelation of private health data might lead to many forms ofdiscrimination.118 Others, including the members of the League for theProtection of Mothers, strongly encouraged the certificate on a voluntarybasis but opposed any prohibition against marriage, which might onlyencourage the more promiscuous reproduction of the “unfit.”119

But some feminists also supported coercive measures. The British “MentalDeficiency Act” was passed by Parliament in 1913. The Act, which wasformulated and supported by the Eugenics Education Society and severalcivic organizations, provided that any person defined by two physicians as“feeble-minded” or as “mentally deficient” might, with the consent ofparents or guardians, be confined in an institution for as long as its directorsconsidered necessary. As Matthew Thomson points out, this measure hadmany female supporters, who combined philanthropic concern for a vulnera-ble population with eugenically based opposition to the transmission of traitsthat were assumed to be hereditary.120 Its chief impact was on the poor—whose behavior was more likely to come to the attention of the police andsocial agencies—and specifically on the female poor. Single mothers who hadborne children while on public assistance were classified as “feeble-minded.”

Some feminists opposed the law because it was damaging to women.Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, editor of the suffrage periodical Votes forWomen, objected that the powers conferred by the Bill “will be usedwith greater ruthlessness and responsibility toward women . . . than towardmen.” Some also pointed out the law’s class bias: Dora Marsden, editor ofThe Freewoman, called the Eugenics Education Society “a danger to thecommunity” and the Bill “a rascally conspiracy against the poor.”121 Butbecause the objects of the Bill were more often stereotyped as dangerousmales—criminals, alcoholics, and sex offenders—other organs of feministopinion supported it. The suffrage periodical The Vote called for the segrega-tion of “all confirmed drunkards and lunatics.”122 Such a measure was alsoproposed to the League of German Women’s Organizations in 1908 by thesocialist Adele Schreiber, but was not incorporated into the organization’slegislative program until the postwar years.123

Let us return to the question raised in the introduction to this chapter:could the liberty of the individual mother be reconciled with the interest of

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society in a healthy and flourishing population? The use of eugenic theory tosolve this problem was ultimately unsuccessful. Rather than a right, eugenicsconstituted reproductive liberty as a privilege from which an under-class of“unqualified” individuals—women as well as men—was excluded. And thesejudgments, though backed by the authority of science, were in fact based oncriteria—such as dubious theories of heredity or measures of intelligence—that we know now to be arbitrary. But in the prewar era, when eugeniclegislation existed more at the level of rhetoric than of reality, its dangers weredifficult to foresee. They would become apparent in the interwar years.

B S

The ideology of the citizen-mother was based on a kind of social contract, inwhich women’s provision of citizens to the state was rewarded by the grant-ing of political rights and various kinds of support. In the immediate prewaryears, feminists objected that the state had not fulfilled its side of the bargain.Some called for a “birth-strike,” or a strategic refusal of service to states thatwere still so resistant to gender equality.

The “birth-strike” (or grève des ventres) was first advocated by theFrench Neo-Malthusians, who since the 1890s had urged workers to refuseto produce more human material to be consumed by industry and war.124

Nelly Roussel gave their message a feminist twist. Women, she swore in1903, would no longer produce children for a society that offered themnothing but scorn and degradation. “We will put them on notice, the strikehas been declared . . . in the circle, still narrow, of those who think andunderstand, but it will spread further.”125 In 1904 Roussel, a professionalactress, attracted wide public attention as the star of her own dramaticportrayal of the birth strike, a play entitled Revolt (Par la révolte). Roussel’scharacter, symbolically named Eve, declared to a figure representing“Society” that she would perform “no work without a salary! I am weary ofbearing ingrates,” she continued. “The tree of life refuses its fruit to theexecutioners.”126

From Norway, Katti Anker Møller predicted that “the expanding birth-strike, that has already started in the upper classes, is the vice that will forcestate authorities to give in to our claims.”127 And from Austria, HenrietteHerzfelder stated that “if men had to bear children under these conditions,they would long ago have resorted to the means that they use to fight for bet-ter living conditions—the mass strike. And would it be a matter for surpriseor condemnation if women, too, planned a strike?”128

British suffragists claimed that the “strike” had already begun. The declin-ing birthrates of Western countries were identified by the editors of The Voteas an “outward sign of revolt against the degradation of the highest and holi-est of functions.”129 At the height of the militant suffrage movement,Christabel Pankhurst called on women not only to refuse childbearing but toavoid all sexual contact with men, 70 to 80 percent of whom she claimedwere infected with venereal disease.130 In 1914, the Women’s Freedom

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League, a suffrage organization that favored non-violence, discussed newtactics to be used in the struggle. Some members seriously suggested distrib-uting contraceptives among working-class women. “We have got at leasttwenty members who are ready to do it. . . . The real force here rests with thewomen, if you refuse to have children, the country is powerless,” urged amember, Mrs. Huntsman. Others agreed on the goal, but rejected the means.“The only right way to limit the birth-rate is by having no relationships withmen,” argued one. “Otherwise you are giving people opportunitiesfor unlimited license . . . We object to prostitution, are we going to makeprostitutes of women, of married women?”131

In Germany, the initiative came from two socialist physicians, who in 1913urged the women of the proletariat to refuse childbearing until the stateimproved social and medical services to families. The leaders of the SocialDemocratic Party (SPD), including prominent women such as Clara Zetkinand Rosa Luxemburg, had rejected Neo-Malthusianism from the beginningbecause it placed the needs of the individual above the need of the workingclass for increased numbers.132 They immediately condemned the birth-strike, arguing that the proletariat needed “soldiers for the revolution.” Thestrike was more popular among the rank and file, who turned out in greatnumbers to discuss and support it. “Comrade Zetkin does not really understandthe living conditions of the poor,” said a speaker at a mass meeting. “I advisethem to go ahead and strike.”133 But the opposition of the SPD leadershipconsigned the movement to oblivion.

The freedom to control fertility was at the heart of feminist aspirations tobe both a mother and a human being. The most conspicuous rhetorical strat-egy of prewar feminists presented gender equality in such areas as politics,economic life, and marriage less as an intrinsic right than as a reward for aservice. This service was motherhood, the production of citizens. As manyhistorians have pointed out, this was in some ways a productive strategy,which by linking the cause of women to the welfare of the nation initiated thefirst stage in the development of the modern welfare state. Changes in lawsregarding marriage and unmarried parenthood, new forms of state provisionfor mothers and children, and the first discussions of reproductive rightswere among this era’s most important developments. But as the birth-strikersasserted, these gains were limited. And the definition of motherhoodas a public contribution had raised some new threats to the liberty ofindividuals—threats that Helene Stöcker was one of the few feminists to rec-ognize. Criticizing her colleagues who regarded “children, even in thewomb, as the property of the state,” Stöcker asserted the primacy of the indi-vidual: “the state exists for the sake of the individual, not the individual forthe state.”134 And Cicely Hamilton, a British suffragette and unregeneratespinster, noted that her contemporaries had put the cart before the horse.Women would not be given equality out of respect for motherhood—a func-tion that they had little choice but to exercise. Only when women gainedequality would motherhood, as the free choice of a free women, deserverespect. Until then, Hamilton saw nothing particularly distinguished about

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mere breeding. “After all, it is not upon the performance of a purely animalfunction that a human being should found his or her title to respect; ifwoman is reverenced only because she reproduces her kind, a stillhigher meed of reverence is due to the rabbit.”135 But amid the patriotichysteria that would soon greet the outbreak of war, such thoughts were outof season.

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Britannia protecting her children; an advertisement for National Baby Week, first held in Britainin 1917. (Hill Siffken: 1914–18 (?). Poster archive: Hoover Institution.)


“T V B” :

M, C,

S W, –

“T G B W”

In 1900, Ellen Key embodied the new century as “a naked child, who comesdown to earth, but turns back in terror at the sight of the globe bristling withweapons, which leaves him not even a small patch of ground where he can setfoot.” Key hoped that “the new generation, its care, and its rearing,” wouldbecome “the central task of society,” and that the infant century might thus bepreserved from the looming danger of war.1 But was peace really in the inter-est of mothers and children? Key’s worst fears were greatly surpassed by the warthat broke out in 1914. And it was in wartime, so many observers remarked,that the value of children was truly appreciated. “The war with its terrible tollof young life has taught us the value of babies,” wrote Maude Royden, aBritish reformer, suffragist, and theologian, in 1918. “They used to be called‘encumbrances’; now we are beginning to reckon them up as jewels.”2

Feminists in all countries hoped that the war would indeed result in anenhanced respect for mothers as well as children. For several decades they hadinsisted that motherhood was as vital a contribution to the life of the nationas men’s military service—a claim that wartime conditions seemed tovalidate. Now more than ever the state depended on mothers for its survival.And considering the progress made in maternal and child welfare, somehistorians have concluded that (in the words of Deborah Dwork) war was“good for babies and other young children.”3 But we have seen that feministsaimed not only to provide practical assistance to mothers and children, buteven more to enable mothers to become free individuals. And though some-times beneficial in a material sense, wartime measures eroded the individualliberties of mothers by instrumentalizing reproduction in the service of mili-tary objectives. After sketching in the historical context, this chapter will lookat three feminist debates—on the wartime role of mothers, on the role ofthe state in encouraging, compelling, or forbidding motherhood, and on therevival of maternalism in women’s peace movements. The focus will be onthe belligerent nations, particularly on France, Britain, and Germany.


In the prewar era, a certain ambivalence about the militarization ofmotherhood was already apparent in feminists’ rhetoric. To be sure, the com-parison of reproduction to military service had become a familiar, indeed ahackneyed trope. Since the late nineteenth century, feminists across the polit-ical spectrum had responded to the argument that only those who fought todefend their country truly deserved to govern it by pointing out that the pro-duction and rearing of citizens was an equally valuable contribution. Patriotssuch as the suffragist Hubertine Auclert claimed in 1908 that “the law thatrepeatedly demands nine months (of service) of women is more demandingthan the law that requires two years of men, and many more women die on abed of pain to create life than men on the battlefield to destroy it.”4 Evenpacifists, among them the Swedish Ellen Key, called motherhood a “femalemilitary obligation.”5

But when they came up with more practical proposals for a female serviceobligation, few feminists suggested the recruitment of young women intomotherhood. To be sure, most believed that the female military obligationmust be gender-appropriate, and the suggestion of the French physicianMadeleine Pelletier that women should fight alongside men found littlesupport.6 Female military service, affirmed the League of Austrian Women’sOrganizations in 1915, must never require the “training of Amazons.”7 Butproponents of a female draft nonetheless hoped to give women a share in theopportunities that military service was said to provide for men—to broadensocial awareness through contact with age-mates of all classes and regions,and to learn skills that would be useful in later life. And such a purpose couldnot be served by tying young women to maternity. In a debate held by theGerman League of Women’s Organizations in 1912 (the proceedings werepublished in 1916) the reformer Anna Pappritz asserted that motherhood initself could never be a constructive form of service, for the woman who wasconfined to the household could not rise above “family egotism” to becomean effective citizen.8

French women who aspired to military service likewise declined toassociate it primarily with motherhood. The legendary Spartan mother—whoadmonished her soldier son to return from battle as a victor carrying hisshield or as a corpse carried on it—was not their chosen role model. Theysettled on nursing, an occupation that combined maternal nurture withpatriotic courage, as women’s most appropriate wartime activity.9 In Britain,the definition of motherhood as a form of military service seems also tohave been confined to rhetoric. With the formation of the Volunteer AidDetachments under the auspices of the Red Cross, young British women com-mitted themselves to wartime service as nurses. This service, they stipulated,was to be voluntary.10

When war broke out in 1914, the majority of feminists sought to turn thecrisis to the advantage of their cause by showing that women were ready andwilling to take on the responsibilities of citizenship. Everywhere they aban-doned struggles for suffrage and for other rights. In an outburst of patrioticenthusiasm, women’s organizations resolved to forget their differences and

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to join in their own version of the Burgfrieden or Union Sacrée declared bypolitical leaders, who called on citizens of all political parties to rally aroundthe national flag. In Germany the National Women’s Service (NationalerFrauendienst), in France the French Women’s Alliance (Éffort fémininfrançais) in Britain a diverse group of old and new organizations recruitedwomen into the war effort.11 In 1914, Italian women formed a NationalWomen’s Committee (Comitato nazionale femminile), which promised to“prepare all women who are fit for work to assume public and private offices,so that in case of war the social and economic life of the country will notcome to a standstill.”12

When their expectations of a quick and victorious conclusion to theconflict were disappointed, government leaders who had at first contemptu-ously rejected women’s offers of service now mobilized them to do the workof production. And feminist leaders were given a conspicuous role in recruit-ing these workers. In Britain, the representatives of several suffrage organiza-tions attended National Conference on War Service for Women called in1915 by Arthur Henderson, a Labour Party head of the War Cabinet.13

Meanwhile, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst turned their organizationaltalents to patriotic demonstrations. “The British Lion is awake, so is theLioness,” read a newsreel headline.14

Gertrud Bäumer, the head of the League of German Women’s Associations(Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, or BDF) coordinated the National Women’sService, which engaged women across the political spectrum in the provisionof child-care, employment agencies, and other social services to the femaledependents and children of service men.15 Two other high-profile feministleaders were appointed to lead the Women’s Bureau (Frauenreferat) in theMinistry of War: Marie-Elisabeth Lüders as head, and Agnes von Harnack asher deputy. Later Lüders headed a National Committee for Women’s WarWork (Nationaler Ausschuss für Frauenarbeit im Krieg).16 In France, feministleaders likewise participated in a Committee on Women’s Work, attached tothe Ministry of Munitions.17 “French women in wartime. What they aredoing, and what is being done for them,” read a banner headline in the fem-inist movement’s chief newspaper, La Française, in May 1915.18 An editorialin the periodical Der Bund, the organ of the League of Austrian Women’sOrganization, declared that “what millions of women have done behind thefront since the beginning of the war, day in and day out, is as important andindispensable for the course of the war as the sacrifice of millions of namelessheroes at the front.”19

In Britain, women’s total workforce participation increased from about25 percent to 47 percent, and their share in traditionally male industriesincreased still more: in building 320 percent, in metal work 249 percent.20 InFrance, where about 30 percent of the workforce in 1914 was female; thefigure increased to about 40 percent in 1918.21 Italian women employed inwar-related industries increased in number from 23,000 in 1915 to about200,000 in 1917, and they also appeared in new roles as streetcar conduc-tors, bank tellers, and post office employees.22 In Germany, where most of

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the wartime workers had previously held other jobs, the historian Ute Danielestimates that the increase in the total number of employed women was onlyabout 17 percent.23 Whatever the facts, contemporary observers perceivedthat the female workforce had increased enormously.

And of course, many of these workers were mothers. The feminist pressin all countries spoke optimistically of the new respect for women who cheer-fully accepted the double burden of work and family: Jane Misme, editor ofLa Française, reported that a boss had praised his new employees. “Withsome exceptions, they are wonderful,” he said, “After ten hours of work perday, they find ways to keep a perfect house.”24 However, the reality of manymothers’ lives hardly bore out such idealized reports. Despite official expres-sions of support for working mothers, their well-being was often sacrificed tothe needs of war production. Most legislation designed to protect maternalhealth was suspended for the duration. As the war went on, shortages ofmany goods caused hardships that often interfered with the work of mothers.British women complained of the hours that they were forced to wait in lineto buy scarce foodstuffs.25 Male and female workers in both France andBritain protested such shortages through a wave of strikes in 1917.26

But the hardships suffered by the populations of these countries,where child and female mortality rates hardly changed during the war years,were slight compared to those that beset families in Germany and Austria.A blockade of the German coastline by the British navy interdicted shipmentof food, medicine, and other vital goods to these central European nations,and resulted in widespread hunger and increased maternal and child mortal-ity. When money lost much of its value, barter, foraging, and theft rather thanwage work became the most effective means of survival of many working-class urban families. The breakdown of law and order in many cities beganthe process of de-stabilization that led to the fall of the German and Austrianmonarchies.27

Governments recognized women’s patriotism by awarding them medalsand other public honors. But among their fellow workers, women’s move-ment into male jobs often attracted more resentment than praise. Tradeunions made clear that the workforce advances made by women were onlytemporary, to be reversed when the return of the men allowed wives andmothers to return to more appropriate domestic duties. Although changes inwomen’s employment patterns were in fact quite limited, they were perceivedas a catastrophic reversal of gender roles. Would motherhood and motherli-ness, those essential female qualities, be destroyed by the war? Hands “coars-ened in munitions factories,” lamented the British poet Mary GabrielleCollins, were better suited to “guide the rosy teat swelling with milk, to theeager mouth of the suckling babe.”28

Along with the pressure to work came the pressure to reproduce. Existingnatalist organizations expanded and new ones were founded. 29 French post-cards that were very risqué by the standards of this era equated reproductionwith war: one card pictured three babies hanging by their swaddling bandsfrom a soldier’s bayonet over the caption, “A good thrust”; and another,

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which portrayed an obviously pregnant woman, exhorted women to “workfor France.”30 Among the measures that were designed to support childbear-ing were dependency allowances and social services for the families ofsoldiers—reforms that will be examined more thoroughly later in thischapter.

However, such measures could do little to reverse the devastating impactof total war on reproduction and family life. As Ute Daniel has pointed out,the absence of fathers, the postponement of marriages, the separation ofmarried couples, and the economic hardships endured by many householdsdisrupted the traditional reproductive and socializing functions of the family.Birthrates were the lowest ever recorded.31 The forced separation of couplesbrought a rise in all forms of non-marital sexuality, including prostitution,and rates of illegitimacy, venereal disease, divorce, and abortion increased. InGermany, an increase in juvenile delinquency was attributed both to povertyand to affluence—to the shortages that gave rise to petty thievery, and tothe enhanced earning power of male adolescents, who in the absence ofadult men found both new job opportunities and freedom from paternaldiscipline.32 All of these developments were interpreted as signs of a socialpathology that called for the enhanced supervision and surveillance of privatelife, especially that of women. Police forces controlled the sexual conduct ofsoldiers’ wives; infant care agencies sent “home visitors” to check up on newmothers and their babies; new rules on the sale and consumption of alcoholregulated the leisure-time activities of women.33

At the beginning of the war feminist movements split. While the majoritysupported the war in the hopes that women’s patriotism would finally earnthem the rights that they had sought for decades, a minority in every countryjoined the peace movement which was inaugurated by the InternationalCongress of Women in the Hague in 1915—a meeting of women from bothbelligerent and neutral nations—and continued by an InternationalCommittee of Women for Permanent Peace (later re-named the Women’sInternational League for Peace and Freedom).34 Most accounts of wartimefeminism differentiate sharply between patriots and pacifists. But, asSusan Grayzel points out, these groups’ view of motherhood had much incommon. Both defined “motherliness,” whether expressed through warlikeenthusiasm or nonviolent compassion, as a defining female attribute.35 Bothpraised women’s sacrificial service to the war effort, hoped that this servicewould be respected and rewarded, and were frustrated—even enraged—bythe way it was belittled by political and military leaders. And all shared in thegrief that wartime separation, anxiety, and bereavement brought to civilianseverywhere. Thus wartime discourses on motherhood often mixed exaltationwith indignation, triumph with mourning, patriotism with dissent.

“T M W F N”

In the first years of the war, most feminists in all the belligerent countriesaffirmed that motherhood was a form of national service. “We will be the

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mothers that the fatherland needs!” wrote the German socialist HenrietteFürth in 1915. Women’s groups of all shades of opinion greatly expandedtheir charitable work for maternal and child welfare, now often with supportfrom private donors and local governments. To name only a few examples:French women volunteered their services to the League to Combat InfantMortality (Ligue contre la mortalité infantile), which sponsored urban pure-milk stations, child-care centers, and kindergartens; German groups from theradical League for the Protection of Mothers (Bund für Mutterschutz, orBfM) to the conservative Patriotic Women’s Associations expanded theirservices to families; British volunteers worked with the Red Cross Society, theBelgian Refugees’ Fund, and the Soldiers and Sailors Dependents’ Fund tohelp women and children in need.36 When Italy entered the war in 1915,women’s committees in many cities cooperated under the leadership of aNational Women’s Committee (Comitato nazionale femminile) to create child-care centers for working mothers and services for the children of soldiers.37

However, such charitable ventures were not sufficient to fill the immenseneed for social services. “The progress of the race,” wrote Margaret LlewelynDavies, head of the British socialist group known as the Women’sCooperative Guild, in 1916, “can best be served by raising motherhood to aposition of power and equality, so that the rights of parenthood may beshared by both men and women. For this we shall find that comprehensivereforms are needed, which will entail national provision for the practicalneeds of motherhood and infancy, the wiping out of old laws, and the pass-ing of others consistent with modern ideas.”38 In the wartime crisis, feministsdeveloped a host of new arguments in favor of the reforms that they hadadvocated in peacetime.

For many decades before the outbreak of war in 1914, reformers hadpointed out that the patriarchal laws of marriage, which condemned marriedmothers to subordination and unmarried mothers to destitution and disgrace,harmed children as well as mothers. And in wartime governments and opin-ion leaders hardly needed to be persuaded of the importance of preservingthe lives of children. But the tradition of male supremacy in marriage was stillstrongly defended, and changes in the status of married mothers in belliger-ent countries were very limited. Among the most important was the Frenchlaw giving mothers, who had been unable to make important decisions abouttheir children during the prolonged absence of their husbands, the rights ofguardianship over their children in 1915.39

The status of “illegitimate” children, who died at twice the rate of theirlegitimate age-mates, caused greater concern. Even Wilhelm II, Emperor ofGermany, who before the war had left philanthropic concern for infantwelfare to the Empress, wrote from his military headquarters to the Ministryof the Interior in 1916 that the health of mothers and children, and particularlyof the illegitimate, must be given higher priority.40 However, even patriotic fer-vor could not overcome the traditional moral notion that any improvement inthe status of unmarried mothers and their children undermined Christianmarriage. Changes in these laws, too, were very limited.

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At the outbreak of war, the German League for the Protection of Motherssubmitted a petition to the Imperial government requesting that illegitimatechildren and their mothers be included in dependency allowances and sur-vivor benefits, and that fathers in military service be allowed to marry andlegitimate their children in absentia.41 These measures, which were also sup-ported by other influential organizations, were passed. German policy-makers also expressed a new concern about the high mortality rate amongillegitimate children, and some supported legal reforms that the BfM hadadvocated for years, including the abolition of the provision known as theexceptio plurium (which exempted a putative father who could prove thatothers might have fathered the child) that made it easy for fathers to avoidsupport obligations. Helene Stöcker remarked ironically that politicians werenow enthusiastic about an agenda that they had ignored or reviled in peace-time: “the need for a comprehensive protection of mothers (Mutterschutz).”42

However, the continuing strength of conservative Christian groups preventedthe reform of German laws on illegitimacy.43

The French government, too, passed measures allotting support paymentsto the unmarried partners of soldiers and their children, and permittingsoldiers to recognize their children from the Front. In 1916, the FrenchChamber of Deputies approved legislation allowing such children to be legit-imated after the deaths of their fathers so long as their mothers could presentevidence of paternity. But this, legislators stressed, was a provisional measurefor the duration of the war.44 In Rome, the National Committee for LegalAssistance to the Families of Service Personnel (Comitato nazionale perl’assistenza legale alle famiglie dei richiamati) campaigned successfully for theallotment of support payments to the children of unmarried parents and setup legal services to help soldiers and their partners regularize their unionsand legitimate their children.45

The legal status of the “illegitimate” child also became a prominentissue in Britain, where before the war it had received less attention thanon the continent. In 1915, the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Family Association, aprivate agency entrusted with the distribution of governmental separationallowances to the dependents of service men, held a public meeting to discussa controversial proposal to include unmarried partners and their childrenin these benefits. The agency’s decision to pay allowances to unmarriedparents who were in a stable relationship unleashed a national debate. Someargued that such a policy would encourage irresponsible female behaviorand warned against the “excited and giddy girls” who “haunted the campsand caused mischief and scandal.”46 Others argued that these children weretoo important a resource to waste: “the mothers of our soldiers’ children,”said a Conservative member of Parliament in a letter to the editors of theMorning Post, “are to be treated with no scorn or dishonor, and . . . theinfants themselves should receive a loyal and unashamed welcome.” Theywere, the speaker insisted, “the children of the state.”47

Children of the state? This indeed was one logical outcome of the argumentthat motherhood was a distinctively female form of military service. Some

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feminists affirmed this duty with enthusiasm. Among them was Marie Stopes,who during the war tried her hand at play-writing. The heroine of her play,The Race, published in 1918 (it was apparently never performed), defendedher decision to bear a child by her soldier fiancé. “My body serves my country,just as much as Ernest’s, only in a different way,” she told her horrifiedmother. “A soldier gives his body to death; a woman gives hers to bringlife.”48 Emmeline Pankhurst offered to raise fifty of “the nation’s babies,” andactually adopted four. Her daughter Sylvia, a socialist, insisted that suchvulnerable children should not be left “to the fluctuations and caprice ofprivate charity,” and recommended that Britain should follow the exampleof Norway and raise paternal support obligations.49

But others found this affirmation of unmarried motherhood harder toaccept. Some cited traditional moral standards. The Oxford undergraduateVera Brittain, later to become a well-known author and reformer, confidedto her diary that some offers of support were “so extremely favorable to theoffenders as to encourage others to repeat the same sin, and thus undermineour whole social and moral structure.” As a more mature woman, Brittainregretted her youthful self-righteousness.50 Other opponents turned tomore modern ideas, including the right of the child to a stable and lovinghome environment. In an editorial in the suffrage paper, Common Cause,Maude Royden approved the decision to support innocent and valuablechildren but deplored what she called “the temptations of militarism,”particularly “the most dangerous to women—the tendency to regard themmerely as potential mothers of men.” Each child, she said, had the right tobe born of “a faithful love. Its coming should be earnestly desired, lookedforward to with joy, received with reverence. . . . And therefore a woman or aman who becomes responsible for the birth of a child from a passing emotionand evanescent passion . . . is an illegitimate mother, and an illegitimatefather.”51

A campaign to revise Britain’s uniquely harsh law, which unlike those ofthe Continent forbade the legitimation of children even by the subsequentmarriage of their parents, produced no immediate results. But in 1917, a neworganization entitled the National Association for the Unmarried Motherand her Child was founded to advocate the improvement of the legal andsocial status of single-mother households.52

Before the war, feminists had been almost the only public speakers to takea positive view of the wage labor of mothers, which had been seen by othersas an evil to be tolerated or prohibited. Under wartime conditions such workwas widely acknowledged to be an urgent, though temporary, necessity. Buthow would women’s obligation to work affect their equally pressing obliga-tion to reproduce? Governments now promised forms of support for workingmothers that feminists had advocated, often without success, during the pre-war period. Feminists hoped that this new assistance would ease the dilemmaof motherhood and paid work. The Austrian Margarete Minor predicted thatwomen’s wartime achievements would show, once and for all, that “theargument whether motherhood can be combined with professional work is

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outdated,” for “women have shown themselves capable and reliable in allmanner of occupations.”53

In France, the gynecologist Adolphe Pinard, who joined the physician andreformer Paul Strauss in heading a governmental agency devoted to maternaland child welfare (Office central d’assistance maternelle et infantile),denounced “the factory, killer of babies” (“l’usine tueuse d’enfants”) andrecommended that pregnant women and mothers of infants be barred fromindustrial work. But a panel of physicians drawn from the Academy ofMedicine argued that work was not damaging to mothers and children aslong as sufficient leave time and social services were provided to them. At its1917 convention, the French League for Woman Suffrage recommended theextension of maternity leaves and the provision of child-care centers andnursing rooms in factories. In 1917, a law required factories that employedmore than 100 women to provide an hour’s break each day and facilities forbreast-feeding.54

The League of German Women’s Organizations (BDF) devoted its“Wartime Convention” (Kriegstagung) of 1916 to the theme of work andmotherhood. Continuing this group’s long-standing support for women’sprofessional ambitions, speakers denied that career commitments in themselvesweakened women’s “will to motherhood.” They insisted that, on the con-trary, the patriotic woman worker wished to fulfill her “moral responsibilityfor reproduction,” but could hardly do so without social services includingmaternity insurance and public child care.55

Starting in 1914, private organizations, sometimes with aid from local ornational governments, established new child-care centers, called “WarKindergartens.”56 In 1917 Marie-Elisabeth Lüders, the prominent feministwho had been appointed the head of the National Committee on Women’sWar Work (Nationaler Ausschuss für Frauenarbeit im Krieg) drafted a set ofguidelines which, had they been implemented, would have almost completelysocialized child-care. Lüders recommended that every locality should establishpublicly funded centers which would be accessible to factories and opentwenty-four hours a day. Younger infants, she specified, should be cared forin the mother’s workplace, and older children must be provided withfree school meals and after-school care, also on a round-the-clock schedule.Always concerned to provide employment opportunities to educated, middle-class women, Lüders was careful to specify that such institutions must bestaffed by trained personnel.57 But by 1917 the desperate financial situationof national and local governments made such proposals thoroughly impracti-cal. Only a small percentage of the children of industrial workers were caredfor in public day-care centers, which were not popular among mothers.58

Lüders complained constantly that the men who made social policy, includ-ing the staff of the War Ministry, lacked all “experience and training” onissues concerning child-care.59 The many frustrations that she encountered inher dealings with the military authorities led to her resignation in 1917.60

Lüders was not the only reformer whose utopian hopes for the expansionof public child-care were disappointed. In Britain, Margaret McMillan,

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a child-welfare activist who was a member of the Independent Labour Party,had worked to improve preschool education since the 1890s, when she hadcampaigned for the provision of free lunches, health care, and baths for thechildren. She had opened her first nursery school for the children of workersin 1911. In 1916, she opened a new nursery school in Deptford, one ofseveral that were funded for the children of munitions workers by theMinistry of Munitions. McMillan did not regard this and other nurseryschools as a temporary expedient, but as a permanent part of the progressivesociety that she hoped would emerge from the war. “Why, we are asked, dowe want nursery schools?” she asked. “Should not every mother take entirecharge of her little ones until they are of school age?” This question, shepointed out, was asked only of working-class mothers. “The well-to-do mother never attempts to do it alone. She engages a nurse, perhaps alsoa governess . . . I don’t wish to continue the parallel. It is too cruel. Theworking-class mother in her home has no help at all.”61

McMillan, whose nursery schools provided baths and clean clothing,imagined that her well-scrubbed children would bring moral as well asphysical regeneration to a world that was polluted by war, poverty, vice, anddisease. Each afternoon, she recounted, “the gate of the Nursery opens anda troop of lovely children file out and pass, a river of beauty and grace, upthe dim alley and across the public square flanked by public houses.” Despitetheir working-class background, McMillan claimed that these children wereas healthy as “the well-groomed nurslings of Hyde Park or Mayfair.”62

However, most of the nursery schools founded in wartime hardly lived up tothis prototype. They were understaffed, regimented, and institutional, andmothers were reluctant to use them.63 In 1918, an Education Act requiredsupport by local governments for these schools. But McMillan’s hopes foruniversally available early childhood education were disappointed, for by1919 only fourteen nursery schools had been founded.64

Other feminist demands were also recast as patriotic responses to thewartime emergency. In Germany, the maternity coverage that had beenadded to the national insurance system in 1883 and expanded in the earlytwentieth century was further enlarged at the outbreak of war to providecoverage for an eight weeks’ leave to the dependents of service men and toguarantee several benefits that had been optional, including reimbursementfor medical services and supplemental grants to mothers who breast-fed.65

Many women’s groups, especially those affiliated with the Social DemocraticParty, called for an additional increase in the rate of coverage to replace theworker’s daily wage.66 In Britain, where the maternity benefits that had beenpassed in 1911 were minimal, the socialist Women’s Cooperative Guild andother groups called for a more comprehensive protection of maternal andinfant health. And this campaign, which was now supported by opinionleaders in medicine, public health, and government, produced impressiveresults. The Maternity and Child Welfare Act, passed in 1918, required localgovernments to support an extensive network of centers that served maternaland infant health.67

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Their successes in the public sphere emboldened British feminists toaddress the more sensitive issues raised by the position of women in the fam-ily, still defined as a private realm that was insulated against public scrutiny.Feminists in every country had asserted that the liberation of mothers fromeconomic dependence was an essential step toward equality. In wartime, thecomparison of the mother to the soldier, whose patriotic services werecompensated, was often adduced to justify some form of “maternal salary.”Though debated in all the belligerent countries, this idea gained the greatestprominence in Britain. Other European countries granted dependencyallowances to the wives and children of soldiers, but these benefits weremeager and inadequate. But in Britain, where military service was not com-pulsory when war broke out in 1914, the government was forced to provideincentives for men to volunteer. Among these was an allowance payable towives and mothers without a means test and at a level on which families couldactually subsist. Of course, this entitlement was actually intended to rewardthe services of male heads of household by supporting their dependents.

But Eleanor Rathbone, who at this time worked as a social worker with theSailors’ and Soldiers’ Family Association, chose to “misread” the provision asa form of state support for women, and specifically for mothers—a benefitthat she believed must be extended beyond the wartime emergency.68 Shewas convinced that the government allowance, which “distributed the meansof subsistence according to the number of persons in the family concerned,”provided a far more adequate level of support than could be given by a malebreadwinner who himself was at the mercy of an unpredictable andinequitable labor market.69 The socialist Woman’s Cooperative Guild andseveral women’s trade-union organizations insisted that motherhooddeserved a wage. In 1915, the Cooperative Guild justified this demand bypublishing a volume entitled Maternity: Letters from Working Women inwhich members described “the conditions under which they had broughtchildren into the world.”70

This volume contained 160 autobiographical accounts—compiled shortlybefore the war—of pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing.71 Written by theworking-class women who headed the Cooperative Guild’s local groups,these stories left no doubt that maternity was indeed a “blood tax” equivalentto that levied on men by military service. In her preface, Davies madeclear that these mothers belonged to the elite of the working class andconsidered themselves “more fortunately placed than most women.” And yetthe stories were shocking, creating “on the whole an impression of perpetualoverwork, illness and suffering.”72 Davies denied that the banishment ofmothers from industrial work would solve the problem: “people forget,” shepointed out in her introduction, “that the unpaid work of the working-woman at the stove, at scrubbing and cleaning, at the washtub, in lifting andcarrying heavy weights is just as severe manual labour as many industrialoperations in factories.”73

One mother wrote that she had “six children, all living, and what a terribletime it is, to be sure, especially during the last two months—only just enough

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to live on and another coming. . . . The mental strain in addition to bodilylabour must surely affect the child.”74 Another had lost six children beforeshe reared one. “I was very unfortunate in my married life,” she recalled,“and at one time thought that I was not going to rear any children.”75 Mostof the contributors agreed that “the state . . . if it wants citizens, and healthycitizens . . . must make it possible for men and women to have families whileliving a full life themselves and giving a full life to their children . . . The firstrequirement is, then, the improvement of the economic position of thefamily.”76 But Davies added that the mother needed not only materialbenefits, but also individual freedom and dignity—“the means and the leisureto live a life of her own without which she is unfit to give life to her childrenand to direct it during their most impressionable years.”77

In the dark days of wartime, many feminists thus hoped that the state’snew appreciation of the value of each of its citizens would bring a new dignityto motherhood. “My sincere desire is that a better time is dawning forworking-class mothers and their babies,” wrote a British mother.78 Certainly,the wartime emergency had motivated legislators to improve some of thematerial and medical conditions surrounding pregnancy, birth, and child-rearing. But the very limited success of efforts to improve mothers’ legal andeconomic status suggested that these mothers were valued more as theproducers of a vital and scarce commodity than as individuals or as citizens.In July 1917, the Queen of England recognized a national “Baby Week” byopening an exhibition on infant health in Westminster, where she was greetedby a guard of honor of mothers and children. A speech by the Bishop ofLondon explained frankly why these mothers were honored. “The loss of lifein this war had made every baby’s life doubly precious.”79 The Germansocialist Henriette Fürth clearly saw the intent behind such patronizingrhetoric, which was also common in Germany. “Without any respect for ourindividual rights and our personal aspirations,” she charged, in 1915, suchmen “demand children, children, and more children! . . . And how will theyforce us to bear them?”80

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In the prewar era, feminists had compared motherhood figuratively tomilitary service. In wartime, metaphor became reality. As military casualtiesmounted, patriotic physicians abandoned any pretense of concern for indi-vidual mothers or children, and insisted on production at any cost. In 1916,the German physician Hugo Sellheim declared in a lecture given tothe female volunteers of the Red Cross that “women can give children to thefatherland . . . it is up to her to make up for all our losses, and . . . to ensurethe survival of the nation.” Like war itself, childbirth was a life-threateningordeal in which eligible citizens had no choice but to engage: “The entry ofa new citizen into the world is a bloody battle,” continued Dr. Sellheim,“in which women are often wounded, sometimes fatally.”81 An influential

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pamphlet by two French physicians stated in 1918 that women who shirkedtheir duty “to have babies, to have babies, always to have babies” did notdeserve the name of citizen.82

Underlying such shrill and desperate exhortations were fears of a crisis incivilian morale. The fall in birthrates, which in Britain declined by 26 percent,in Germany by 52 percent, in France by 38 percent, was due not only to theabsence of fathers, but perhaps also to the conscious refusal of parents tobring children into a world of poverty, uncertainty, and violence.83 Accordingto the historian Belinda Davis, working-class Berlin women who struggled tosurvive amid shortages so “resented the notion, spread by some privateorganizations, that the mother of many young children contributed more toher country’s needs and that she should therefore be rewarded for herefforts” that they contested the need of such families for increased rations.Women who became pregnant under these circumstances were deemed“selfish and suspect.”84 In 1915, Margaret Llewelyn Davies remarked on a“current of general opinion which is among the working classes, resulting inthe refusal to have children,” which she called “a kind of strike against largefamilies.”85 Evelyn Greville Warwick, a British feminist and social reformer,noted ominously in 1916 that the war had “left in the hearts of the survivorsso vivid a sense of the horrors of life that many a man will hesitate to becomea father lest his sons have to take their place in time to come on the fields ofwar and his daughters chance to be among the dwellers in a conqueredcity.”86 Fearing a renewal of the “birth strike,” governments in all three coun-tries resorted to coercion as well as to positive incentives. Both the natalistlegislation itself and the ways in which feminists responded to it differed inBritain, France, and Germany.

Even in wartime, natalist pressure was not nearly so strong in Britain as onthe Continent. An act passed in 1915 mandating the reporting of all birthsand stillbirths to local medical officers was designed to control abortion.87

Most feminists argued, as they had in the prewar period, that childbearingmight indeed be encouraged, but could not be compelled. The physicianMary Scharlieb testified before the National Birth Rate Commission in1916 that measures to prohibit the sale of contraceptives, though perhapsdesirable, would be ineffective. “I think that we must try to educate theconscience of the nation—try to make them understand that they are com-mitting racial suicide—try to make them willing to have children.”88

According to the British historian Jeffrey Weeks, both the knowledge andthe use of contraceptive technology increased during the war—a trend influ-enced by the publication of the Women’s Cooperative Guild’s volumeMaternity.89 The working-class mothers who contributed to this volumewere strongly committed to the care of their children but angrily resistedinvoluntary childbearing. Many complained of forced motherhood underconditions of domestic slavery. “I cannot tell you all my sufferings during thetime of motherhood. I thought, like hundreds of women do today, that itwas only natural and you had to bear it. I was left an orphan and, having nomother to tell me anything, I was quite unprepared for marriage and what

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was expected of me,” wrote one, “I often think women are really worse offthan beasts.” Another reflected that “when you have got an unkind husbandit is a terrible life.”90 And they resisted coercion by the state as well as by hus-bands. “Preventives are largely used,” reported one. “Race suicide, if youwill, is the policy of the mothers of the future. Who will blame us?”91 Themodern woman, wrote the pacifist Helena Swanwick in 1915, felt the need“to be a complete person,” and would resist pressure, whether religious,legal, or social, to spend “all her best years in incessant child-bearing.”92

In France, a committee composed of physicians nominated by theCommissioner of Public Assistance proposed new laws that sharpened thepenalties for performing, seeking, or advocating abortion and for the spreadof information on contraception—a proposal that became the model fora law that was finally passed in 1920.93 Caught up in the wartime emergency,some prominent feminists supported these coercive measures. In 1916,a new addition to the already large number of natalist organizations, theLeague for Life (Ligue pour la Vie), included the feminist leaders Margueritede Witt-Schlumberger and Cécile Brunschvicg along with some prominentmale politicians in its executive committee. Schlumberger, herself the motherof six children, was the head of a large organization, the French Union forWoman Suffrage (Union Française pour le Suffrage des Femmes, or UFSF).94

In the mainstream feminist newspaper, La Française, she declared in anarticle of 1916, entitled “The Distinctive Duty of Women,” that “mothersowe service to the country just as do soldiers on the front,” and that “anyyoung married people in good health who refuse to give a child to France inthe first year of peace should be considered deserters.”95

The historians Karen Offen, Anne Cova, and Paul Smith place this state-ment in the context of a resurgent campaign for woman suffrage, which inthe form of a municipal franchise or a “familial vote” seemed a political pos-sibility. The “familial vote” would have given the parents of large familiesadditional votes, and feminists hoped that mothers as well as fathers would bethus enfranchised.96 Was Schlumberger’s patriotic stance part of a “deliberatepolitical trade-off,” asks Offen, and was “reproductive servitude the ultimateprice of women’s admission to French citizenship?”97 Although not allfeminists agreed with Schlumberger, wartime censorship—which penalizedany support of birth control or family limitation—prevented the opendiscussion of her position.

German feminists, and especially those of the mainstream League ofGerman Women’s Associations (BDF) have often been stereotyped as ferventnationalists.98 But although many agreed with their French counterpartsthat childbearing was a service to the nation, as a group they proved moreresistant to natalist pressures. German feminists of all political persuasionsobjected to the exploitation of motherhood in the service of militarism.Gertrud Bäumer, who in addition to her position as the leader of theNational Women’s Service was the editor of the best-known German feministperiodical, Die Frau, argued in 1916 that reproduction was indeed a form ofpublic service, but a voluntary one that the state could not compel. “People,

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who belong to us, are our greatest wealth—in the end, the only wealth thatwe possess, and there is nothing greater than to give life to another person.”Pointing to women’s protests against wartime hardships, she characterizedsinking birthrates as an expression of “pessimism about the future,” andconcluded that only “the belief in social justice” could restore “the couragerequired for parenthood.”99 The failure of Germany’s natalist associations—unlike those of France—to put women in prominent roles left them vulnera-ble to criticism. In 1916, Helene Lange commented on the inauguralmeeting of one such organization, the Society for Population Policy(Gesellschaft für Bevölkerungspolitik) that it was “very strange” that “in amatter in which nature has given women a not inconsiderable role . . . theyare allotted only token representation.”100

In Germany, three laws—one that strengthened penalties for abortion,a second that forbade all advertisement or sale of contraceptives, and a thirdthat tightened control over prostitution and the reporting and treatment ofvenereal disease—were introduced in the Reichstag in 1918.101 In a resolutionpassed in the same year, the BDF endorsed some clauses in the new laws,including the criminalization of abortion and the prohibition of the door-to-door peddling of contraceptives. But the resolution objected to any total banon the sale of contraceptives: “in the interests of many families who are undereconomic pressure, and to protect women, we should not prohibit therestriction of births. Therefore, in our opinion the prohibition of themanufacture and sale of contraceptives goes too far. The means of preventingboth venereal disease and conception must be available in apothecary shops,drugstores, and shops that sell medical supplies.”102

In October of 1918, the collapse of the German army on the WesternFront and the prospect of an armistice initiated a period of political change,marked by the appointment of a new Chancellor, Max von Baden, and thefirst steps toward the liberalization of the monarchy. In this freer atmosphere,feminists of all political persuasions spoke out against “compulsory child-bearing” (Gebärzwang). The socialist women’s groups organized protestmeetings against a state which (as the socialist women’s newspaper, DieGleichheit, put it in October of 1918) “forces you . . . to bring as manychildren as possible into the world, by depriving you of the only harmlessmeans of deciding for yourselves how many children you want to have.”103 Inan article entitled “Coercive Population Policy,” Bäumer declared “witha feeling of painful humiliation” that there was “no area of legislation . . .in which it is more woefully apparent to women that laws are made for themwithout consulting them or even taking their viewpoint into account.”104

The proposed laws were, in fact, never passed, for by the winter of 1918the Imperial government disintegrated under the impact of defeat, and thesuccessor regime, the Weimar Republic, inaugurated a less coercive popula-tion policy.105

The cult of militarized motherhood also demanded of mothers, as of draftboards, the selection of the healthy. In Britain, where military service did notbecome compulsory until 1916, grief for a “Lost Generation” expressed

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a popular belief that the war had claimed a disproportionate number ofupper-class young men—seen through the lens of nostalgia and class preju-dice as the best, healthiest, and brightest.106 Some medical authorities fearedthat the removal of these men from the gene pool was a threat to the nation’sfuture. “Some of us are trying to encourage the men to marry before theygo,” testified a prominent physician and eugenicist, Caleb Saleeby. “I amdoing so for the definite eugenic end, as they are the pick of our men.”107

Marie Stopes agreed: the heroine of her play, The Race, warned that if “all thefine, clean, strong young men . . . who go out to be killed should leave nosons to carry on the race” then the next generation would be bred from “thecowardly and unhealthy ones.”108

During the war years, public health authorities urged mothers to avoid theproduction of unhealthy children who, like these unfit fathers, would burdensociety. An exhibition held in Dresden in 1916 included both advice onchildren’s health and warnings against “irresponsibly produced children.”109

Alarmed at the prospect that returning soldiers would spread venerealdisease, public health authorities in the belligerent countries proposed newmeasures directed against women, including stiffer controls on prostitutes.

By contrast, feminists emphasized men’s share of the responsibility forspreading disease. School-based sex education gained more public support;for example, in Britain the Royal Commission on Venereal Disease recom-mended the teaching of “the laws of moral hygiene” in all “types and gradesof education.”110 The push for voluntary or compulsory health certificates formarried couples, reinforced by the passage of such a measure in Sweden in1915, also continued. In France, the premarital health certificate wasadvocated by the prominent anti-prostitution activist Marcelle LeGrandFalco. But the physician Blanche Edwards-Pilliet considered that sucha requirement would be ineffective, and argued instead for an intensiveprogram to educate young people of both sexes on the danger of venerealdisease.111

In Germany, representatives of the League for the Protection of Mothersand of the socialist women’s groups attended a meeting held in 1917 underthe auspices of natalist organizations such as the Society for PopulationPolicy (Gesellschaft für Bevölkerungspolitik) and the Society for RacialHygiene (Gesellschaft für Rassehygiene). Along with many other participants,they advocated premarital health examinations chiefly in order to protect thehealth of women and their children from infection by diseased men. Somefemale delegates also appealed to women’s own sense of responsibility byinsisting that the health examination should be required of brides as wellas bridegrooms. But the Ministry of Health looked unfavorably upon anymeasure that would cut back on the number of marriages and births, andendorsed only a recommendation that a leaflet on the dangers of hereditarydisease and the importance of wise mate-selection be distributed by localmarriage offices. This became law during the Weimar Republic.112

Maternalists often claimed that motherly concern for children was auniversal emotion that knew no distinction of class or nationality. But in

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wartime, tenderness was out of fashion. Whereas the child—or at least thehealthy child—of the nation was regarded as a priceless resource, the child ofthe enemy could be seen as a hated invader. In January 1915, Frenchnewspapers reported that many pregnancies had resulted from rape byGerman soldiers during the invasion of Belgium and northern France in theprevious autumn. According to these same reports, a Belgian priest had dra-matically abjured Catholic doctrine and exhorted the victims to emulateHerod’s massacre of the innocents: “Let no impure blood corrupt the purityof your veins. . . . I give you absolution before God and men.”113 Incitementto abortion and infanticide was repudiated by the Catholic press but taken upby nationalist propagandists. If their mothers killed these children of rape,wrote the eminent journalist and novelist Maurice Barrès, “what jury wouldcondemn them?”114

The response of French feminists to these reports was so deeply dividedthat the editors of both the mainstream paper, La Française and the left-wingLa Bataille Syndicaliste opened their columns to debate. What to do with the“children of the enemy”? On the one hand, the victims of rape excitedsympathy and outrage. On the other hand, many correspondents remarkedthat those who advocated the termination of these pregnancies were hardlyconcerned about the women—in fact, they were among the most fanaticalopponents of abortion or contraception under other circumstances. Rather,they were motivated by sheer, murderous hatred for the enemy.

And could a child be the enemy? Some readers clearly thought so. “Franceshould get rid of everything German,” stated a letter to La Française in1915. Some feminists took advantage of the crisis to break taboos thatforbade the advocacy of abortion. “Don’t you think that, in such cases,abortion is not a crime but a duty?” wrote a correspondent who pitied themother who held “the child of the foreigner at the breast in the place of aFrench child.”115 No mother, wrote the lawyer Maria Vérone, should becondemned to such a “horrible maternity”; nor, according to the feministCamille Bélillon, should she be regarded simply as a “baby mill.”116

But the editor of La Française, Jane Misme, held to her maternalistposition that mothers and children deserved respect and help, whatever theircircumstances. “It is with all the strength of my maternal instinct thatI speak,” she wrote, “to defend, here and everywhere, the mothers andchildren who are treated as outcasts.”117 Misme asserted that the conservativemen who exploited the victims’ plight for propagandistic purposes werehypocrites, for they had never objected to marriage laws that producedcountless “legitimate” children of rape.118 When spokesmen for the govern-ment affirmed that these children, if abandoned by their parents, had thesame right to foster care as all needy children, Misme asked how they wouldbe treated by foster families who might well know or suspect their origin.119

Likewise Marcelle Capy, a socialist reporter for La Bataille Syndicaliste,condemned the “utter hatred” expressed in letters to the editor, and affirmedher faith that “women, whatever their nationality, have stayed close to theirnature, and could thus never reject an innocent, newborn life . . . Have

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women become just like men, for whom the law of guns and executioners issupreme?”120

The visceral hostility to the “children of the enemy” was reinforced byracist theories that the genetic quality of the French population was threatenedby this infusion of inferior German blood. But some feminist authors,especially those who advocated a matrilineal family structure, insisted that thechild of a French mother was French, whatever the father’s nationality mightbe. In one of the many fictional accounts of this dilemma, the husband of araped woman decided against killing or abandoning the child and resolvedthat: “we will make him into a good Frenchman, and that will be ourrevenge.”121

How could a mother love such an unwanted child? In order to explainthis, the mother–child relationship had to be divested of its moral andspiritual content and recast as a purely visceral and instinctive bond. Thechild-welfare activist and pacifist Madeleine Vernet portrayed a fictional rapevictim, Marthe, who was determined to abort, kill, or abandon her child. Butwhen she saw the baby’s face, she felt “the call of the flesh, which affirms lifeand existence . . . Sublime, unchanging, is maternity not its own reason forexistence, and is it not sufficient in itself?”122 However, such maternalinstincts were clearly not universal. In 1917, the servant JoséphineBarthélemy was tried for the murder of her newborn infant. Although shedeclared herself innocent of murder, she claimed to have been the victim ofrape by German soldiers. In a decision supported by public opinion, she wasacquitted.123

Among the psychological effects of the war was to continue the destruction,well under way in the prewar years, of the Victorian ideal of the mother aspure and altruistic “angel in the house.” For the wartime mother lived inde-pendently, did the work of a man, protested raucously in the streets, andoften refused her traditional burden—in the words of the British pacifistMaude Royden, the bearing of children into “a world so unready forthem.”124 And all mothers were not the loving, compassionate, and responsi-ble beings that some prewar feminists had made them out to be. Indeed,many shared in wartime hatreds that could include even newborn babiesamong the enemy.

“W-W” T P M

But a minority of pacifists in all countries still held up the mother as a symbolof love, compassion, and nonviolence. Aletta Jacobs (since her marriageAletta Jacobs Gerritsen), who was president of Holland’s Association forWoman Suffrage, summoned women who wished to “protest togetheragainst the horrors of war” and perhaps even to “find a way to end thehostilities” to a meeting in The Hague in 1915.125 The national feministassociations in the belligerent countries refused to send delegations, but smallgroups from Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Great Britain, as well as from suchneutral nations as Sweden, the Netherlands, the United States, and Canada

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attended. These women formed the International Committee of Women forPermanent Peace (in 1919 its name was changed to the Women’sInternational League for Peace and Freedom) and passed a set of resolutionsthat called for a negotiated peace. This document, which was sent to thegovernments of thirteen neutral and belligerent nations, influenced the“Fourteen Points” that were proposed later by the American PresidentWoodrow Wilson.126

The meeting was chaired by a woman of great international prestige, theAmerican Jane Addams. Though herself neither married nor a mother,Addams claimed that pacifism came naturally to women because of theirexperience of motherhood—an experience that transcended national bound-aries. The same argument was made by Helena Swanwick, a British participant.“Two pieces of work for the human family are peculiarly the work of women:they are the life-givers and the homemakers,” she wrote in 1915.

War kills or maims the children born of woman and tended by her; wardestroys “woman’s place”—the home. Every man killed or mangled in warhas been carried for months in his mother’s body and has been tended andnourished for years of his life by women. He is the work of women: theyhave rights in him and in what he does with the life they have given andsustained.127

Swanwick and other delegates who returned from the Hague such as theGerman Anita Augspurg and the Austrian Rosa Mayreder set up branches ofthe International Committee in their own countries. Some, such as theGerman Helene Stöcker, supported pacifism through journalism and organiza-tional work.128

Following a socialist peace conference held in Switzerland in 1915, someFrench socialist women, including Hélène Brion and Louise Saumoneau,took up the pacifist cause. Brion, an activist with a left-wing teachers’ union,was arrested for her antiwar activities in 1917. At her trial, where she statedfearlessly that “I am first and foremost a feminist. All those who know me canattest to it. And it is because of my feminism that I am an enemy of war,” shewas defended by her friends Nelly Roussel and Madeleine Vernet.129 In 1917,Vernet founded a periodical, The Mother as Educator (La Mère Éducatrice), inwhich she proclaimed that only mothers could save the world from “a slowdeath, a moral death, the worst of deaths. . . . We will help you with themoral education of your children!” she promised mothers. “We will showyou the grandeur of your maternal role, we will give you confidence inyourself so that you finally dare, O mother, to occupy the place in society thatbelongs to you.”130

Meanwhile a new group that called itself Women’s Action (Action desfemmes) was founded in France in 1915 and took up the struggle for womansuffrage that the larger organizations had renounced at the outset of hostilities.At first, this group’s program was highly patriotic. But by 1917, disillusionedwith the war, the group turned to a pacifist ideology based on the matriarchal

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theories of Céline Renooz, who at the age of seventy-eight was elected itshonorary president.

The group’s manifesto of 1917 invoked “the difference of the sexes innature and mission” as a basis for female solidarity transcending class. “Themale is violent and destructive; the female is gentle, altruistic, and construc-tive.” Whereas the age of matriarchal rule had been a “period of peace andhappiness, called the ‘golden age,’ ” the rule of men had brought nothingbut “an uninterrupted sequence of wars and horrible catastrophes.”131 Thepresent war, stated the group’s secretary, Anne Léal, was merely the latestconsequence of the “triumph of panmasculinism.”132 Women’s Action calledfor the legal recognition of a mother-headed family structure, maternity as asocial function, and women’s entitlement to equality of opportunity ineducation, the professions, and political life. It also claimed “the right andduty to assume the moral leadership of humanity.”133 This initiative hadconsiderable success—meetings often attracted over two hundred women—and helped to reinvigorate the suffrage struggle carried on by the Committeefor Suffragist Action (Comité d’action suffragiste) in 1918.134

But motherhood proved to be a shaky basis for international solidarity.The vast majority of feminists in all countries refused to cooperate with thepeace movement. Of course, one motive for this refusal was the ambition todeserve the rights of citizenship, including suffrage, through valiant patrioticservice. But some were also skeptical about the pacifists’ conception ofwomen’s nature. Like most men, most women defined themselves more bynationality than by gender. French women, stated the National Council ofFrench Women (Conseil national des femmes françaises), had always beensympathetic to pacifism and in the prewar years had aspired to “peace andinternational understanding, if not in the entire world, at least in Europe.”But “until the German women protested to their own government against itsviolations of international law and the crimes of its army against civilians, anycooperation with them would be a betrayal of the nation; the fact that theybelong to the female sex was quite irrelevant.”135

Marianne Hainisch, the leader of the League of Austrian Women’sAssociations (Bund Österreichischer Frauenvereine) declared that support forthe peace movement was a betrayal of the Fatherland.136 The Germans toorallied to their men. “Nobody can look for an end of these sacrifices withmore longing than we,” wrote Gertrud Bäumer. “But with the knowledge ofthe greatness of the sacrifices we feel one with our people and our government.The men who take the responsibility for the decisions Germany makesare as dear to us as are the men who shed their blood for us on the field ofbattle. . . . Should we spiritually betray the men who defend our safety bybelittling and insulting the inner forces which keep them up?”137 In an articlewritten for Die Frau, Hanna Hellmann doubted that the notion thatwoman’s nature was inherently peaceable could stand against the historicalfact that the majority of women had supported the war enthusiastically. “Sowe must not ask ‘how must women fulfill their nature,’ but rather admit thatthis is the way women have behaved. What can we conclude about their

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nature?” The pacifist doctrine made women into rather simple and stereo-typed creatures. “If women are purely determined by their biology, then, ifthey are truly feminine, can they never feel any conflict between natural urgesand intellectual convictions?”138

At the conference in the Hague, the statement of a lone dissentingdelegate that she did not believe that “the average woman” was more peace-ful by nature than the average man was met with derision.139 But the sameskepticism was expressed by other women. The British journalist and suffrageactivist Rebecca West criticized feminist pacifism as it was articulated by theSwedish child-welfare advocate Ellen Key. Like other peace activists, Keybelieved that the admission of mothers to the rights of citizenship would putan end to war. “When women have gained a voice in these decisions, theliving human material that is now ruthlessly sacrificed . . . will be accountedthe greatest riches of the State.”140 West, who had never belonged to Key’sinternational fan club, derided the notion that “now mere femaleness isgoing to end the war” as an expression, not of feminism, but of sentimental“woman-worship . . . Mere platitudinous assertions as to the niceness ofpeace and the nastiness of war are useless in such crises, and the ‘motherly’advice of Miss Key that the belligerent nations should refrain from denouncingthe sins of others . . . is actively mischievous.”141

Pacifists claimed that mothers’ love for their sons would always be a forcefor peace. But wartime images of mothers and their soldier sons did notinevitably carry a pacifist moral—indeed, they were much more often used toserve the cause of patriotism. In 1914, Britain had adopted the “Mother’sDay” holiday from the United States. A British pamphlet showed a gray-hairedmother who imagined that her son was sitting at her feet while she knit hima pair of socks. “When you do come marching home,” read a letter from thisfictional mother, “bring me back the same boy I gave my country—true andclean and gentle and brave.”142 The holiday spread to France by 1918, wherea Catholic women’s organization, the League of French Women (Ligue desfemmes françaises) organized celebrations in Paris and Lyon. The celebrationsincluded patriotic films and music for children, and medals were awarded tomothers who were judged particularly meritorious.143 Italian propagandistsurged mothers to reinforce the morale of the troops by encouraging theirsons to fight, and compared the mothers of the fallen to the Virgin Mary as“mamma dolorosa, mamma gloriosa.”144

All these sentimental images, whether pacifist or patriotic, were coveredwith contempt by the authors who claimed to speak for the soldiers themselves.Like other women, mothers were civilians, who were often resented for thesafety in which they lived. “We’re divided into two foreign countries,” said asoldier on leave in Henri Barbusse’s novel, Under Fire, “the Front, overthere, here there are too many unhappy, and the Rear, here, where there aretoo many happy.”145

In the all-male society of the Front, the only human ties that countedwere to comrades. Mothers could not support their sons emotionally—infact, the parent–child relationship was reversed as sons were forced to shield

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their mothers from the shocking truth. Sometimes mothers’ ignorance wasportrayed as simply pitiable. A soldier in Barbusse’s fictional company whowrote a cheerful and reassuring letter to his mother was killed before hecould send it. His comrade, who retrieved the letter, reflected that it “wouldhave been read by the old peasant woman at the moment when the body ofher son is a wet nothing in the cold and the storm, a nothing that trickles andflows like a dark spring on the walls of the trench.”146 While home on leave,the central character of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the WesternFront (which was based on its German author’s own experience as a frontsoldier) was asked by his mother if it was “bad out there.” He lied: “No,Mother, not so very. There are always a lot of us together, so it isn’t bad.”147

With mixed pity and aggression, the British soldier poet Siegfried Sassoonaddressed the mother of the enemy.

Oh German mother, dreaming by the fire,While you are knitting socks to send your son,His face is trodden deeper in the mud.148

But not all mothers were pitied—some were included in the poets’ indict-ment of an older generation whose stupidity and arrogance had sent so manyyoung men to their deaths. The Countess of Warwick described a Britishmother’s response to her son’s death. “Harry’s colonel has sent me a lettertelling me of my poor son’s bravery. I am proud to think that he has lived upto our tradition—ours has always been a fighting family.”149 In another of hispoems, Sassoon pictured just such a Spartan mother, who responded to thenews of her son’s death with pride that “Jack fell as he’d have wished.” Theofficer bringing the news, who had seen Jack “blown to small bits,” admittedthat he had:

Told the poor old dear some gallant lies,That she would nourish all her days, no doubt,For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyesHad shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,Because he’d been so brave, her glorious boy.150

The British war poets, observes the historian Paul Fussell, had very littlesympathy for the suffering of bereaved women.151 Neither did the Germanfighting men portrayed by Klaus Theweleit. Their literary works picturedmothers in the double guise of creator and destroyer, and denounced the“mother of iron who does not even bat an eyelid at the news of the death ofthe sons that she has sacrificed so much to raise.”152

These misogynist fantasies said more about the sons’ feelings of vulnera-bility than about the mothers’ actual behavior. Parents grieved in manydifferent ways. Some tried to recover their sons’ bodies, others decided toleave them where they had fallen.153 Often, there was no body. Vera Brittainrecalled the “helpless distress” of her fiancé’s mother when she received his

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only remains—a few items of clothing, which gave off “a charnel-housesmell.” “Take these clothes away into the kitchen and don’t ever let me seethem again,” said Roland’s mother. “I must either burn them or bury them.They are not Roland.”154 Some bereaved mothers and fathers attendedspiritualist séances, which gained in popularity during and after the war, ina desperate attempt to make contact with the dead.155 The German painterand sculptor Käthe Kollwitz struggled to express her grief for her son Peter.“Make a drawing: the mother letting her dead son slide into her arms.I might make a hundred such drawings, and yet I do not get any closer tohim. . . . I am too shattered, weakened, drained by tears.”156 A replica ofKollwitz’s bronze sculpture of a mother cradling her dead son in her lap nowstands in Berlin as a monument to all victims of war and political oppression.In the German working-class neighborhoods described by Ute Daniel,mental breakdown and suicide, but also laughter and curses, were among thereactions to bereavement.157

Contrary to the hopes of pacifists, the moral authority of mothers was notexalted by the war. On the contrary, maternalist stereotypes of innately peace-ful and altruistic mothers were questioned by the many feminists whorejected the peace movement. And familiar clichés about mother-love, whichhad been degraded in the service of wartime propaganda, were consigned byspokesmen for an angry younger generation to the trash-heap of outmodedVictorian sentimentalities. In the interwar era, the mother would bedisplaced from her pedestal.

C: “B H?”

What was the effect of the wartime experience on the culture and politics ofmotherhood? Prewar feminists had aspired to two ideals of the post-patriarchalfamily: one centered on the independent mother and the other on the egali-tarian two-parent household. The wartime experience, though it seemed toreinforce the first model, actually tilted the balance toward the second. Forthe mother-headed family was associated with the hardship and bereavementof wartime; by contrast, the restoration of the two-parent householdpromised a return to stability, harmony, and fertility.

More than ever, prestigious spokesmen prescribed marriage and mother-hood as every woman’s destiny. Dr. Gaston Variot, the head of the Instituteof Child-Care in Paris, declared that “young girls and women must nowthink of the repopulation of France, and fill up the house with childrenquickly after the war.”158 To be sure, the supply of healthy young men hadbeen decimated. But Dr. Variot insisted that women must be persuaded tomarry the wounded, whose injuries had not diminished their geneticvalue.159 The British Eugenics Education Society even recommended thatthe wounded be given a special badge to attest to their fitness for paternity.160

But the literature of the postwar period offered few happy endings. InRebecca West’s novel, The Return of the Soldier, the shell-shocked veteran didnot even recognize his wife, and returned to the love of his youth, who was

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married to someone else.161 The returning soldier portrayed by Ernst Toller’splay, Hinkemann was castrated.162 In his short novel The Fox, D.H. Lawrencedepicted a female couple who offered hospitality to a demobilized soldier.Having fallen in love with one of the women, the soldier jealously killed theother.163 These literary figures had their real-life counterparts in the men whoreturned disabled, emotionally disturbed, or unable to adapt to civilianlife.164 Natalist zealots proposed polygamous marriage as a solution to theshortage of suitable husbands. Jane Misme rejected this degrading suggestion,but admitted that many women would be deprived of motherhood. Theywere, she said in 1916, “victims of war. Just as men have sacrificed their livesor their health, women will suffer in their souls.”165

Feminists had hoped that wartime measures that assisted working motherswould be preserved and expanded after the war. But returning veteransdemanded the removal of their female competitors. Even before the warwas over, feminists expressed concern about the widespread summary dismissalof women from their wartime jobs. The return of women to the home, wroteMarie-Elisabeth Lüders, depended on the presence of the family breadwinnerand his ability to earn an adequate wage, and under existing conditionsneither could be relied on.166 Helena Swanwick feared that the cry of “backto the home” would be raised “whether the women have a home or not.”167

The editors of La Française continued to support women’s right to work,but added that such work must be reconciled with maternal obligations:“the France of the future,” stated an editorial of 1918, “cannot sacrificematernity to work, or work to maternity.”168

Feminists predicted confidently that postwar governments would recognizethe contributions of women by making it possible for them to fulfill their truepotential, both as mothers and as human beings. The Italian Donna Paola(Baronchelli) praised the work of Italian women in the fields of maternal andchild welfare and hoped that the mother of tomorrow would be a “consciouscitizen” who would become the educator of “a new Italian people—new inspirit, in thought, in customs.”169 As we have seen, medical coverage andsocial benefits for mothers and children were improved during the war,a trend that would continue in the interwar years. In some countries, such asBritain, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Austria, the granting ofsuffrage rights signaled lawmakers’ appreciation of women as mothers as wellas workers. But fears that the female would outnumber the male electoratecame to the fore in the British law that set a minimum voting age of thirty forwomen, but of twenty-one years for men. In France, an initiative to givewomen the vote passed one legislative chamber, the Chamber of Deputies,but was defeated in the upper house, the Senate, where members insisted thatit might endanger population growth. And in Italy, woman suffrage failedbecause of the disorganization of the liberal parties and the rise of themilitantly anti-feminist fascist movement.170

While feminists dreamed of a postwar world where the mother couldfinally be a free individual, the generation of male authors who served at thefront cherished a very different fantasy. The modernist literature and visual

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art that they created was full of anger at women for refusing their maternaland feminine roles. A playful variation on this theme was the revue TheBreasts of Tiresias (Les Mamelles de Tirésias) by the soldier-poet GuillaumeApollinaire, which though written in 1903 was first performed (in a revisedversion that contained some topical references to the war) in Paris in 1916.In far-off Zanzibar, a housewife named Thérèse declared that she would haveno children, removed her breasts (represented by balloons) and went off tobecome a general, a deputy, and a city councillor. Whereupon her husbandassumed the breasts and his patriotic responsibility:

Women who crave emancipationHave called a halt to procreation!“We’ll bear no more” they boldly state.“You’ll simply have to populateOur land with apes and elephants,With snakes and ostriches and ants.”Just like the queen, who overseesHer busy, buzzing hive of bees(Though less industrious than these)Our women have become quite sterile.They’ve placed the Fatherland in peril!So shout aloud, to near and far,“We need more kids for Zanzibar.”Despite the accident of gender,We love our land, and we’ll defend her.If women will not breed the race,We men will do it in their place.171

Unlike this versatile hero, who immediately produced more than 40,000 chil-dren for the Fatherland, real men could not learn to have babies. But theycould devise new ways to stem the tide of emancipation, keep women out ofmale careers, and control their reproductive capacities. And these would bemajor policy directions during the next two decades.

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“Think of our future: vote for the Center Party.” In the interwar era, all German political partiesemphasized the importance of mothers and children to the survival of the nation. (DeutscheZentrumspartei, Berlin: A.M. Cay, 1918–25 (?) Poster archive: Hoover Institution.)


T D B :

M , M ,

E I Y

“N P C”

At the close of the war, feminists hoped for peace not only in internationalbut also in gender relations, to which wartime had brought so much tension,disorder, and conflict. Sometimes, a return to nurturing motherhood wasproposed as a remedy. Amid the revelry that marked the signing of theArmistice, the British suffragist Catherine Gasquoine Hartley deplored thebehavior of the “screaming girls” who greeted the soldiers. “In one group awoman was carrying a baby, and a tiny child dragged at the hand of anothergirl, crying drearily, and no one noticed. . . . Surely this squandering ofWoman’s gift, this failure of herself, must cease now that peace has come.”1

But as the initial euphoria was followed by a more realistic view of women’sstatus in interwar societies, many voices were raised against this one-sidedview of women’s destiny. Among them was that of the flamboyant Britishactivist Dora Russell. “In actual fact, a woman is as capable as a man ofcombining love of a mate, parenthood, and physical and intellectual work,”she wrote in 1925. “If we cannot have children and remain intelligenthuman beings . . . then indeed our emancipation is a mockery.”2 Russellincluded both maternity and fulfillment through work in her definition ofemancipation.

Feminists of the interwar era have often been stereotyped as conservative.For instance, Susan Kingsley Kent accuses British leaders of endorsing “con-servative and reactionary images of masculinity and femininity”; and ClaudiaKoonz depicts German feminists as devotees of “motherly love in its separatesphere.”3 Certainly, these years saw the decline of militancy and a newemphasis on the reconciliation of the sexes, and large and vocal religiouswomen’s organizations gave high visibility to some conservative positions.But by the 1930s, progressive feminists in every country—and even somemembers of conservative religious groups—had coalesced around a view ofmotherhood that was distinctly modern and included equality of parentalrights, the right to combine marriage and motherhood with paid work,


controlled reproduction, and rationalized child-rearing. After sketching inthe historical context, this chapter will focus on the first two issues—the legalrights of mothers in marriage, and the combination of motherhood and jobor career. The others will be discussed in the two chapters that follow.

Feminists’ positions on these issues evolved in the context of more generalchanges in attitudes toward reproduction, child-rearing, and the role of thestate. As we have seen from an earlier chapter, most prewar feminists did notsimply affirm woman’s maternal vocation, but problematized it by depictingit as one side of a dilemma, the other side of which was the desire for indi-vidual autonomy or self-realization, sometimes in the form of paid work. Inthe interwar era, issues surrounding motherhood and paid work moved tothe forefront of public concern. And the maternal dilemma continued as aprominent theme in feminist debates, but with a change of emphasis from theindividual mother to the family group.

The context for this shift of focus was the widespread perception that thefamily was in crisis—a crisis that was attributed not just to the stress of postwarreadjustment, but to changes in the status of women. In the closing daysof the war, feminists renewed the campaigns that had been suspended in1914. And in the first years of peacetime, they reached the height of theirinfluence. Shortly after the war, women had gained the right to vote in manycountries—such as Britain, Germany, Austria, Britain, Ireland (where theBritish law was extended to women, and ratified in 1922 by the newly createdIrish Free State), the Netherlands, and Sweden. In France, where women didnot gain suffrage rights, organizations such as the National Council ofFrench women and other liberal organizations nonetheless gained in prestigeand influence.4 In many countries, legislation—for example, the British SexDisqualification (Removal) Act of 1919 and German educational reformsthat admitted women to university teaching positions and to the legalprofession—gave women new access to educational opportunities and to pro-fessions. In wartime, women had not only taken on new vocational roles, buthad claimed new personal freedoms in dress, social behavior, and recreationalactivities.

Public opinion responded anxiously to these changes in women’s status.For example, the influential British journalist Victor Gollancz associated hiscountry’s resurgent women’s movement with “revolutionary methods, sexstrikes, and sex wars” which might abolish all distinctions of gender.5 Groupsrepresenting male workers, including professional organizations, veterans’associations, and labor unions, retaliated against this imagined threat bydenying job opportunities to female workers. And mothers—actual or poten-tial—were singled out for discriminatory treatment by policies and laws thatmandated the dismissal of married female workers in many occupations, par-ticularly in privileged civil service and teaching positions.6 As unemploymentwas defined as a male problem, married women who were dismissed wereoften denied insurance and other forms of financial assistance.

The family, too, was sometimes portrayed as a war zone. The popularFrench novelist Henry Bordeaux described the marital conflicts of reunited

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couples. “We talk of marriage between men and women,” he observed, “asone talks of peace between the Germans and the French. The husband wantsto impose conditions. . . . Women do not want to obey and don’t know howto command.”7 Such apprehensions were shared by many feminists. TheAustrian Grete Meisel-Hess warned that “the tensions that the war createdseem still to hover in the air. People have not had enough of the pain, thehostility, the destructive fury . . . Marriage and war have infected each other.”8

The popular culture of the era exuberantly fed these obsessions byportraying the emancipated woman as a seductive man-hater—red-lipped,sharp-toothed, and sadistic. “I am a vamp, I am a vamp, I’m a fierce wildbeast,” sang the cabaret stars of Berlin:

Upon the blood of men I feed,I like them fried and fricasseed.9

Most famous of the vamps was Monique, the heroine of La Garçonne (TheBachelor Girl), by the French novelist and sex reformer Victor Margueritte.An instant publishing sensation in 1922, the novel sold a million copies bythe end of its first decade in print, and was translated into many languages.10

Monique rejected an arranged marriage and set out on a “bachelor” life,complete with career, lots of wild partying, and affairs with glamorouspartners of both genders. But lest the novel subvert its own moral by makingits wayward heroine seem enviable, the author cursed her with sterility. Afteran abortion, Monique found herself unable to conceive, and reflected sadlythat “she had won nothing beside her freedom. Her work? What good was it,if it only fed her loneliness? . . . If no child was to be given to her, what wasthere left?”11 As Mary Louise Roberts remarks, Monique was the femalecounterpart of the impotent or emasculated male veterans who wanderedhelplessly through postwar fiction.12 And the solution to this anguish wasmarriage, for when she found a sympathetic husband and gave up hermisguided independence, Monique’s fertility was miraculously restored.

The reconstruction of the family was also a central concern of the nationalcommunity. Governments faced with the task of reintegrating returningveterans into society and reversing wartime declines in birthrates promotedmarriage and family stability. The constitution of the German WeimarRepublic devoted a clause to the family: “Marriage is the foundation of familylife and of the preservation and increase of the nation, and stands underthe protection of the constitution.”13 The French Prime Minister, GeorgesClemenceau, declared in 1919 that although the Versailles treaty did notspecifically “stipulate that France undertakes to produce a great numberof children,” nonetheless “that should have been its very first article,since . . . France will be ruined because there will not be any Frenchmenleft.”14 The Swedish Minister of Social Affairs wrote to a newly appointedPopulation Commission that “measures will have to be instituted to encour-age marriage . . . and the bearing of children.”15 The concepts of “marriage”and “family” were widely debated and took on a broad range of meanings.

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One influential familial ideal was promoted by religious and right-wingwomen’s organizations. In Germany, conservative religious women organizedin the German Evangelical Women’s League (Deutsch-EvangelischerFrauenbund) and the Catholic Women’s League (Catholischer Frauenbund).16

In France, Catholic women united in the National Union for WomanSuffrage (Union Nationale pour la Vote des Femmes), the Women’s Civic andSocial Union (Union Féminine Civique et Sociale), and French Women’sCatholic Action (Ligue Féminine d’Action Catholique Française). By 1937these groups together claimed a membership of two million women, farsurpassing the liberal National Council of French Women (Conseil Nationaldes Femmes Françaises), whose membership declined from about 300,000members in 1926 to about 200,000 in the 1930s.17 Large Catholic organi-zations, including the British St. Joan’s Society and the Dutch ChristianWomen’s League (Christen-Vrouwen-Bond), were formed in all countrieswith substantial Catholic populations.18

The Catholic groups took as their guide the papal encyclical CastiConnubii, which when promulgated by Pope Pius XI in 1930 became theera’s most influential religious statement on family life and sexual morality.The Pope denounced the false doctrine that “the wife, being freed from thecare of children and family, should, to the neglect of these, be able to followher own bent and devote herself to business and even to public affairs,” andlamented “the debasing of the womanly character and the dignity of mother-hood, and indeed of the whole family, as a result of which the husband suffersthe loss of his wife, the children of their mother, and the home and the wholefamily of an ever watchful guardian.”19

But despite its wide appeal, this religious ideal of the family was by nomeans uncontested or even dominant among Western Europeans during theinterwar years. Another major development of this period was the increasedinfluence of socialist women’s groups, such as those that developed withinthe British Labour Party, the German and Scandinavian Social DemocraticParties, and trade-union movements everywhere. These working-classwomen, who sometimes cooperated with liberal feminists, rejected religiousdoctrines of male supremacy and based their definition of the family on acomradely relationship between husband and wife. Partly in order to distancethemselves from the Russian Bolsheviks, who were reputed to have socializedwomen as well as other means of production, democratic socialists disavowedradical doctrines of “free love” and lauded the joys of monogamy. For exam-ple, the German socialist periodical Die Gleichheit (Equality), aimed at aworking-class female readership, extolled marriage as “the intimate spiritualcomradeship of two equal partners.”20

This ideal proved to be extremely popular. During the interwar era, thespread of moral values previously professed chiefly by the middle class to theworking-class majority increased the popularity and prestige of marriage.21

Dismal predictions that the wartime holocaust of men would produce ageneration of lonely widows and wild bachelor-girls were not fulfilled. Infact, the rate of marriage increased in most European countries. For example,whereas at the beginning of the twentieth century about 80 percent of British

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women had married by age fifty, by 1940 the proportion was about 94 per-cent.22 In Germany about 55 percent of all men and 53 percent of all womenwere married in 1910; by 1939 these figures had risen to 63 percent and58 percent.23

At the same time, attitudes toward marriage became more individualistic.Divorce rates (still very low by contemporary standards) doubled in Germanyand Sweden and increased fourfold in Britain.24 Divorce changed the lives ofsome prominent feminists. The French Marcelle Kraemer-Bach married atthe end of the war, and divorced a year later. “The ecstatic adolescent wasdead,” she wrote. “There I was, ruined by my husband, with a baby in myarms, facing reality and forced to reinvent myself.”25 Both Kraemer-Bach andanother divorced Frenchwoman, Yvonne Netter, became prominent lawyers.26

The German social worker and politician Else Ulich-Beil was the mother oftwo sons when her husband demanded a divorce in 1929. “I put the divorcedecree in my drawer. And there, unread, it burned in 1944.”27

Gender roles in marriage were understood as complementary, and manywives aspired to a domestic existence occupied by housework and child-rearing. Working-class women were even more likely than their middle-classcontemporaries to rejoice in domesticity and to consider employment outsidethe home as, at best, a necessary evil.28 Housewives’ organizations such as theNational League of German Housewives’ Associations (Reichsverbanddeutscher Hausfrauenvereine) and the Danish Housewives’ Federationdemanded respect and financial support for the full-time homemaker.29

However, many married women continued to work outside the home, atrates that varied among nations. In Britain, married women were only about14 to 16 percent of the female workforce; in France, however, half ofall female workers were married in 1920.30 Around 1930, 29 percent of allmarried women were employed in Germany, but in Sweden only 9 percent,in Denmark 10 percent to 12 percent, in the Netherlands 10 percent, and inIreland only about 5 percent held paying jobs.31 Two models of motherhood—one based on full-time homemaker status and the other on a combination ofdomestic work and employment—competed for legitimacy.

This era’s feminist organizations created their own approaches to mar-riage, the family, and parenthood. The leaders of the British National Unionof Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC), which succeeded the NationalUnion of Woman Suffrage Societies, criticized the prewar suffragettes asmindless imitators of men, and called for a new respect for female difference.Though they continued to link motherhood to citizenship, the “newfeminists” shied away from the exalted moral claims that had been advancedby prewar maternalists such as Ellen Key, and soberly defined motherhood asa job almost like any other. Not all British feminists supported the new ide-ology: an active and vocal minority founded an organization known as the SixPoint Group to oppose what they considered a dangerous emphasis ongender difference at the expense of equality.

Feminists in other countries likewise affirmed motherhood as an essentialtask of the female citizen.32 They, too, shifted away from maternalist rhetoricto emphasize the couple or the family over the mother as an individual.

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“Marriages have never been more numerous,” declared an editorial in LaFrançaise, “Wherever there is a man and women who love each other, thereis a family.” Warm and comforting images of family life expressed hopes forpeace in a land ravaged by war.33 The pacifist Madeleine Vernet, who continuedto publish her journal La Mère Éducatrice (The Mother-Educator) extolled thefamily as the basis of social harmony. “The ideal for which we must strive,”she wrote, “is that of a man and woman who depend on each other, collabo-rating in two areas, family and society.”34 In Germany, the League of GermanWomen’s Associations (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine or BDF) stated in itsprogram of 1920 that “as the highest and most intimate form of humancommunity, the family must be the seed-bed of all spiritual development.The purity of family life is thus the basis of the health and strength of soci-ety.”35 And in Austria, an editorial in the socialist periodical The Worker(Arbeiterzeitung), proclaimed that the experience of motherhood and familylife must provide the basis for a “human, comprehensible, real-life politics.Politics that lays hold of them (women) and that they experience firsthand.”36

These moderate and family-centered programs are often interpreted asa sign of the decline of feminism and the blunting of its formerly militantmessage.37 But in fact, they sometimes provided powerful arguments for gen-der equality. The modern woman, feminists asserted, would never becomea mother under conditions of subordination and economic dependency. Thediversity of interwar women’s movements—which as we have seen containeda spectrum of political positions ranging from religious conservatism tosocialist radicalism—made a unified approach to issues concerning marriage,work, and parenthood very difficult. As Anne Cova has remarked, leaderswho tried to pull together these warring factions often walked “the razor’sedge.”38 Nonetheless when faced with a backlash against all the gains thatwomen had made over the past decades, many interwar feminist movementsmoved from the conciliatory programs of the 1920s to a more militantdefense of equality in the 1930s. And their struggle was not simply defensive,but also innovative, creating an image of the mother as both nurturer andworker which anticipated the “new feminism” of the second half of thecentury.

“H H P”: T M F

The struggle to improve the legal status of the mother in and outside ofmarriage faced new obstacles in the interwar years. The process of reform thathad begun in the prewar era produced some results, but its momentum wasreduced in some countries and halted in others. We will first look at changesin the status of the mother in marriage and then at the very much morecomplex and acrimonious debate on the rights of the unmarried mother.

In the Scandinavian countries, a process of reform that had been initiatedduring the prewar era produced results in the 1920s.39 As the historian Silke

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Neunsinger points out, these neutral nations were spared the gender conflictthat arose elsewhere from the traumas of wartime and postwar readjustment.40

A Scandinavian Committee for Family Law produced its final report in 1918,and by 1929 its recommendations were incorporated into the marriage lawsof Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. The new codes decreed theequality of husband and wife in almost all aspects of married life, includingmost aspects of child-rearing. In all countries except Finland, however,fathers maintained guardianship rights in respect to financial decisions.Equality of rights did not imply equality of function: these laws assumedthat the household would normally be headed by a male breadwinner.Housewives were given the right to sufficient resources to meet householdexpenses, and were allowed to appeal to the courts against a husband whorefused to provide for his family.41

As Birgitte Søland points out, Scandinavian conservatives displayed anopenness to the reform of the family that was seldom shared by theircounterparts in other European states. Their motive, she suspects, was tocounteract what they viewed as the dangerous appeal of feminism by makingfamily life more attractive.42 The goal of this legislation, as defined by a mem-ber of the Norwegian parliament in 1918, was to encourage “the foundingof numerous homes for healthy people, where healthy children can be born.”43

In Britain, too, a campaign for the rights of married mothers that hadbegun in the nineteenth century produced results during this period. In1920, NUSEC drafted a law that gave mothers and fathers equal rightsof guardianship over children and an equal obligation to maintain them“according to their means.” The draft law made this obligation enforce-able whether the partners were living together or apart. Another draft lawstrengthened the enforcement of maintenance obligations to divorced womenand their children.44 The laws that were passed by Parliament—the MarriedWomen (Maintenance) Act of 1922 and the Guardianship of Infants Act(1925)—conferred on mothers, married, separated, or divorced, an equalright to guardianship of children. But the law forced fathers to support theirfamilies financially only in case of separation or divorce. Unlike theirScandinavian counterparts, who thought of the family almost as an agency ofthe state, the British lawgivers were reluctant to allow the state to intervenein what they still regarded as the private sphere.45

In family law as in other areas, the hopes for progress held out in Germanyby the constitution of the new Weimar Republic were frustrated by a right-ward political trend. The National Assembly that debated and ratified theWeimar Constitution in 1919 was elected by both men and women, andabout 10 percent of its delegates, representing the entire spectrum of politi-cal parties, were female.46 A clause in the Constitution stated that marriage“rested on the equal rights of both sexes,” and that “the nurture of offspringto physical, spiritual and social maturity is the highest duty and natural rightof the parents, over whose work the state presides.”47 The League of GermanWomen’s Organizations reaffirmed its prewar program that called for equalparental power and the intervention of a guardians’ court in cases of

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disagreement. In cases of divorce, the group further stipulated, the custodialparent should also have full parental rights. But these demands were neverimplemented through legislation. The law that gave precedence to thefather’s wishes in case of parental disagreement remained in force, except foran amendment of 1921 that prevented him from changing the children’s reli-gious affiliation without the mother’s consent. In cases of divorce, the care ofthe children was allotted to the innocent party, but the father remained theguardian in financial matters.48

Though the struggle for suffrage absorbed most of the energies of Frenchfeminist organizations, they also upheld the parental rights of mothers.Despite the emergency wartime decree that had given mothers power tomake some decisions regarding their children, French law still upheld mostforms of paternal authority.49 In 1919, a position paper of the NationalCouncil of French Women called for an end to all the legal disadvantagessuffered by married women (many of whose decisions were still subject totheir husbands’ approval) and demanded equal rights for both parents andthe intervention of a court in case of disagreement.50 Parental equalityalso received the enthusiastic support of socialist feminists; “if the family is tobecome the harmonious environment that we hope for,” wrote the influen-tial Madeleine Vernet, “it should not be based on an injustice.”51 But thelarge and vocal Catholic women’s groups that lauded the mother as “giver oflife, educator, heart of the household, agent of human progress” upheldpaternal authority.52 On this issue, the Catholic women followed the leadof male-dominated natalist organizations such as the National Alliance toIncrease the French Population (Alliance nationale pour l’acroissement dela population française), which attributed declining birthrates to theNapoleonic Code’s system of partible inheritance (which forced fathers todivide their property among their children) and warned that further restric-tions upon paternal rights might wholly destroy men’s incentive to foundfamilies.53

In 1929 a general meeting of all French feminist groups, the EstatesGeneral of Feminism, called for the abolition of paternal power.54 But AndréeButillard, head of the Women’s Civic and Social Union, supported her right-wing allies by insisting that the law should buttress the husband’s paternaland economic power by giving him the title “head of the family” (Chef deFamille).55 When a new Marriage Code—denounced by feminists as “truncatedand mutilated”—was passed in 1938, it enacted some improvements in thestatus of wives but preserved paternal power, which was not fully abolisheduntil the 1970s.56

Although historians have tended to regard natalism as the predominantgoal of interwar family policies, these policies in fact placed a still higherpriority on the stability of marriage. The victim of this emphasis on marriagewas the unmarried mother.57 In the prewar era, natalist rhetoric had oftenjustified efforts to reform the legal status of single mothers and their children,who were defined as valuable citizens who deserved protection. Among themost significant results were the French law of 1912, which for the first time

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permitted paternity suits, and the Norwegian law of 1916, which gave thechildren of unmarried parents, in cases where paternity could be established,most of the rights of “legitimate” children with respect to inheritance andfamily name, and allotted public assistance if paternal support could not becollected.58 But in the interwar years, these children were resented in allcountries for the burden that they allegedly placed on overtaxed welfarefunds.59 In an era when the sexually active single woman was pictured moreas vamp than as victim, pathetic or heroic images of the unmarried motherlost their credibility.60 And concern for the survival of “illegitimate” childrenwas often outweighed by a stronger desire to uphold marriage, which manyfeared would be undermined by any sign of sympathy for the single mother.

Sweden’s law of 1920 entitled “illegitimate” children to paternal support,but deprived them of inheritance rights unless the couple was engaged at thetime of conception. The law placed all such children under the guardianshipof a municipal officer who was responsible for assisting and guiding themother. Similar measures were adopted by Finland in 1922. Only Denmarkfollowed the example of Norway and passed a law in 1937 providing that“children born out of wedlock have the same legal position in relationto their parents as legitimate children, except where explicitly stated other-wise.”61 Though more tolerant of the unmarried mother than those of otherstates, the Scandinavian laws still showed a marked mistrust of her judgmentby denying her full parental rights and placing both her and her child underpublic guardianship.

In the German National Assembly, the body that met in 1919 to write theconstitution of the new Weimar Republic, the female delegates initiated along and vehement debate on the status of the single mother. A diverse groupthat was distributed across the spectrum of political parties, including theradical Independent Socialists, the moderate Social Democrats, the liberalGerman Democratic Party, the Catholic Center Party, and the right-wingGerman National People’s Party agreed that a clause on the status ofthe unmarried mother and her child should supplement the constitution’sArticle 119, which placed marriage and the family under the protection ofthe constitution.

But on the definition of that status they parted company. TheIndependent Socialists, influenced by the Norwegian example, demandedthat the illegitimate child be granted “a right to the name of his/her fatherand legal equality with legitimate children.” Luise Zietz, an Independentdelegate, noted that these mothers’ moral standards were often “muchhigher than those of many ‘legitimate’ wives.”62 Elisabeth Roehl, who repre-sented the Social Democratic Party, advocated equal rights to inheritance andsupport. “A nation bled white by the war,” she stated, could not afford towaste any of its human resources. But Roehl objected to any compulsoryattribution of the father’s name, which she claimed that many unmarriedmothers did not desire.63 Marie Baum, a delegate from the liberal GermanDemocratic Party, objected that the situation of the child of unmarriedparents was so different from that of the “legitimate” child that complete

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equality of rights was hardly conceivable.64 Moreover, added GertrudBäumer, who was also a Democratic Party delegate, such fictive equalitymight actually create problems for the unmarried mother herself, whosecontrol of her child might be disrupted by too much paternal interference.65

Catholic and conservative delegates declared that an equal status for illegiti-mate children might undermine the stability and respect due to legitimatemarriage.66

And this conservative position prevailed. The final version, which becameArticle 121 of the Weimar Constitution, made no reference to legal rights atall but guaranteed to illegitimate children “conditions for their physical,spiritual, and social development that are equal to those of legitimatechildren.”67 This clause defined the child of unmarried parents more as anobject of philanthropic concern than as a citizen with rights. Indeed, themajor innovation of the Weimar Republic was the assignment of rights ofguardianship, not to the mother—who was usually deemed incapable ofexercising them—but to a governmental agency, the Jugendamt, or youthwelfare bureau. According to the legal scholar Camilla Jellinek, whopresided over a national network of legal counseling centers for women, thismeasure somewhat improved the financial situation of female-headedhouseholds.68 The League for the Protection of Mothers (Bund fürMutterschutz) continued to insist, as in the prewar era, that the child shouldbe under the mother’s guardianship and should bear her name.69 Unmarriedmothers who were employed, dependents of an employed person, ordestitute were eligible for maternity insurance and other forms of assistancein Germany.

The rise of the Fascist regime in Italy, which consolidated its totalitarianrule in 1925, and the National Socialist seizure of power in Germany in1933, created a new and disturbing perspective on many of these issues ofsexual morality, including the status of single mothers and their children. Forthese movements cynically co-opted an originally progressive critique ofconventional morality for use in the service of their militarist and racist agen-das. Regardless of marital status, declared Heinrich Himmler (who was headof the political police, or SS) any mother of good blood who produced achild for the Volk was to be honored.70 After the National Socialists tookpower in Germany, unmarried mothers who could prove that they themselvesand the fathers of their children were of acceptable “racial” stock receivedimproved benefits. The discriminatory provisions of this law would not havebeen acceptable to Camilla Jellinek, who because of her Jewish descent wasforced to give up all her public activities, nor to most of her colleagues in theLeague of German Women’s Organizations, which disbanded shortly afterthe Nazis took over.71

The right-wing government of Austria emulated the Nazi example. In1934, after the Nazis took over in Germany, a Catholic leader, Maria Wolfring,was appointed by the Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss as head of anorganization known as the Mothers’ Protection Bureau (Mutterschutzwerk),which modeled its services to unmarried mothers on those of the Nazis and

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Fascists. At the opening of a home for destitute single mothers, Wolfringproclaimed that it was “a wonderful thing to be an Austrian mother.” Thoughthey themselves had initiated many charitable efforts on behalf of poormothers and children, two Austrian Catholic groups—the Catholic GermanWomen’s League (Katholischer Deutscher Frauenbund) and the CatholicWomen’s Organization (Katholische Frauenorganisation)—refused to partici-pate in this initiative, which they criticized both for undermining traditionalmorality and for exploiting motherhood in the service of the state.72 Criticismof state policies was silenced when Austria was forcibly incorporated into theThird Reich in 1938.

The unmarried mother and her child in Scandinavia, Germany, and Austriawere fortunate compared to their British counterparts. British law stilloffered no way for such children to be legitimated, and set paternal supportobligations at a minimal level. The National Council for the UnmarriedMother and her Child, a philanthropic organization founded during the war,joined NUSEC, in a campaign to change these laws.73 Among the legislativegoals formulated by NUSEC was a measure designed to entrust the respon-sibility for collecting support payments to a public authority, to apportionthese payments to the circumstances of the father rather than the mother, toallow for the legitimation of children by the subsequent marriage of theirparents, and to give illegitimate children equal inheritance rights with theirlegitimate siblings in cases where parents died intestate.74 The outcome ofthese and other initiatives was the Legitimacy Act of 1926, which permittedthe legitimation of children by the subsequent marriage of their parents,unless the parents had been married to others at the time of conception. Thislaw, of course, affirmed the norm of the two-parent, nuclear family andhelped only those children whose parents wished to form such a household.For the others, adoption by unrelated families—which was legalized duringthis period—was the preferred solution.75

In France, women’s groups also championed the rights of the unmarriedmother. Feminist lawyers such as Maria Vérone and Marcelle Kraemer-Bach,who formulated the positions taken by the National Council of FrenchWomen, advocated legal reforms that would make paternity suits easier whilepreserving the mother’s rights of guardianship.76 The socialist MadeleineVernet also argued passionately that “we can have no real progress while themother, creator of life, can be dishonored by the very fact of her maternity.”77

And yet even Vernet had changed with the times. During the prewar years,she had rejected marriage as a form of servitude and had herself borne a childin an unofficial, though stable relationship. But in the postwar era Vernetmarried her companion and publicly repudiated “free love.” And she nolonger extolled the emancipatory possibilities of unmarried motherhood. Onthe contrary, she declared, such an abstract ideal of liberation failed to takeinto account the difference in the needs of the two sexes; in a nonmaritalpartnership “the man risks nothing, but the woman risks motherhood.”78

These progressive groups and individuals were drowned out by the morenumerous Catholic women’s organizations, who joined their male allies in

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a militant defense of marriage. To give the unmarried mother the rights ofher married counterpart, they argued, would undermine the status of thelegally constituted family.79 The political clout of the religious groups wasapparent in the French law on social insurance that was passed in 1928. Forthe first time, the state sponsored maternity coverage for women whoseincome was under a certain limit, whether they were employed themselvesor the dependents of an employed husband. But much to the outrage offeminists, unmarried mothers were not included in this benefit.80

In Spain, the confrontation between liberal and socialist feminists and theforces of religious conservatism occurred in the context of political upheavaland civil war. Under the Spanish monarchy, the status of women had beenregulated by laws modeled on the Napoleonic Code.81 In 1921, soon after itsfounding in 1918, the first national feminist organization, the NationalAssociation of Spanish Women (Asociación Nacional de Mujeres Españolas),submitted a petition to the parliament (Cortes) requesting several improve-ments in the status of women, including equal parental rights for marriedmothers and, for unmarried mothers, the right to care for their children evenwhen their fathers had gained paternal rights by recognizing them. In 1925,when this petition had not produced results, the feminist periodical Feminalpublished a series of articles that proposed revisions in the Civil Code.82

A military dictatorship that shared power with the monarchy from 1923 until1931 brought only limited rights of suffrage for female heads of families.

The fall of the monarchy and the founding of the Second Republic in1931 opened the way for many forms of social change. Ruled by a coalitionof liberal and socialist parties, the Republic not only gave women the right ofsuffrage (1931) but also modernized family law to permit secular marriageand divorce, give equal rights to husband and wife, and equalize the status ofchildren born in and outside of marriage. These laws, which were upheld byseveral left-wing women’s organizations, including the communist Anti-Fascist Women’s Association (Agrupación de Mujeres Antifascistas) and theanarchist Free Women (Mujeres Libres), placed the new Spanish Republic “inthe forefront of the parliamentary democracies of Europe.”83

But the Republic was immediately opposed by a counterrevolutionarycoalition of conservatives, Catholics, and monarchists that in 1934 united inthe Spanish Falange (Falange Española). Its female auxiliary was a groupknown as the “Women’s Section” (Sección Femenina), which was led byPilar Primo de Rivera, sister of the Fascist General José Antonio Primo deRivera. Like the French Catholic organizations, the Women’s Section far out-numbered secular women’s groups. Spanish women were predominantlyconservative and religious, and the electoral setbacks suffered by the left-wing parties in elections held in 1933 were attributed largely to women’svotes.84

In 1936, republican groups formed a new Popular Front, which they inau-gurated in a parade that included many liberal and socialist women. In a“Letter to Soldiers,” General Primo de Rivera cited the behavior of theseabandoned women—who had shouted “Children yes! Husbands no!”—to

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justify the overthrow of the Republic.85 In 1941, after the Spanish Civil Warand defeat of the Republic, the fascist regime headed by General FranciscoFranco repealed the Republic’s marriage laws, condemned women who livedin nonmarital unions to fines and imprisonment, forbade daughters to leavetheir fathers’ homes except for marriage or a convent, and prohibited theemployment of all married women whose husbands’ income was sufficientto support a family.86

Thus despite widespread perceptions of a “crisis of the family,” the lawspertaining to marriage, motherhood, and family relationships changed littlein the interwar era. Only in Scandinavia and in Britain were marriage lawspermanently changed, and these changes completed a reform process thatdated to the prewar years. In other countries, paternal power was amongthe last remnants of patriarchal marriage to be abolished, sometimes not untilthe 1970s. The anxieties that were expressed through the defense of marriage,patriarchy, and “legitimate” child-rearing were deepened by the economiccrises of the era, to which we shall now turn.

“T G D C”: T C A W M

“A home without a mother is like a body without a soul,” declared themanifesto of the French Women’s Civic and Social Union.87 The mother atthe hearth became an icon of the interwar era—a sentimental image thatserved powerful material interests. Although they showed signs of recoveryin the mid-1920s, the postwar economies were unstable. Rates of unemploy-ment fluctuated until their rise in 1929–30 signaled the onset of the greatestcrisis as yet experienced by Western capitalism, the Great Depression. Womencould hardly be blamed for rising rates of male unemployment. Theirremoval from their wartime jobs had restored the gender segregation of thelabor market, and few competed directly for male jobs. The employedwoman was nonetheless a useful target for anger that might otherwise havebeen directed against governments, politicians, and trade-union leaders.

Although this attack was aimed at all working women, married womenwere singled out for special forms of discrimination. For while public opinionaccepted the employment of the unmarried woman—though of course ata lower level than a similarly qualified man—the married women could beportrayed as fully occupied in the home. And her occupation was defined asmotherhood. The notion that motherhood was a job—in fact a service tothe state—that might deserve compensation had been developed by feministsand other progressives in the prewar era. Now it was co-opted in many countriesto serve anti-feminist agendas: not only reduction of the female workforcebut also population policies that assumed that full-time mothers were morefertile than their employed counterparts. Natalist groups, which gainedgreatly in influence in the interwar years, often urged their governmentsto offer cash subsidies for childbearing—a measure that was designed to com-pensate families for mothers’ lost wages and thus deter them from working.

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Feminists recognized the trap that had been set for them. In 1917, theBritish socialist Wilma Meikle had already warned that the return of peacewould also bring back “the Great Domestic Cant of Good Wifehood andGood Motherhood.”88 The German legal expert Camilla Jellinek observed in1921 that “sometimes you hear people say very frankly that women shouldstick with their natural function, having children, and everything else issuperfluous and harmful.”89 In 1923, the editorial board of La Françaisecomplained of a tide of reactionary propaganda that defined the position ofwomen as “the home and the pedestal . . . the home where they want toimprison women . . . the pedestal where they want to put her.”90 But anopposing strategy was difficult to devise. Feminists could not afford to affirmdomestic motherhood, for this would betray the core constituency of profes-sional and white-collar workers who because of their privileged status wereoften selectively targeted for dismissal. To allow these women to be senthome against their will would be to reverse gains made over an entire centuryof struggle for professional opportunities. But still less could feminist organ-izations afford to make the employed mother into a role model, for thismight offend the majority of mothers who did not wish to work outsidethe home. The only solution was to break down the dichotomy betweendomesticity and employment by claiming that these were not rigid oppositesbut flexible options. Full-time domesticity, full-time wage work, or somecombination of the two—all might be appropriate choices for the individualmother.

The British “family endowment” controversy showed that keeping themother’s options open was a complex task. Eleanor Rathbone, who hadheaded the Family Endowment Society during the war, became the presidentof NUSEC in 1919. Along with her colleagues Elinor Burns, Mary Stocks,Maude Royden, and Kate Courtney, Rathbone was convinced that wartimedependency allowances payable directly to mothers had improved the standardof living and the morale of working-class families, and argued for the reten-tion of these subsidies in peacetime. Motherhood, Rathbone argued, wasa job much like any other—indeed, in some cases “a career in itself.”91 Itdiffered from other skilled work chiefly because it provided “no moneyremuneration for the mother’s task, no guarantee of her maintenance whileshe performs it, and . . . no consequential relationship recognized by societybetween the quality and quantity of her product and the quantity and qualityof the tools and materials that she has at her disposal.”92 Such work deserveda salary, or “family allowance,” which Rathbone envisaged as a subsidy foreach child under five—whether raised by taxes or by insurance was left open.

Rathbone insisted that she had no intention of driving women from theworkforce, and that on the contrary her proposal would improve the positionof the working mother. She argued that it was unfair to stereotype the bread-winning role as male, for the many women who also supported dependentswere as much in need of a “family wage” as men. Rathbone—a FabianSocialist who believed in the power of social engineering to solve the mostintractable of social problems—claimed that a shift in the responsibility for

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supporting children from the family to the state would invalidate the chiefargument for gender discrimination: the belief that men needed more moneybecause they were family breadwinners. She added that the mother’s entitle-ment to the allowance should not be predicated on her employment status;indeed “independent minded women” who were “not fitted by temperamentfor an exclusively domestic life,” might use some portion of the allowance topay for child-care while they worked outside the home.93

Rathbone was well aware of the danger that subsidies for childbearingmight put pressure on women to bear more children. But natalism foundmuch less support among British elites—who tended to see reproductionamong the poor chiefly as a drain on the welfare budget—than among theircontinental counterparts.94 Rathbone appealed to these attitudes by insistingthat the allowances would bolster the status and self-respect of poor womenand thus actually increase their ability and motivation to limit births.95 Theillegitimate child’s entitlement, she suggested, should be contingent on theparents’ willingness to “stabilize their union”—a conservative stance bycomparison to that of many continental feminists who defended the rights ofthe unmarried mother.96

After this proposal was included in NUSEC’s program in 1927, somemembers resigned and joined another feminist organization, the Six PointGroup, whose doctrine of gender equality opposed any stereotyping ofwomen as mothers.97 Too narrow a focus on maternity, these dissidentsobjected, obscured the larger issues. “The equalitarian knows that it is notmaternity in itself which is the disability,” wrote Elizabeth Abbott, “it is thehorribly low and unequal status of woman, the everlasting conception of heras a means to an end instead of as an end in herself, that makes not onlymaternity but sometimes every hour of a woman’s day a disability.”98 Alongwith activists of all nations, some of these women joined The Open DoorInternational, an organization founded in Berlin in 1929 in order to defendthe increasingly threatened rights of women in the workforce. “A woman,irrespective of marriage, parenthood, or childbirth, should have the right atall times to decide whether she should engage in paid work,” read thisorganization’s charter. “A free race is not born of slave mothers.”99

Though family endowment received the support of the major British social-ist women’s organization, the National Conference of Labour Women, in1922, other working-class women demurred. Married working women oftenfeared that the subsidies might be used as a reason to dismiss working mothersfrom their jobs. Housewives, who contrary to Rathbone’s assumption usuallycontrolled a considerable portion of their families’ budgets, often believedthat the family was already a partnership and were suspicious of state inter-vention.100 Major opposition came from the male trade unions, who fearedthat the provision of family allowances would be a substitute for pay raises.When the Labour Party decided not to support family allowances in 1929, thediscussion came to an end, and was not resumed until World War II.101

French feminists also worked toward a flexible definition of the maternalrole that valued mothers’ work both in and outside the home. In France,

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where wartime losses had deepened the obsession with population growth,subsidies for child-rearing were supported across a political spectrum thatranged from religious conservatives to communists.102 Since the 1890s, somecompanies and governmental agencies had supplemented wages with childallowances that were normally payable to fathers. In 1919 the NationalCouncil of French Women enlisted women in the “struggle against depopu-lation,” and called for improved child welfare services and aid to largefamilies. But, like their British colleagues, they insisted that there were manyways of mothering and defended the right of all women, regardless of maritalor parental status, to employment opportunities and equal pay.103 Somefeminists were highly skeptical about the consequences of payment for child-bearing, chiefly because most of the proposals designated fathers, rather thanmothers, as the recipients. The socialist Madeleine Vernet protested thatchildbearing should not become a commercial operation, but should beregarded as “an affair of the individual conscience.” Vernet called for a moregeneral state “endowment” of all women from the age of twenty—a provisionthat she insisted must not release men from the obligation to support theirchildren.104 The Estates General of Feminism, a meeting that included manyorganizations, endorsed child allowances in 1929.105

Because the 1920s was a decade of low male unemployment in France,opposition to the work of married women did not become serious untilthe onset of the Great Depression in 1931. But as unemployment figuresrose, public opinion turned against married female workers. Natalist propa-ganda, which was widely distributed in schools, churches, and places ofemployment, portrayed the working mother as a sinister vamp who waswilling to sacrifice the welfare of her children and her country to her ownselfish ambition.106 In 1932, the Catholic women’s groups founded a neworganization, the League for the Mother at Home (Ligue de la Mère auFoyer) to promote full-time motherhood. Though opposed to a legal ban onmarried women’s employment, this group proposed a supplementalallowance to nonworking mothers as a kind of maternal salary that mightinduce them to leave the workforce. “There is no better way of honoring themission of the mother,” proclaimed the Women’s Civic and Social Union.107

Amid this hostile atmosphere, liberal and socialist feminists moved towarda resolute defense of the rights of all women, including wives and mothers, toaccept employment. To be sure, they differed on the extent of such rights,for only a minority supported Open Door International, which militantlyopposed all legislation designed to protect mothers by regulating their hoursand working conditions. But they asserted not only that that the mother’swages—particularly in homes where the father might be unemployed—wereoften necessary to her family’s survival, but that the mother’s employmentoften enhanced her own and her family’s well-being.108 “It is not the con-stant presence of the mother that ensures the good upbringing and educationof the children,” declared an editorial in La Française. “It is the spiritual andemotional character of the mother—and of the father, let’s not forget hisresponsibility! . . . With the support of the school, the worker or civil servant

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can give the state both male and female citizens that are just as valuable asthose produced by women who limit themselves to the domestic sphere.”109

In 1938, the decades-long debate on family law and population policyculminated in the appointment by the government headed by ÉdouardDaladier of a Commission on Population, which produced a new code offamily law (Code de Famille) in 1939. Strongly influenced by the religiousgroups, the Code introduced governmental child allowances that werepayable only to parents who were married. A supplementary payment wasallotted to mothers who did not have paying jobs, and remitted directly tothem. Mothers received a special subsidy for a first child born within twoyears of the couple’s marriage but only on the condition—to be certifiedby public child-welfare authorities—that they cared for their childrenproperly. Starting with the third child, allowances were paid to the familybreadwinner—if both parents were employed, to the father in recognition ofhis status as “head of the family.”110 Partly because of the unified oppositionof women’s groups across the political spectrum, no law that forbade marriedwomen to work was passed.

By contrast to French and British feminists who supported both childallowances and women’s employment rights, feminists in Germany, theNetherlands, and Sweden took a much more negative view of state paymentfor childbearing. In these countries, family-allowance schemes had littlesupport from progressive or left-wing forces. Instead, they originated on thepolitical right and were clearly intended to support new forms of discriminationagainst married women workers.

In Germany, family allowances were advocated chiefly by an organizationknown as the League of Large Families (or Bund der Kinderreichen), whichhad close ties to the conservative parties and to the Catholic Center Party.Like the French natalist organizations, this group aimed to maintain patriar-chal family structure as well as to build population by making governmentalchild allowances payable to male breadwinners. Although many right-wingwomen, including the members of the conservative housewives’ associations(Reichsverband deutscher Hausfrauenvereine) supported these measures,most liberal and socialist feminists opposed them. Several delegates to theGeneral Meeting of the BDF in 1924 pointed out that subsidies payableto fathers discriminated against single women who were breadwinners andsubverted the important principle of equal pay for equal work.111

Gertrud Bäumer, who during the Weimar era served as a liberal delegateto the Reichstag as well as the editor of the BDF’s journal Die Frau, was oneof many feminists who appropriated the language of eugenics and populationpolicy to defend women’s right to employment. She claimed that cash incen-tives might damage population “quality” by encouraging imprudent repro-duction, and that improved housing and education would protect childrenbetter than cash subsidies for childbearing.112 Socialist women took a similarapproach. The aim of population policy, said the prominent socialist intellec-tual Henriette Fürth, was “not to bring about an increase in births, butto take care that only healthy and strong children are born and that all

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conditions for a favorable environment are created and guaranteed.”113 At itsannual congress of 1929, the BDF divided on the issue of family allowances.114

Bäumer conceded to her opponents in the housewives’ associations that suchallowances might be necessary in the existing dire emergency, but insisted thatthe “motivation and the will” to childbearing should under most circumstancesbe left to the individual, not manipulated by the state.115

Amid the economic crises that threatened the stability of the WeimarRepublic, right-wing politicians attacked the right of married women—so-called“double earners”—to employment. This attack targeted the small femaleelite of civil servants whose rights to tenure and retirement pensions werecoveted by men. The Constitution of 1919 had guaranteed equal access to allgovernmental positions and had specifically invalidated all the laws that hadpreviously required women to resign such positions when they married.116 Butlike many of that constitution’s provisions, this one was ineffective. In 1925a temporary austerity measure required the dismissal of female (but not ofmale) civil servants when they married. Policies that required teachers toleave their jobs when they married also continued in force. The women’sprofessional organizations contested several dismissals in court on constitu-tional grounds, but did not succeed in changing the law.

In 1932, when the Great Depression had reached catastrophic proportions—in that year, 43 percent of the German workforce was unemployed—aso-called Double Earner Law (Doppelverdienergesetz) was introduced intothe Parliament (Reichstag) that permanently invalidated the constitutionalprotection of female civil servants from dismissal upon marriage. In opposi-tion to this law, the BDF moved beyond practical arguments to defend therights of working mothers as individuals. “Our nation is not well served whencapable workers are replaced by those who are less capable. And it is an injus-tice to working women not to recognize that they regard their profession notonly as a means of financial support, but of giving meaning to life by theexpression of their talents.”117 But the opposition ended in disunity anddefeat. The liberal feminist deputies and organizations were abandoned bythe women delegates of both the socialist and the conservative parties, whoin solidarity with their male colleagues endorsed the bill. When a majorwomen’s professional organization, the Union of Post-Office and TelegraphWorkers, opted for a compromise solution (a partial payout of their pensionsupon dismissal), liberals gave up a resistance that now seemed futile.118

In Austria, as in Germany, a series of legislative proposals targeted marriedwomen in the workforce. The National Association of Women Employees(Reichsverband weiblicher Angestellter), which was led by single civil servants,favored the removal of their married competitors.119 But other women’sgroups joined the opposition. The solution to working mothers’ “doubleburden,” declared an editorial in the socialist periodical Die Frau in 1931,was to provide benefits such as guaranteed maternity leave and day-care cen-ters, not discriminatory employment policies.120 The mainstream Leagueof Austrian Women’s Associations (Bund Österreichischer Frauenvereine)warned its members in 1933 that a proposed “Double Earner Law”

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(Doppelverdienergesetz) placed “all of the achievements of women over thepast two decades” in jeopardy.121

Two Austrian Catholic organizations—the Catholic German Women’sLeague (Katholischer Deutscher Frauenbund) and the Catholic Women’sOrganization (Katholische Frauenorganisation)—joined liberal and socialistgroups in defending the rights of married women. The Catholic womenagreed that the dismissal of married women—who in fact were often bread-winners—undermined rather than supported family life. They also insistedthat the loss of married female teachers and social workers would be a greatmisfortune to a society that could not do without their wisdom and experience.And they were repelled by the glorification of motherhood—now pervadedby National Socialist racism—above all other professional, educational, andspiritual aspirations. The coalition of Catholic women’s and professionalgroups did not succeed in defeating the Double Earner Law, which was passedin 1934, but they continued to protest it. On the Mother’s Day holiday in1936, the Catholic groups and the Archdiocese of Vienna sponsored aday-long meeting for mothers who were employed.122

Dutch feminists opposed state subsidies for parenthood, which in theNetherlands as in Germany were supported by right-wing and religiousgroups that aimed to reinforce the father’s position as head of the family. In1920, liberal and socialist feminist organizations formed a “Committee ofAction against the Family Wage” (Comité van Actie tegen Gezinsloon). TheDutch Women’s Organization warned that any such scheme might givethe state too much control over family life and childbearing—a fear thatwas justified in a country where Catholic and Protestant religious partiesdominated politics. The feminist leader Wilmoet Wijnaents Francken-Dyserinck even charged that payment for children might incite marital rapeby fathers greedy for state subsidies.123 But this opposition was unsuccessful:a “Child Allowance Act” (Kinderbijslag), passed in 1939, provided for fam-ily allowances payable to fathers and excluding “illegitimate” children.124

In 1937, a legislative initiative by a Catholic-dominated government toban married women from many workplaces aroused the concerted oppositionof a wide spectrum of Dutch women’s organizations, which founded theCommittee for the Defense of the Freedom to Work for Women and theCommittee on the Dismissal of Married Women in the Civil Service. In orderto discredit the widespread stereotype of the working mother as a ruthlessegotist, the latter committee designed a questionnaire to investigate femalecivil servants’ reason for working. The results showed that these women’swork, which often supported children, parents, and disabled husbands, wasthe mainstay of their households.125 Because of the fall of the government in1939, the measure was never passed. In neighboring Belgium, a similar coali-tion of feminists and trade unionists defeated legislative initiatives that wouldhave denied civil service positions to married women.126

Swedish feminists were even more successful in defending the right ofmarried women and mothers to paid employment—a success that was dueboth to their skillful tactics and the favorable climate in which they worked.

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As in other countries, the controversy centered on the very small group ofmarried women who held desirable jobs in the civil service. As SilkeNeunsinger has shown in her comparative study, political, social, and genderconflicts were far less bitter in Sweden than in Germany. A smaller percentageof Swedish wives worked for pay (9 percent in 1930, compared to 34 percentin Germany) and overall rates of unemployment in Sweden, even at theheight of the Depression, were much lower (22 percent in 1932, and 43 per-cent in Germany). And unlike Germany, where the Depression years sawpolitical polarization, the breakdown of parliamentary government, and therise of the Nazi dictatorship, Sweden was governed by a worker/populistalliance of the Social Democratic and Agrarian Parties. In the 1930s, Swedishsocialists shifted their emphasis from class struggle to national unity, picturingthe nation as the “People’s Home” (Folkhem), where all citizens were valuedand cared for.127

But even in this relatively benign environment, opposition to the employ-ment of married women in the civil service was strong, and by 1934 thirteenlegislative initiatives calling for their dismissal had been brought before thenational parliament (Riksdag).128 The self-interest of male civil servants wasembellished by nationalist arguments that the employment of mothers outsidethe home reduced birthrates and threatened the nation’s future development.

A more positive perspective on the work of married women was created byAlva Myrdal, who would later become the best-known Swedish woman ofher era. In her life and in her work, Alva Myrdal confronted the maternaldilemma. When Alva Reimer, who was born in 1902, married the sociologistGunnar Myrdal in 1924, she envisaged their marriage as an intellectual aswell as a romantic partnership. After her marriage she continued her studies,almost completed a doctoral degree in child psychology, and gained promi-nence as an educator, author, and social reformer. But the arrival of threechildren in 1927, 1934, and 1936 plunged her into a severe conflict betweenher commitments to maternity and to these professional interests. Perhapspartly for this reason, she always emphasized parenthood and child-rearing ascentral issues for the state as well as the family. In 1934, she and her husbandaddressed an important social issue in a book entitled Crisis in the PopulationQuestion (Kris I befolkeningsfråget). The wide attention given to this contro-versial book made its authors—both of whom belonged to Sweden’sSocial Democratic Workers’ Party (Socialdemokratiska Arbetareparti)—intopublic figures. In 1935, Gunnar Myrdal was appointed as Secretary of agovernment-appointed Population Commission, and Alva Myrdal as a con-sultant on parental education. Alva Myrdal was also appointed to a govern-mental commission on married women’s work. At this stage of her life,Alva Myrdal identified herself more as a socialist than as a feminist. Butshe was deeply influenced by two prominent female parliamentarians—Kerstin Hesselgren and Elizabeth Tamm. Both women were members of anindependent feminist group that met at Fogelstad (Tamm’s estate) andwas well known for its positions on women’s employment, birth control,legalized abortion, and a number of other issues.129

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Alva Myrdal and her political allies avoided confrontational tactics andadroitly manipulated dominant political concerns to address the rights andneeds of women. Drawing on the Myrdals’ recent book, they warned thatthe prevailing trend toward low marriage and birthrates might eventuallyproduce a sparse and aging population that would be unable to maintainthe nation’s cultural or economic vitality—a fear that was shared by thePopulation Commission. The female delegates rejected the solution proposedby right-wing parties—cash incentives for childbearing—and objected thatsuch handouts would be of no help to the unemployed and would depresswages, alienate labor unions, and encourage childbearing for the wrongreasons.130 They also flatly contradicted the familiar argument that marriedwomen’s employment lowered birthrates. On the contrary, they asserted thatthe prohibition of married women’s work could only discourage marriageand motherhood by depriving couples of the woman’s income, which wasoften needed to support a new household. Alva Myrdal reinforced economicwith eugenic arguments, predicting that these misguided prohibitions woulddeter ambitious and intelligent women from marrying and thus excludethe most “qualified” group from motherhood. Realizing that natalism hadmore popular support than feminism, the Committee defended “the right ofthe working woman to marry and have children” rather than the right ofthe married woman to work.131 Swedish feminists also cleverly appeased theiropposition by protesting that the number of female civil servants was tooinsignificant to threaten the job opportunities of men.

These tactics were not original—they had been employed by feministselsewhere—but the success that they gained was unique. Swedish feministgroups such as the Frederika Bremer Association (Fredrika-Bremer förbundet)joined labor organizations to stage protests against the firing of marriedwomen, and a women’s political party, the Women’s List (Kvinnolistan),gave a prominent place in its platform to women’s rights in the labor force.132

And the result was the passage of a law in 1938 that prohibited the dismissalof women workers on account of marriage. Other legislation of the 1930screated a benefits program that included grants payable to mothers to coverthe expenses of childbirth, public housing made available to large families,and governmental loans to newly married couples. The latter measure,which except for the absence of racial and political discrimination resembleda similar law that had recently been passed by the Nazis in Germany, wasproposed by right-wing delegates and not endorsed by Myrdal and herassociates.133

However precarious and limited its success, the defense of the rights of themarried woman worker was important. In other countries, where feministand trade-union movements were abolished by totalitarian governments,women workers were defenseless against male backlash. In Italy, Mussolini’sregime excluded women from most forms of professional employment,including many teaching and civil-service jobs, paid family allowances andmarriage benefits to fathers, and trumpeted the slogan “Women go home!”(“Le donne a casa”).134 In Germany, the National Socialist regime dissolved

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all independent groups, including the League of German Women’sOrganizations and the League for the Protection of Mothers, and organizedwomen in a party affiliated umbrella group known as the National SocialistWomen’s League (Nationalsozialistisches Frauenwerk). The Nazi govern-ment took over the discriminatory laws that had been passed during theWeimar period and added some new ones, such as quotas on the admissionof women to universities, expulsion of women from certain professions, loansto married couples that required the wife to resign her job, and familyallowances payable to fathers. Some of these measures were modified a fewyears later when unemployment figures decreased and women were neededin the workforce to replace men in military service.135

Less tyrannical but equally anti-feminist was the government of Ireland,where an independent republic (Eire) succeeded the Irish Free State in 1937.A women’s movement that had been active during the first two decades ofthe twentieth century, and had won the suffrage in 1918, had fallen intodecline in the 1920s. Women politicians devoted their energies to main-stream national politics rather than to women’s issues, and did not openlyobject to discrimination against married women workers.136 The so-calledMarriage Bar of 1929, which required female civil servants and local govern-ment workers to resign their jobs upon marriage, was institutionalized bya new Constitution passed in 1937. This Constitution stipulated that “thestate shall . . . endeavor to ensure that mothers shall not be obligated byeconomic necessity to engage in labor to the neglect of their duties in thehome.”137

In many ways, feminism declined in the 1930s. Amid the economic andpsychological stresses of the Great Depression, the membership of the liberaland socialist groups dwindled. But as the historians Marjan Schwegman andJolande Withuis have pointed out, this era was also marked by the forging ofnew coalitions and a vigorous defense of the rights of women to combinemotherhood and employment.138 And this struggle was not merely defensive,but showed important changes in views of motherhood, citizenship, andwomen’s choices. In the prewar era (as we have seen in chapter 3) many fem-inists agreed with the highly influential Ellen Key that paid work outside thehome for mothers was a “waste of women’s energy,” and that motherhoodwas or should be the married woman’s full-time occupation. The workingmother was usually portrayed as a downtrodden victim of poverty andexploitation, and a truly fulfilling combination of career and motherhood wasa utopian aspiration. But by 1940, most feminists regarded the combinationof motherhood and a career outside the home as an option that every womanshould be able to choose. To be sure, the emphasis was still on elites, chieflyon a small group of white-collar workers and professionals. The narrow focuson this group was chiefly due to the fact that they were singled out for dis-crimination, but class prejudice also played a role. “During the first third ofthe century,” recollected the British activist and author Vera Brittain, “theonly support usually available to working wives was that of organized women,who repeatedly called attention to the ‘dysgenic’ effect of marriage-bars

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upon a society where the number of children produced by healthy, intelligentand disciplined mothers was already far too few.”139 Some feminists, however,vindicated the right of all citizens to realize their potential through work aswell as love. “Democracy calls for the development of all talents, and theencouragement of all initiatives,” wrote the French lawyer Yvonne Netter.“And does activity not bring happiness?”140

But in the hostile atmosphere of the 1930s, the working mother couldnot look for much social support. She could claim only the freedom to finda personal solution. “Certainly, the combination of marriage, job and moth-erhood causes serious problems,” conceded the German socialist AdeleSchreiber, “but it is up to the woman herself to find a solution that suits herown conscience and abilities.”141 In the concluding chapter of her book,Nation and Family, Alva Myrdal warned that the maternal dilemma couldnot be solved by individual efforts—it was a social problem that required asocial solution. “The risk is great,” she continued, “that society will proceedso slowly in solving these problems of woman’s existence that new and evenmore desperate crises may invade the whole field of women, family, andpopulation.”142 One of the prerequisites for a successful solution was thefreedom to control reproduction in order to synchronize maternal and careercommitments. And this will be the theme of chapter 7.

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During the interwar period, some feminist movements shifted their attitudetoward birth control from skepticism to support. In societies that were onlybeginning to realize the extent of wartime casualties, this alliance of feminismand birth control could arouse both anxiety and misogyny. A popular novelby the French author Clément Vautel, Madame ne veut pas d’enfant (the verytitle became a natalist slogan) portrayed the sinister vamp Malthusia, whoselectures often opened with the command, “tu n’engendras point” (“Thoushalt bear no children”). “In France, everything is coming together to helpus,” she cackled fiendishly, “we no longer believe in God or the Devil; welove money more and more . . . we must dread the children that wouldprevent us from having fun.”1 Feminist authors gave a different picture of themodern mother. In her novel, Honourable Estate (1936), Vera Brittainportrayed two characters: Janet, married at the turn of the century, whoresented the child whom she was forced to bear, and her daughter-in-lawRuth, who was an emancipated woman and a willing mother. “To begin with,I wanted the twins and we agreed about having them, whereas your motherwas not only unready for a child and quite ignorant, but apparently neverconsulted,” explained Ruth to her husband. “Don’t you see that it is justbecause I am better qualified than your mother and still able to go on withmy work that I care for the twins so much? . . . If our own mothers had beenencouraged to learn what was going on in the world instead of being toldtheir place was the home, the War might never have happened.”2

Brittain reaffirmed the claims of prewar maternalists such as Helene Stöckerand Nelly Roussel that, in the area of reproduction, the interests of individualwomen and those of the state were identical. In the interwar era, this formerlyradical argument moved into the feminist mainstream as what AtinaGrossmann has called a “motherhood–eugenics consensus, which assumed thatmotherhood was a natural and desirable instinct in all women, only needing to


be properly encouraged, released, and regulated, and which understoodthe bearing of healthy offspring as a crucial social task.”3 But by the end of theinterwar era, this consensus had been severely disrupted. Birth control literaturecarried contradictory messages: while preserving the notion of motherhood asa social task, it exalted desire above duty. The right of the parents was tochoose to bear children; of the child to be wanted. These were principles thatcould legitimate decisions both for and against childbearing. Birth controllersoften preached a new hedonism that reversed conventional moral notions byportraying personal happiness rather than reproduction as the primary pur-pose of marriage. The ideology of the citizen-mother was undermined by itsmisuse by governments in the service of natalism, militarism, and the manyforms of employment discrimination that were described in the previous chapter.Eugenics, having reached the height of its influence in the 1920s, was discreditedin the 1930s and 1940s by the horrific example of National Socialist racial andreproductive policies and by changing scientific paradigms. After sketching inthe historical context, this chapter will look at feminist birth control activistsand their positions on three issues: family limitation, eugenic legislation, andreproductive decision-making.

This brief summary, which will draw on the many excellent histories ofbirth control movements in various countries, will exclude Italy andPortugal—nations that were under dictatorships that prevented the growthof such a movement during most of this period. Before the war, birth controlhad been supported by only a minority of feminists, chiefly on the politicalleft. Broadened support in the interwar era was due both to ideological andtechnological change. The old Neo-Malthusian ideology that had advocatedbirth control as a remedy for the poverty caused by overpopulation waswidely questioned in an era of declining birthrates. “To confront the fact ofpopulation decline with the assertion that there are too many people in theworld or that it does not matter if the human race dies out,” remarkedthe British demographer Enid Charles, “is merely flippant and generallyinsincere.”4 Birth control movements reoriented their propaganda towardthe welfare of parents and children—a focus that appealed to feminists,whose positive views of marriage and family were explored in the previouschapter. A gradual change in the attitudes of some churches—particularly theAnglican Church, which at its 1930 Lambeth Conference gave reservedsupport to the use of contraception in marriage—created a more permissiveclimate in Protestant countries.5 And the popularization of barrier methodssuch as the cervical cap and the diaphragm held out the promise that womenmight be able to practice contraception even without the cooperation of theirpartners.

In many countries, birth control activists—among whom were manyprofessed feminists—sought to make contraceptive advice and technologyavailable, especially to the low-income population that had little access tomedical care. The ideology and practice of birth control movements varied,and the two most internationally influential models emanated from Germanyand Britain.

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In the German-speaking world, the birth control movement engageda large group composed chiefly of radical, socialist, and communist womenand men and from the beginning was associated with other progressive aspi-rations, including the reform of sexual mores. The Weimar Republic, wherein the early years many policies were made by social democratic and liberalparties, provided a friendly climate for these efforts. Such laws as those thatstill theoretically prohibited the advertisement of birth control devices wereloosely enforced and eventually struck down. The first birth control clinic ofthe postwar era was opened in 1919 by the sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld,who was also a crusader for homosexual rights, at his new Institute for SexualScience in Berlin. The mainstream feminists of the League of GermanWomen’s Associations (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, or BDF) consistentlysupported access to contraception and discussed reproductive issues at theirannual meetings and in committees. But they did not openly advocate birthcontrol—which offended the religious and moral beliefs of some members—and opposed the legalization of abortion.6

The German birth control movement was invigorated in 1927 by a visit ofthe American activist Margaret Sanger to Berlin. Under Sanger’s inspirationalleadership, the German Committee for Birth Control, composed chiefly ofwomen physicians, set up a network of marriage counseling centers(Eheberatungsstellen), which were sponsored both by private organizationssuch as the League for the Protection of Mothers (Bund für Mutterschutz orBfM) and by public health authorities.7 In these centers, contraceptiveadvice was often dispensed to both married and unmarried people (andHelene Stöcker’s clinic offered it “whether they intend (ed) to marry ornot”8). Organizations such as the League for the Protection of Mothersand Family Hygiene (Liga für Mutterschutz und Familienhygiene) and theReich Association for Birth Control and Sexual Hygiene (Reichsverbandfür Geburtenregelung und Sexualhygiene) manufactured and sold contra-ceptive devices throughout the country.9 The Austrian socialists whocontrolled the government of the nation’s largest city, Vienna, set up a pub-lic marriage-counseling center to give advice on contraception and othersexual problems, but their plans to extend these services remainedunfulfilled.10

The support of German-speaking radicals for the reform or repeal of abor-tion laws distinguished them sharply from their counterparts in other coun-tries, many of whom avoided the issue. German-speaking communistsglorified the Soviet Union for legalizing abortion and called for the completerepeal of all legal prohibitions.11 In 1919, they launched a campaign inGerman-speaking Switzerland. When a communist-sponsored proposal todecriminalize abortion was accepted by the City Council of Basel, which as atextile-manufacturing city was a center of labor activism, the city’s women’sorganizations organized mass meetings to debate the proposal. Consideringit too radical and a threat to sexual morality, the majority rejected it. Thoughnot yet allowed to vote, the Basel women had enough influence to persuadethe Council to repeal the law.12

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Social Democratic women’s organizations in German-speaking countriesgenerally opposed the decriminalization of abortion but advocated legaliza-tion subject to medical, eugenic, and social indications (a progressive stanceby this era’s standards).13 A modification of the German abortion law in 1926to permit terminations to save the life or health of the mother made itthe most lenient in all Europe. But communists who demanded completedecriminalization collaborated with socialists—a rare instance of suchcooperation!—to sponsor a series of mass demonstrations in 1931. Themovement spread to Austria, where socialist delegates to the Parliament(Nationalrat), including Adelheid Popp and Therese Schlesinger, proposedliberalized “indication” laws. Upon their seizure of dictatorial power in1933, the German National Socialists banned the birth control organiza-tions, forced their leaders into exile, regulated abortion according to a racialideology that recognized only the eugenic indication, and legalized thecompulsory sterilization of individuals whom they considered geneticallydefective. In Austria, abortion reform was also blocked by the rise of aright-wing dictatorship in 1934.14

The British birth control movement developed a more conservative ideol-ogy, which was shaped in large measure by the charismatic personality ofMarie Stopes. Her best-selling books, especially Married Love, which waspublished in 1918, placed more emphasis on private, and specifically maritalbliss—portrayed against a background of middle-class comfort—than onsocial reform or sexual radicalism. Stopes, who founded the Society for BirthControl and Racial Progress in 1921, was opposed to abortion, which shebelieved that contraception would make unnecessary. Her class-biased versionof eugenic theory, very different from that of socialist birth controllers,associated poverty with hereditary deficiency.

But though certainly prejudiced against some women, Stopes had strongfeminist convictions. She affirmed the married woman’s right not only to sexeducation and birth control, but also to economic independence and profes-sional self-fulfillment. “The pursuit of her work or profession and honorableachievement in it,” she wrote in 1920, “is not at all incompatible with, but ishighly beneficial to her motherhood.”15 Of all this period’s birth controlactivists, Stopes had the widest international influence. Her effective andwidely imitated “Mothers’ Clinic,” which opened in London in 1921,dispensed contraception and other forms of practical help to women regardlessof income.16 Stopes’s example was followed in Northern Ireland with theestablishment of the Society for Constructive Birth Control, which openedthe first birth control clinic in Belfast in 1936.17

The women members of the British Labour Party took a more radicalapproach. The Workers’ Birth Control Group, under the leadership ofDora Russell, campaigned to make contraception accessible to working-classwomen in publicly supported maternal and child-welfare clinics. Birthcontrol found less sympathy on the British than on the German political left.The male leadership of the British Labour Party, responding to its Catholicconstituents, repeatedly refused the demand of the Party’s Women’s Section

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to include access to birth control in the Party’s program.18 The initiative thuspassed to middle-class organizations, including the National Union ofSocieties for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC), which endorsed birth control formarried women in 1926. In 1929, the Health Ministry authorized thedispensation of contraceptive advice in public medical centers. With fewexceptions British birth control organizations, which united into a coordi-nating body known as the National Birth Council Association, avoided thecontroversial topic of abortion reform until 1936, when a small group ofmilitants, including Russell and the journalist Stella Browne, formed theAbortion Law Reform Association.19

The contrasting German and British approaches were publicized throughthe World League for Sexual Reform, founded in 1928, which supported theefforts of birth controllers in many countries, especially in Scandinavia.The Swedish Elise Ottesen-Jensen, who worked for birth control as journalist,organizer, and traveling lecturer, was a socialist and a supporter of Germanreformers such as Hirschfeld and Stöcker. In 1934 an organization under herleadership, the National Society for Sexual Education (Riksförbundet för sexuellUpplysning, or RFSU), opened a clinic in Stockholm. In 1938 the Swedishgovernment provided public support for this and other clinics. Ottesen-Jensen was also a militant supporter of abortion-law reform, and in 1934 wastried and convicted for referring a woman to an abortion provider.20 Ottesen-Jensen had close ties to a feminist group centered in Fogelstad, whichincluded the parliamentarians Elizabeth Tamm, and Kerstin Hesselgren (whowere mentioned in the previous chapter), and Dr. Ada Nilsson, a physicianand public health activist who advocated benefits to mothers (such asmaternity insurance and well-baby clinics) and the free dissemination ofcontraceptive advice.21

The Norwegian Katti Anker-Møller, whom we have already met as anadvocate of the rights of mothers during the prewar era, was an admirer ofStopes, some of whose works she translated into Norwegian. In 1922, uponreturning from a visit to Stopes’s London clinic, she founded a clinic in Oslo,and by 1937 similar clinics existed in thirteen other towns. In 1939, theseclinics received public financing. Møller did not agree with her British men-tor on all issues—for example on abortion, which Møller believed should belegalized.22 In Denmark, where no such forceful leadership emerged, onlyone birth control clinic existed in 1932.23 The Dutch birth control movementdeclined in influence after the death in 1924 of its leader, the internationallyrenowned physician and sex reformer Johannes Rutgers. In the 1930s, however,the influence of Marie Stopes provided new momentum. In 1931, a clinicnamed for Aletta Jacobs opened in Amsterdam, and by 1940 eleven additionalclinics had been established.24

In general, therefore, the democratic countries of Europe saw a slow,uneven, but nonetheless steady growth in the public acceptance of birth con-trol during this era. A notable exception to this trend was France. In 1920,the French Chamber of Deputies and Senate enacted a law that penalized notonly the sale of contraceptives and the performance of abortions, but also the

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public advocacy of any form of family limitation.25 Religious proscriptionreinforced political repression. In 1930, the papal encyclical Casti Connubiiwarned the Catholic faithful against “any use whatever of matrimonyexercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its power togenerate life,” and against abortion, even when necessary to save themother’s life.26

Many historians have criticized French feminists for their initial failureto protest the 1920 law, which Nelly Roussel termed the loi scélérate(abominable law). But some radicals continued to draw attention to the issue.In 1927 the teacher Henriette Alquier, a member of a communist teachers’union, was tried for publishing an article that promoted “neo-Malthusianism,”and was acquitted.27 In the 1930s the founding of the periodical ProblèmeSexuel (Sexual Problem) by Berthie Albrecht, a member of the World Leaguefor Sexual Reform, and the opening of a clinic in Suresnes by the physician JeanDalsace, reinvigorated the opposition to the “abominable law.”28

Religious prohibitions influenced legislation in other Catholic countries aswell. Belgium passed a law based on the French model in 1923 and the IrishFree State prohibited the advertisement and sale of contraceptives in 1929and their importation in 1935.29 Spain’s law of 1928 against the propagationof contraceptive theory or practice was briefly overturned in 1931 by the left-wing groups who founded the Second Republic. In the anarchist strongholdof Barcelona, radical physicians founded a birth control clinic in their Houseof Mothers (Casa de Maternidad), which provided a variety of services tomothers and babies, and pushed for the legalization of abortion in theautonomous region of Catalonia. These efforts were halted by the right-wingcounterrevolution in 1939, and the Fascist government passed laws thatupheld Catholic teachings.30

Proponents of what French feminists scornfully termed repopulâtrie(“populationitis”) and lapinisme (“rabbit-breeding”) blamed decliningbirthrates on the spread of the birth control movement. But this was a rever-sal of cause and effect; in fact, it was the widespread determination to limitfamily size that drove the expansion of the movement. Prohibitions againstaccess to contraceptive technology could not prevent the use of the non-technological methods, such as coitus interruptus, through which birth con-trol had been practiced for a century or more. The “rhythm” method, whichutilized the woman’s natural infertile periods rather than birth control tech-nology, was accepted by the Vatican and came into use in Catholic countriesin the 1930s.31 Between 1920 and 1933 the birthrate per thousand popula-tion fell from 25.5 to 14.7 in Britain; from 25.9 to 14.7 in Germany; from21.4 to 16.2 in France; from 29.5 to 27.7 in Spain; and from 23.6 to 13.7 inSweden.

The decision to limit families arose chiefly from a new feeling of entitle-ment to the pursuit of happiness and self-realization. Contrary to the gloomyobsessions of natalists, the falling birthrates of the interwar years signaled nowidespread rejection of motherhood—in fact (as we have seen in chapter 6)

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the number of women who married and had children actually increased. AsYvonne Knibiehler, the historian of motherhood, points out, many women ofthis generation aspired to be “more motherly and happier mothers than theirmothers and their grandmothers.” Freed by household technology fromheavy labor and by prosperity from pressure to work outside the home,middle-class mothers devoted themselves to their small families, preferablyconsisting of a girl and a boy, in houses made cosy and comfortable bymodern conveniences. The growth of the toy industry and the increasinglavishness of Christmas festivities were signs of a newly child-centeredculture.32

However, advances in the control of fertility raised more disturbing possi-bilities, including an individualism that could not be contained by thisdomestic ideal. The rationalization of reproductive behavior through the sep-aration of sexuality and pregnancy, writes the German historian KarenHagemann, constituted a “decisive step toward the emancipation of thefemale sex.”33 One possibility was the avoidance of motherhood withoutrenouncing heterosexual satisfaction. Another was a new solution to thematernal dilemma: the planning of childbearing to fit into new life-plans.“Intelligent and perhaps truly feminist women want two things,” wrote theBritish novelist Naomi Mitchison in 1930, “they want to love as women, tohave masses of children by the men they love . . . and they want to do theirown work, whatever it may be.”34

Though feminists expressed widely different views on reproductive issues,they agreed that the elevation of maternity from the realm of necessity to therealm of freedom—still a utopian goal—would add a new dimension to thematernal dilemma. They called on women to find a new balance betweenfreedom and responsibility. “Evidently,” remarked the French feminist andpolitician Cecile Brunschvicg, “women no longer wish to be considered asdestined only for motherhood. But we firmly believe that the more awarethey are of their rights, the more they also realize their duties.”35 But dutiesto what, or to whom? The following sections will address feminist concep-tions of freedom, responsibility, and choice.

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Adele Schreiber, one of the first women to be elected into the Parliament(Reichstag) of the Weimar Republic, regarded reproductive choice as a rightand duty of citizenship. Not for German mothers the medals for largefamilies that were awarded in France—their honor was to be “the freemothers of a free generation.”36 But in this as in other areas of life, newfreedoms brought new uncertainties. Couples who assumed “this terribleresponsibility of the deliberate creation of life,” wrote Naomi Mitchison,were forced to ask such questions as “we willed this life, are we justified?” or“ought we to deny life to a being . . . who might be alive and happy?”37

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What were the ethical guidelines for reproductive decision-making? And howshould mothers balance their obligations to their children, to society, and tothemselves?

Most feminist reformers based their reproductive ethic on relational ratherthan individualistic arguments, and portrayed birth control primarily asa benefit to children and families. This was in part a defensive strategy,for anti-feminists never tired of deploring the modern woman’s distaste formotherhood.38 Auguste Isaac, who was among the leaders of one of thelargest French populationist organizations, the National Alliance againstDepopulation (Alliance nationale contre la dépopulation), complained thatmothers corrupted by materialism and frivolity had forgotten “the influenceand the prestige that arise from a prolific maternity.”39 Nelly Roussel chargedmen such as Isaac, the proud father of eleven, with using patriotic rhetoric tojustify “their own lack of self-control and glorify the suffering of their wives,”and claimed—in defiance of legal prohibitions—that mothers who responsi-bly limited their families served both their children and their country.40

The editors of the British suffrage periodical Time and Tide affirmed that the“real meaning of birth control” was “children, the happiness of childrenand the rights of children, and the chances of making fine citizens out of herchildren . . . That is why birth control, in its real sense, in its larger sense, hascome to stay.”41

The era’s demanding standards of child-care were often invoked tosupport this rhetorical strategy. In a statement issued in 1927, the DutchNational Women’s Council (Nationale Vrouwenraad) asserted that “the morepeople understand the high minimum standards of hygiene that are necessaryto the care of newborns and older children, the more the conception of off-spring becomes an event that cannot depend simply on accident.”42 Andindeed, these standards were constantly rising. Eglantyne Jebb, a BritishQuaker who had been a leader of her denomination’s campaign to assist chil-dren in wartime and continued as an international child-welfare activist,introduced into the League of Nations a resolution entitled the “Declarationof the Rights of the Child,” which was passed by that body in 1924.“Recognizing that Mankind owes to the Child the best that it has to give,”the document affirmed the child’s right to all “the means requisite for itsnormal development, both materially and spiritually.”43 According to aFrench socialist periodical, the Voice of Women (La Voix des Femmes), theserequirements included schooling, adequate housing equipped with bath-room and laundry facilities, and access to the natural world.44 One of MarieStopes’s best-selling advice manuals admonished parents that “Baby”required “fresh air to breathe” and the opportunity “to play in the sunshinewith his limbs free in the air; to crawl about on sweet, clean grass.”45

Obviously, these conditions could be provided by only a minority ofprosperous families, and were beyond the means of the poor. Left-wingactivists thus often resorted to traditional Neo-Malthusian arguments thatbirth control was a remedy against poverty. Henriette Alquier, the Frenchteacher who was placed on trial in 1926 for advocating birth control,

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deplored the plight of the proletarian family, in which unwanted pregnanciestoo often produced children destined for early death or permanent illness.“I am the mother of a family,” she declared to the judge. “I am defending thebirth of healthy children.” Lamenting the misfortune of a family that had lostfour of its eighteen children, she assured the judges that “before these fourcoffins, none of you could have claimed that it was not a crime to conceivechildren who were condemned to death before they were born.”46

As working-class women had no access to the services that were providedto wealthier women by private doctors, the large families of the poor came tosymbolize class injustice. Delegates to the annual conference of the BritishLabour Party in 1924 insisted that women of all classes were entitled tocontraceptive advice and demanded that such advice be made available inpublicly financed health centers (a demand that was fulfilled in 1929). “Westand for the woman who is very poor,” declared Mrs. Hagger, a delegatefrom Epsom, “and who is unable to get the information that she maydesire.”47 The Swedish activist Elise Ottesen-Jensen traveled through the ruralnorthern section of the country giving lectures on birth control and fittingdiaphragms. She justified her work as a benefit to the mother who was “alwaysin agony because she was afraid that she must give life to a new, unwelcomebeing who might burden the family still further.”48

One problem with this rhetorical strategy is that it seemed to call for areduction of numbers among the poor, but not among the rich. It mighttherefore seem to support a variety of right-wing agendas—racist populationpolicies, class snobbery, conservative opposition to the expansion of publicsocial services. Left-wing birth controllers took care to point out that familylimitation was not a desirable end in itself, but a means of coping with adversecircumstances. They urged nations that were threatened by populationdecline to encourage the poor to have more children by creating servi-ces for mothers, children, and families. The corollary of this argumentwas often that a state that provided such support could expect mothers toreciprocate by increasing birthrates: “First protection for mother and child—and then increased birth-rates,” demanded the German socialist AdeleSchreiber. “First housing and food—and then large families!”49 DoraRussell saw the problem with these arguments, which turned women’sfreedom of choice from an individual right into a temporary expedient.“Even if we lived in Buckingham Palace,” she said, “we would not want ababy every year.”50

Arguments for birth control as a remedy for poverty supported a highlyimportant cause—the provision of contraception through public services.Nonetheless they were unconvincing. The uncomfortable fact was that birthcontrol was much less frequently practiced by the poor and sick than by thehealthy and prosperous middle classes, who were perfectly able to producelarge and flourishing families but simply chose not to. “The tendency torefuse the maternal role is steadily increasing,” wrote the German socialistAlice Rühle-Gerstel. “And birth control is particularly popular among theclasses that are not affected by poverty.”51 Did women whose health and

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economic status fitted them for motherhood have an obligation to producechildren? Feminists, who often shared the obsession of their contemporarieswith the dangers of population decline, sometimes passed harsh judgmenton people who were in a position to have large families, but chose not to. TheFrench feminist newspaper La Française condemned such couples—“theirmaterialism is shocking.”52 Maude Royden, a well-known British suffragist andtheologian, likewise affirmed that all healthy women wanted to have children,with the deplorable exception of those who were “too idle, cowardly, and self-ish.”53 Though she affirmed women’s right to choose, Dora Russell nonethe-less saw childbearing as an important moral commitment.54 “Some may find ithard to understand my passionate involvement, almost intoxication, with theidea of children as the future of mankind,” she wrote. “Bertie and I, for allthe individualism of our personal lives, were inspired by an abiding sense ofresponsibility to humanity.”55

But the definition of reproduction as a service that women owed tosociety, the nation, or even “humanity”—an exalted term which in practicecould only mean the state of which the prospective children would be citizens—lost some of its credibility in the interwar era. Feminists in all the belligerentcountries had vainly hoped that peace would bring a reorientation of statepopulation policies to serve human rather than military needs. “We stand fora population policy, but not one that uses mothers as instruments of the armsrace,” said Gertrud Bäumer, a leader of the liberal German Democratic Partyand the long-time editor of Germany’s foremost feminist periodical, in 1919,“but one that protects, cares for, and strengthens existing life.”56 But therebirth of militarism in a new and virulent form disappointed this hope. In1933, in a political atmosphere now saturated in the aggressive and racistrhetoric of the Nazis, Bäumer defended the private sphere of the familyagainst governmental intrusion and insisted that “the will to reproduce is amatter for the individual, not for the state.”57

In the campaign organized by German left-wing parties for the legalizationof abortion, which reached its peak in 1931, antimilitarism was a dominanttheme. The German Communist Party struck a new note with a slogan—“Your body belongs to you”—which bypassed all instrumental arguments toaffirm reproductive freedom as an individual right. Of course, this slogansounded strange when it came from people who took their orders from therulers of a totalitarian state where abortion rights had already been limitedand would soon be utterly abolished. But this was nonetheless an effectivepropaganda tactic that drew huge numbers of women to the cause.58 Thetheme song of the antiabortion campaign—a poem by Bertolt Brecht thatwas set to music by Hanns Eisler—bitterly mocked the ideology of patrioticmotherhood by placing it in the mouth of a heartless physician who says tohis destitute and unwillingly pregnant patient,

You will be a lovely mother, that’s for sure,And you’ll send some cannon-fodder off to war.You’re a woman—it’s your fate,

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To have babies for the state.So don’t argue—it’s too late,We’ll have no more fuss and bother!Just shut up and be a lovely little mother.59

Feminists across the political spectrum responded with increasing skepti-cism to the tributes to patriotic mothers that became ever more frequent withthe heightening of military tensions. In the 1920s, a “Mother’s Day” holidaywas sponsored by conservative groups in Germany and Austria andcelebrated with patriotic ceremonies. Glad as she was to see mothers recog-nized, wrote Henriette Herzfelder in the journal of the League of AustrianWomen’s Associations (Bund Österreichischer Frauenvereine), she doubtedthe sincerity of such tributes in a state where most mothers were still thepoorest and most oppressed of all citizens.60 In 1920, as they formulated thedraconian law against abortion and the sale of contraceptive devices, Frenchlegislators also created the “Medal of the French Family” (“Médaille de lafamille française”) which was awarded in bronze to mothers who had five toseven children, in silver to those who had six to ten children, and in guildedsilver (vermeil) to those who had ten or more.61 In 1938 a sentimentalmonument showing mothers mourning their fallen sons, was dedicated inParis to the “sublime mothers” of France. The editorial writers of LaFrançaise rejected these tributes from a government that still denied womenthe right to vote. “Alas for peace!” they exclaimed in 1938. “Don’t be so surethat these mothers won’t respond with raucous indignation, ‘Children?Cannon fodder? No, thanks.’ ”62

The rise of Nazism and Fascism, which promoted motherhood througha combination of thumping propaganda and coercive legislation, exacerbatedthese fears. From Italy, the British feminist Cicely Hamilton reportedthat “the aims of Fascism, where women are concerned, are conservative: thelife domestic, a husband and a home, and children, future citizens of Italy,the more the better! Give her these, and she has all the interests she needs,and likewise does her duty by the State.”63 Winifred Holtby noted that the“cult of the cradle” transcended national boundaries. “In Italy, in Germany,in Ireland, and in France today fecundity is revered as a patriotic virtue.Babies are potential citizens and potential soldiers. . . . The mother whofills the cradle enables her sovereign to rule the world.”64 Virginia Woolfwarned in 1938 that in Italy and Germany, the “monster” of male supremacyhad come “more openly to the surface. There is no mistaking him there.He has widened his scope. He is dictating how you shall live; he is makingdistinctions not only between the sexes, but between the races.”65 Reactingto Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, Sweden’s representative to the Leagueof Nations’ Social Committee, the feminist and politician Kerstin Hesselgren,asked “how could women wish to bear children in a world that is so hopeless,so insecure! I have heard numbers of women say this.”66

Austrian socialists ridiculed the Nazi schools for mothers where lessons inracial dogma and in knitting baby clothes were combined.67 Austrian

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Catholic women criticized the Nazis’ exaltation of motherhood on religiousgrounds—Catholicism, which venerated the Virgin Mary and respected thecelibate as well as the married state, did not reduce the value of the individualwoman to her sexual and reproductive functions.68

But were there more constructive ways for the state to encourage parent-hood? To devise a democratic approach to natalism was the aim of Alva andGunnar Myrdal, the authors of a controversial book entitled Crisis of thePopulation Question (Kris I befolkningsfråget) who in 1935 were appointedby the Swedish government to its prestigious Population Commission. TheCommission’s charge was to recommend policies to reverse the trend towardsmall families and low birthrates—a trend that the Myrdals and many othersbelieved was a threat to the survival of the Swedish nation.69 Alva Myrdal,who was influenced by the feminist birth control advocate Ada Nilsson,rejected the crude French natalist measures as well as most of the even moretyrannical laws passed by the German government since the Nazi seizure ofpower in 1933. The decision to bear children, she insisted, was intenselyprivate, and could no longer be swayed by “exhortations to duty, to patrioticglorification, or religious obedience.”70 Nor should a democratic governmentengage in coercion: the Population Commission recommended that existinglaws that restricted the sale of contraceptives be repealed, that family plan-ning services should receive public support, and even that abortion should belegalized under some circumstances. But the Commission called on the stateto encourage childbearing through positive measures such as the creation ofstate-subsidized housing designed to accommodate large families, recreationalfacilities for parents and children, medical services for mothers and babies,and affordable day-care that enabled mothers to pursue career or volunteerinterests. Alva Myrdal also urged state educational institutions to encouragea positive attitude toward marriage, childbearing, and the family.71 Some ofthese measures—including legalized birth control, legalized abortion undercertain conditions, welfare payments to impoverished mothers, and publichousing for poor families—were passed by the Swedish parliament in1937–38.72

This program met with a very mixed public response. Although Myrdalherself emphasized the differences between her own version of natalism andthat of the Fascist nations, her colleagues in the Social Democratic Workers’Party were not entirely convinced. They expressed considerable aversion togovernmental involvement in reproductive decision-making. “No dictator-ship, no children on command!” responded one woman to a poll conductedby the Party. “An attitude toward life which disregards the well-being ofpeople and which focuses instead on fulfilling a debt to society cannot beaccepted by Social Democratic women,” insisted another. “We must decideby ourselves whether we want children and how many we want.”73

The interwar years saw the growth of a stubborn individualism thatresisted even benevolent attempts to regulate reproduction in the interests ofsociety or the state. Most feminists, as we have seen, viewed this trend withambivalence, for they still regarded motherhood as a right and duty of

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citizenship. But their resentment of the heavy hand of the state eventuallybrought many to question this notion. A few openly made the libertarianclaim that the only guide to reproductive decision-making was to the indi-vidual’s own conscience. Among these was the British journalist StellaBrowne, one of the few activists in that country who openly advocated thelegalization of abortion as well as of access to birth control. “Apart, however,from the present laws and customs affecting women,” she wrote in 1917,“the fundamental question arises, whether maternity can ever be a dutytowards any outside entity—state, individual, or deity. I deny that it can.”74

In 1935, still undaunted, she said that abortion was an “absolute right” thatshould be “available for any woman . . . For our bodies are our own.”75

Another libertarian was the French physician Madeleine Pelletier, whobecame a victim of the repressive French laws when she was convicted ofperforming abortions and confined to an insane asylum in 1939, where shedied in the same year.76 “The prohibition of abortion is an attack on thehuman individual,” declared Pelletier in 1930. “For if we have any property,it is our bodies. Society has a claim to those assets that are in a certain sensepublic, but our bodies belong to us alone.”77

“A D P”: F E

Should reproductive decisions be left entirely to the individual? How couldthe mother’s right to self-determination be balanced against the right of thechild to be born healthy—as Ellen Key had put it, the “right of the child tochoose its parents”?

As we have seen from an earlier chapter, the eugenics movement gainedmany adherents among left wing and progressive groups, including somefeminists, in the prewar era. Its appeal increased in the 1920s. Progressiveeugenicists opposed the open racism and class bias that were professed by theright wing of their movement. But they, too, took health and fitness ascriteria of human value. Many agreed with the influential Marie Stopes that“the power of parenthood ought no longer to be exercised by all, howeverinferior, as an individual right. It is profoundly a duty and a privilege, and itis essentially the concern of the whole community to encourage in every waythe parenthood of those whose circumstances and condition is such that theywill give rise to healthy, well-endowed future citizens.”78 In accordance withLamarckian theories of evolution, French physicians attributed all hereditarydefects to the effects of parental vices—chiefly alcoholism and sexualpromiscuity—on the developing fetus. The physician and educator JustSicard de Plauzoles, a prominent disciple of Adolphe Pinard, warned that “alleducated parents should be regarded as criminals if they knowingly becomethe cause of the birth of a degenerate, infirm, or idiot child.”79

In France, where the open advocacy of birth control was prohibited,a concern for the health of the next generation provided an important ration-ale for the enhancement of women’s understanding and control of their

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reproductive functions. In 1924, the French physician Germaine Montreuil-Straus and her colleagues founded a Committee on Women’s Education(Comité d’éducation féminine) within the previously all-male Society forSanitary and Moral Reform. The Committee admonished mothers andprospective mothers that their first and “primordial” responsibility was tounderstand “the origins of life, the function of heredity . . . the consequencesof immorality for the girl and the young man, the importance of health infounding a family, the responsibility of parents in regard to their children.”80

Young women were urged to choose their partners carefully—a subversiveidea in a nation where many marriages were still arranged, chiefly accordingto the social status of the prospective partners. “Young girl, think of yourfuture children and marry a healthy man!” read a poster that featured a pictureof two plump babies.81 That the mother also had the right to protect her ownhealth by refusing sexual relations with an infected husband was not openlystated but strongly implied, chiefly through very explicit information on thesymptoms of venereal diseases in the male. “The venereal scourge hurtsmothers and children,” warned another poster. “Women, learn to recognizeit in order to combat it.”82

This campaign, which was carried by a group of energetic speakersto women throughout France, sought to overturn conventional beliefs thatsexual ignorance enhanced a girl’s marital prospects and a wife’s fidelity.The warnings directed by local newspapers to respectable matrons againstthese highly immoral lectures served as an effective advertisement andoften brought in large and curious crowds. A subsidy awarded to Montreuil-Straus by the Ministry of Public Hygiene showed a growing officialacceptance of sex education as a means to child health, if not to femaleautonomy.83

Campaigns for sex education also spread to Spain, where in 1922 thesocialist Margarita Nelken (who was born in Madrid to German Jewishparents and later played a prominent political role in the Spanish Republic)cited the authority of French and German physicians to claim that “nothingis so harmful and prejudicial to morals as an educational system that hides thetruth about nature . . . It is terrible to think that the immense majority of ourgirls know nothing of what will be their highest duty, which hinges on annatural act that they have been taught to consider repugnant.”84 After thefounding of the Second Republic in 1931, a “School for ConsciousMotherhood” was set up by radical physicians in the House of Mothers(Casa de Maternidad) in Barcelona. Instruction in the laws of heredity,asserted the anarchist physician Dr. Felix Marti Ibañez, would free womenfrom “egotistic male tyranny” and give them rights including “self determi-nation and the right to decide on their own maternity.”85 But most Spanishfeminists, even the anarchist founders of Mujeres Libres (Free Women),responded skeptically to an ideology that they feared would discredit theirmovement.86

Education was not enough, for it could not protect women against thecoercive pressures of the patriarchal family. Activists called on the state to

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support them in their aspirations to protect the health of the next generation.As we have seen, prewar feminists had been among the earliest proponents ofhealth certificates as a prerequisite for legal marriage. Scandinavian countrieswere the first to write this requirement into their new codes of family law,which forbade the marriage of persons afflicted with a range of ailmentsconsidered hereditary, including mental retardation and insanity (or “lunacy”).Swedish and Finnish laws also prohibited marriage to those with venerealdiseases, while Danish and Norwegian codes required only that each partypresent a health certificate to the other.87

In countries where women had won the right to vote and to holdoffice, laws requiring some kind of health certificate for marriage wereoften introduced by female representatives to national parliaments. TheDutch feminist Betsy Bakker-Nort, who was also prominent as a defender ofmarried women’s right to employment, was a representative of the liberalFree Democratic Party and also belonged to the Committee for a MedicalCertificate for Marriage (Comité ter Bevordering van het GeneeskundigOnderzoek vóor het huwelijk).88 This committee’s most prestigious ally wasthe physician Maria Anna van Herwerden. Although not active in feministorganizations, Herwerden was a prominent advocate for female physiciansand medical students and a critic of pseudo-scientific justifications for genderdiscrimination. She rejected any tendency to pure genetic determinismand insisted that policy-makers should always recognize “the interaction of genotypical traits with life circumstances in the broadest sense.”89 Thelegislation sponsored by Bakker-Nort was very cautious, and required onlythat applicants for a marriage license should be provided with a brochu-re advising them on the dangers of hereditary disease (a law that hadalready been passed in Germany). But even this limited involvement of thestate in marital choice was thought excessive by a Parliament composedlargely of representatives of religiously oriented parties (both Catholic andProtestant), who rejected the proposal because it violated religiousprecepts.90

In France, the most prominent advocate of the pre-marital health certifi-cate was Dr. Pinard. Starting in 1926, he introduced several proposals intothe Chamber of Deputies that would have required the health certificate onlyof men, for he feared that the prospect of examining virginal brides wouldoutrage public opinion.91 The feminist press supported this proposal—indeed, the young lawyer Laure Biardeau argued in the name of genderequality for the extension of the requirement to women.92 Pinard’s initiativewas temporarily halted by public aversion to this unprecedented limitation onpersonal liberty and medical confidentiality.

But in the 1930s the debate was dramatically revived by the novelistLouise Hervieu, who was also a painter until her blindness and other infirmi-ties made painting impossible. Hervieu, who attributed her illness and thoseof her children to a venereal disease acquired from her husband, addressedthe problem of hereditary disease in 1936 in a sensational novel entitledSangs (Blood-Lines) and in 1937 in an impassioned tract, Le Crime (The Crime).

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Both of these books were directed primarily toward female readers, and bothdenounced careless reproduction as a crime against the next generation.“Do not accept your own contamination and the ruin of your children!”Hervieu exhorted her female readers. “It is a great crime against them,it is infanticide!”93

Along with many other reformers, Hervieu advocated the compulsoryissuance to citizens of both sexes of a “Health Booklet” (Carnet de Santé),which would record medical data from birth to death and would be inspectedon important occasions such as school entry, military conscription, andmarriage. Hervieu created a public image of herself as emancipated woman aswell as mater dolorosa. A Louise Hervieu Association, which was foundedto advocate the Carnet, was lauded in the feminist press and by prominentfeminist leaders.94 Hervieu dismissed all reservations about possible infringe-ment of personal privacy: “the child, the future human being also has rights,which we violate because he is too weak to defend them.”95 The majorityof French legislators still had reservations: in 1939 the Chamber of Deputiesvoted to adopt the Carnet but on a voluntary and confidential basis.Under the fascist Vichy regime, the prenuptial examination was madeobligatory.96

Another way of protecting population “quality” was the legalization ofvoluntary or compulsory sterilization. In France, such a measure—thoughsupported by a few prominent physicians and reformers—was not likely togain widespread acceptance. Catholics opposed it because it violated theprecepts laid down in the papal encyclical Casti Connubii, and natalistsbecause it might have the effect of further reducing birthrates. But inpredominantly Protestant Germany, Britain, and Scandinavia, sterilizationfigured prominently in debates on population policy. Though made infamousby the Nazis after their seizure of power in 1933, sterilization was notoriginally associated with the political right—indeed, like many other eugenicmeasures, it was originally proposed and supported chiefly by adherents ofprogressive or left-wing groups in all countries, including feminist groups.The laws proposed by these groups were intended to make voluntary sterili-zation available as a means to the exercise of reproductive responsibility. Thisdefinition of responsibility was held to justify a more coercive approach tothose deemed irresponsible, chiefly the insane, retarded, or mentally“deficient.” Because these people’s afflictions were assumed to be hereditaryand their reproductive patterns prolific, they were targeted as a threat topopulation “quality.” Another stereotype—that of the “mentally deficient”male as a rapist or sex criminal—played to the fears and prejudices of women,including many feminists. Of course, as groups such as welfare recipients,prisoners, and the patients of public medical facilities were most oftenaffected, the proposed laws had a strong class bias—a serious ethical problem,which was often unrecognized or ignored even by socialist reformers.97

But by no means all feminists approved of sterilization—an issue on whichtheir views differed according to their political and religious beliefs andnational contexts.98 In the polarized political atmosphere of Weimar

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Germany, sterilization was debated by the leaders of the socialist and com-munist women’s groups and the members of the BDF. Although mostGerman socialist and communist women did not identify themselves asfeminists, they played the major role in defining their parties’ positions onissues concerning women and the family, and a few of them—such as AdeleSchreiber and Henriette Fürth—were well-known advocates of women’srights in many areas. The broader theme of this controversy was social policy,chiefly in regard to those classified as feeble-minded or insane. At first, boththe socialist and the moderate feminist groups recommended the custodialcare of these individuals (along the lines of the British Mental Deficiency Act,which had been passed in 1913) for indefinite periods in sex-segregatedinstitutions. But they disagreed about the financing and control of theseinstitutions. The members of the League of German Women’s Associationswished to entrust the custodial services to charitable institutions, many ofwhich were directed and staffed by women. The socialist activists, on the con-trary, insisted on the abolition of private charities and the transfer of custodialservices to public institutions under the authority of local governments,many of which were controlled by socialists.99

After a proposed National Custodial Law, which would have mandatedlife-long confinement for the mentally “deficient,” was defeated in 1925,socialist politicians (who had not succeeded in supplanting the private chari-ties) shifted their support to sterilization, which they argued was preferable tolong-term custody on both humanitarian and financial grounds. Lawsdesigned to legalize sterilization were sponsored by socialist party memberson both the national and state level. All of these were based on the voluntaryprinciple, but as they also provided that the mentally deficient, retarded, or illcould be sterilized with the consent of their families or guardians, theirvoluntary nature was questionable.100

By contrast, the BDF continued to support the custodial laws—a positionthat appealed both to the material interests and the moral values of themember groups, who prided themselves on their “motherly” concern forvulnerable members of society. Some BDF members objected to eugeniclegislation not only on religious but on scientific grounds: “science cannotyet predict heredity, and especially in the case of mental illness, this is not yetpossible,” remarked one delegate to the BDF’s 1925 meeting.101 GertrudBäumer, who chaired the Reichstag’s Committee on Population, complainedthat the emphasis on biological fitness ignored the spiritual aspects of parent-hood. “The discussion over-emphasizes eugenics and population policy—that the production of children also involves the spiritual and intellectualprocess of child-rearing is often forgotten.”102

After 1930, when the National Socialist Party won its first major electoralvictories, the political atmosphere was rapidly polarized between right andleft extremes. In response to the great campaign for legalized abortion thatwas launched by the left-wing parties, the BDF—which had been aloof fromthese efforts—was urged by the minority of sex reformers among itsmembership to define its position on this and other reproductive issues.

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A group headed by Anne-Marie Durand-Wever, the head of the organiza-tion’s Committee on Marriage Counseling, cooperated with the Committeeon Population Policy, headed by the Protestant conservative Luise Scheffen-Doering, to draft a position paper entitled “Guidelines on Family Policy,”which was scheduled to be voted on by the organization’s annual conferencein 1933.

That conference never took place, for in response to the Nazi seizure ofpower the BDF disbanded itself on May 14, 1933, in order to avoid cooper-ating with Nazi guidelines, which demanded the removal of all Jewishmembers. But the organization’s journal, Die Frau, continued in print underan editorial board headed by Gertrud Bäumer. In June of 1933, Die Fraupublished the position paper on “Family Policy,” which the BDF had had noopportunity to pass. An introductory statement by Scheffen-Doering vowedloyalty to Adolf Hitler and endorsed “voluntary sterilization for life unwor-thy to be lived.” But the original text of the position paper, which was printedin its entirety, advocated the strengthening of the family through positive,state-sponsored benefits such as improvements in maternity insurance andeducation, and it made no mention of sterilization, voluntary or compulsory.The first clause stipulated that “the moral responsibility of parenthood isderived from a personal decision, of which no one can be deprived of anygovernment.” In a commentary on this document, Scheffen-Doeringcautiously admonished the new rulers to respect the religious conscience.“All new eugenic measures, all public marriage counseling, must respect thisbasic principle of sexual morality. . . . No ethically valid marriage can, as hasbeen suggested, be contracted according to criteria of biological value, andchildren cannot be produced for any nation by compulsion.”103 The Nazi lawthat mandated compulsory sterilization for many categories of people cameinto effect six months later (January 1, 1934).104 Custodial laws for the“mentally deficient,” though not enacted on the national level, were adoptedby many local governments after 1933.

In Britain, by contrast, the attitude of feminists toward sterilization wasmore positive and less conflicted than that of their German counterparts, inpart because the political environment permitted them a more prominentrole in defining the issues. In Britain, fascist and communist parties of thesort that did so much to radicalize the debate in Germany played a muchlesser role, and political parties showed little interest in population policy.105

Thus civic organizations, such as NUSEC and the Eugenics Society, wereable to initiate legislation on population issues (including birth control,which both of these organizations supported) and to dominate nationaldebates on these issues.

Britain already had a law permitting the long-term confinement of thosejudged mentally deficient. In 1929, when state mental health authoritieswarned that the numbers of this group were nonetheless increasing, theEugenics Society introduced the first of several sterilization bills intoParliament. Like most comparable measures in other countries, the Britishbill made sterilization voluntary, but excepted the insane or retarded, for

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whom consent could be given by a relative or physician—thus its voluntarynature was highly questionable.106

During the period from 1929 until 1937, the Eugenics Society enlistedallies among civic organizations, and among these feminist groups of allshades of opinion were prominent. One reason for the difference in Germanand British responses was that the British already had the custodial law forwhich the German mainstream feminists were still campaigning. Another wasthat in Britain the propaganda for sterilization was developed, not as inGermany by male-dominated parties, but by and for women. Placing a highpriority on winning of women’s support, the Eugenics Society providedspeakers for hundreds of local organizations, from the socialist Women’sCooperative Guild to the conservative Mothers’ Institutes. As Lesley A. Hallhas remarked, the arguments for sterilization were quite similar to those foraccess to birth control: both were presented chiefly as measures for theprotection of the health and well-being of mothers and children. TheSterilization Bill was endorsed by the largest feminist groups: the NUSEC(led by Eva Hubback, who was also a member of the Eugenics Society); theNational Council of Women; and the socialist Women’s Co-Operative Guild,which even recommended that sterilization be made compulsory in somecases.107 The influential Marie Stopes also supported compulsory sterilizationas a means to what she called “racial progress.”108

The male leadership of the Labour Party opposed the Bill and denouncedit as an instrument of class oppression, predicting that only poor peoplewould be sterilized.109 But the Party’s Women’s Section broke with the lead-ership (as they had on the issue of birth control) and placed gender loyalty (asthey saw it) ahead of class loyalty by endorsing the Bill “by a large majority”at their national conference of 1936.110 Some women’s organizations refusedtheir support out of respect for the religious scruples of their members. Theonly group that opposed the Bill on feminist principle was the Association forMoral and Social Hygiene, the successor to the Abolitionist Federation,which had successfully opposed the Contagious Diseases Acts in the mid-nineteenth century. The Association looked back to the theoretically voluntary,but actually compulsory health examination to which suspected prostituteshad been subjected, and expressed the fear that a sterilization bill would leadto similar abuses.111 Despite the strong support of these women’s organizations,the British sterilization bill was repeatedly rejected by Parliament.

In Scandinavia, laws that mandated both voluntary and compulsory steril-ization were supported by many feminist leaders and organizations. A veryearly example was the petition brought before the Danish Parliament in 1920by Danish Women’s National Council, which represented the mainstream ofmiddle-class feminist opinion, supporting the sterilization of the mentallyretarded as a protective measure for women and girls against sex offenders. In1929 and 1934, Denmark passed laws permitting voluntary sterilization thatallowed relatives or guardians to give consent for the mentally retarded orinsane.112 Influential throughout Scandinavia was the support of twoeminent Swedish reformers, Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, for the prevention of

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“socially undesirable parenthood,” by voluntary birth control if possible butby compulsion if necessary.113 Denmark and Finland passed laws that permit-ted voluntary sterilization and compulsory sterilization in some cases in1934; Norway and Sweden in 1935. In Finland, too, women physicians,lawyers, and politicians played a prominent role in formulating andpromoting this legislation, which mandated compulsory sterilization when“the offspring would inherit (the parent’s) defects or if it is likely that suchoffspring would by reason of such deficiency be uncared for.”114

Environmental as well as medical guidelines often worked unfairly to stigma-tize poor parents.

But some feminists perceived the ethical problems that were inherent insuch policies. The British journalist Stella Browne, always a rebel, was amongthose who objected to the class biases that were built into the rhetoric ofeugenics. She regretted that a working-class friend had not had the opportunityto develop the “gifts which, had they received anything of the cultivationlavished on any blockhead born into the classes which arrogate to themselvesthe name ‘fit,’ would have made her famous.”115 While she approved inprinciple of the proposed British sterilization law, Dora Russell regretted that“wholesale compulsion” seemed more acceptable to public opinion than“making ordinary men and women free to exercise their choice according toordinary brains and human affections.”116 In 1927, the Dutch NationalCouncil of Women concluded their policy statement on “Population Policy”with the declaration that too little was known about the laws of heredity toexclude anyone from reproduction.117 Catholic women’s groups upheld theirChurch’s teachings. For example, the journal La Femme Belge, published bythe Christian Women’s Social Movement of Belgium, called sterilization a“mutilation that violates the rights of individuals—a measure that nothingcan justify.”118

After 1933, the alarming spectacle of compulsory sterilization and othereugenic policies in Germany alerted many reformers to the danger of givingthe state so much power over individual decisions. Elise Ottesen-Jensen, whohad lobbied for a eugenic sterilization law in Sweden, retracted her supportof this measure in 1933 and devoted her energies to informing the publicabout sterilization in Germany, where she said it was used as a “weapon forsuperstition and violence.” When the Swedish sterilization law came intoeffect in 1934, she urged health officials to protect the rights of individualsto give consent.119 Carlos Blacker, General Secretary of the British EugenicsEducation Society, complained that the sterilization bill to which he hadcommitted the energies of his organization failed because of its similarity(which Blacker claimed was only superficial) to the National Socialist law.The Dutch eugenicist Maria Anna van Herwerden (whose mother wasJewish) was appalled by a German colleague who “in the name of racialhygiene spouted anti-Semitic politics, and received applause from his mostlyyouthful audience.”120 The editors of the French sex-reform periodicalProblème Sexuel, who in 1933 had printed the text of the German sterilization

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law without comment, recognized by 1934 that it was part of a tyrannicalagenda that suppressed all freedom of reproductive choice, especially amongthe poor.121 And even in Germany itself, women continued to protestcautiously against compulsory sterilization. “The sterilization of the inferior,for example, poses some problems for women that cannot be simply solved,”wrote Gertrud Bäumer shortly after the Nazi seizure of power. “For in theend this is also an application of technical means to biology, and it brings verymixed spiritual and social effects.”122 Another article in the same issue, thisone by a Nazi apologist, complained that in certain circles “the introductionof ‘compulsory sterilization’ has caused some discomfort.”123

Revulsion against National Socialism gradually discredited the eugenicsmovement. As so often happens, scientific theory reinforced political conviction.Starting in the 1920s, some biologists and psychologists had rejectedthe crude assumptions that lay behind the sterilization laws, pointing outthat the characteristics of the parents (phenotype) did not indicate theirgenetic makeup (genotype) and thus did not provide an adequate basis uponwhich to predict the health of their offspring.124 In the middle decades of thetwentieth century, this theoretical direction, which emphasized the impor-tance of environment over heredity in the physical and psychologicaldevelopment of individuals, would become dominant in the social andnatural sciences.125

W W T M P H

The resistance to eugenic and natalist legislation eroded the conception ofmotherhood as a public service and made way for a more individualistic viewof reproduction. Birth control literature affirmed parental desire as the mostimportant reason for childbearing. The first right of all babies, stated MarieStopes, was “to be loved before birth as well as after birth.”126 But those whomade this argument realized that its effect was highly ambiguous, for it couldbe—and clearly often was—used to justify decisions both for and againstchildbearing. If every child had a right to be wanted, then those who did notwant children were justified in not producing them.

This individualistic view of parenthood as an option rather than a duty wasoften included among the symptoms of a more general “crisis of the family.”As we have seen from the previous chapter, policy-makers of the interwar era,who regarded the preservation of marital and familial stability as essential tosocial order, often feared that these bonds could not withstand the pressuresof modern life. The German social theorist Alice Salomon argued that thefamily, no longer supported by its traditional pillars—paternal authority andeconomic interdependence—was held together only by emotional ties. Andeven these ties were threatened: “the independence of its individual mem-bers” she predicted, might well be gained through the “disintegration of thefamily.”127

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Likewise Alva Myrdal, whose influential book on population policy beganwith a chapter entitled “The Maladjusted Family,” insisted anxiously that themodern family existed only to fulfill the emotional needs of its members, asan “opportunity for supreme intimacy.”128 Therefore, Myrdal and otherprogressive reformers advised governments to avoid coercion and to respectthe individual’s claim to private happiness. Forcing parents to bear childrenwas counterproductive, for it destroyed their pleasure in parenthood.“Children should be born as a matter of joy; whatever kills that joy misses itseffect.”129

Some birth control literature even argued that marital happiness was moreimportant to social order than population growth. Although Marie Stopesregarded reproduction as the ultimate purpose of sexual love—“Every loverdesires a child,” began the first chapter of her popular advice-book, RadiantMotherhood—she advised couples to delay the first pregnancy for at least twoyears in order to allow time for the full development of their sexual relation-ship.130 Young marriages, she warned, were often permanently disrupted bythe “inevitable dislocation and readjustment” caused by pregnancy andparenthood.131 And she insisted that state policies that forced such couples tobear unwanted children could lead only to social unrest. The “real root ofrevolution,” she wrote, lay in “the secret revolt and bitterness which permeatesevery fibre of the unwillingly pregnant and suffering mothers.” The unwill-ing mother’s children might well become “bitter, soured and profoundlyunhappy” adults who would avenge their own wrongful births throughrevolutionary activity.132

If the happiness of families took priority over population growth, thencould the avoidance of childbearing actually be socially desirable? As we havealready seen, those who were afflicted with hereditary diseases were urged,even sometimes compelled, to refrain from reproduction. But voluntarysterility, at least on a temporary basis, could also be recommended even forthe young and healthy. One of the period’s most contentious debates ragedaround the proposal made by the American judge Ben Lindsay for the legaland social acceptance of the so-called “trial marriage”—a union of youngpeople who were not ready for a lifetime commitment. The partners wouldagree that the relationship would be childless and could be terminatedwithout legal formalities if it did not prove satisfying.133

Lindsay and his many European supporters, who included Alva Myrdal,Dora Russell, Helene Stöcker, and the Dutch activist Wilmoet Wijnaendts-Francken-Dyserinck, believed that trial marriages would assuage the sexualfrustration which fashionable Freudian doctrines of human nature identifiedas a major cause of social instability and crime—according to Russell, even of“nervous disorders bordering upon insanity.”134 “Comradely marriage,”wrote Francken-Dyserinck, would “bring the sex drive, which for so long hasbeen scorned, cursed, and repressed into constructive channels.”135

Moderates such as Gertrud Bäumer found this emphasis on sexual satisfac-tion as an end in itself highly dubious, for it required the woman at leasttemporarily to give up her “right to motherhood.”136 But more radical

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thinkers dismissed this association of female sexuality with motherhood asan old-fashioned stereotype: among human beings as well as animals sexual-ity was the basic drive, and parenthood merely its accidental by-product.137

The Austrian socialist Marianne Pollak praised the modern girl, who refus-ed to be the “old maid, condemned to a nun’s life” and had become the“self-conscious bachelor girl, who grows up early.” To the vanguard of the “sexual revolution,” marriage was no longer simply a “baby factory”(Kinderzeugungsanstalt).138

But the fact that marital happiness was now deemed to be a sufficient end initself raised serious questions about reproduction. For why should the blissfulpartners ever encumber themselves with the offspring, that might destroy theprecarious equilibrium of their relationship? “Why do we have them?” askedDora Russell in some perplexity.139 In the consumer society of the interwaryears, many identified personal narcissism as the motive for the acquisition ofchildren as well as other valuable possessions. According to Marie Stopes, thecouple who decided to bear a child was overcome by a “mutual longing . . . toinitiate the chain of lives which shall repeat throughout the ages the bodily,mental and spiritual beauties of each other, which each holds so dear . . . Loverswho are parents give each other the supremest material gift in the world, amaterial embodiment of celestial dreams.”140 Margaret Sanger, widely read inEurope, likewise pictured motherhood as the completion of the mother’s“completely rounded self-development.”141 And Dora Russell compared thepersonal fulfillment to be gained from child-rearing to recreation: “there is noactivity so delightful . . . as mutual cooperation between men and women overthe care and education of babies and young children.”142

But if the parents’ only reason for having children was to gratify theirdesires, then why should they choose this form of gratification over theothers that were now so lavishly available? Enid Charles, a British demogra-pher and feminist, took account of the profound change in the valuation ofchildren over the past century. Children were no longer an economic asset,but a liability—in fact, even more costly than the most luxurious of consumergoods. “Industrialism proffers a number of alternative and often moreattractive ways of spending money,” she noted ironically. “Statistics clearlyshow that the choice between a Ford and a baby is generally made in favorof the Ford.”143 If they did not think of new ways to encourage reproduc-tion, Charles predicted that all Western societies would see a “twilight ofparenthood.”144

One solution to this problem—already envisaged during World War I—was the development of technologies that would remove reproduction fromthe vagaries of individual choice and make it completely rational. Charlesreferred her readers to the British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, who seriouslypredicted in 1924 that “ectogenesis”—the production of children outsidethe womb—could be perfected by 1951.145 The era’s futuristic fantasiesimagined societies in which women were liberated from the onerous duty ofchildbearing. In 1922, George Bernard Shaw’s play, Back to Methuselah,opened in an idyllic Garden of Eden where Eve was informed about human

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reproduction by the snake. “Life must not cease,” declared the snake. “It issilly to say that you do not care. You do care.”146 But Eve, the first reluctantmother, responded with “an expression of overwhelming repugnance.”147

The play concluded in the year AD 31,920, when the human race hadevolved to the point that the young were born as fully developed adults fromgiant eggs, and child-rearing and the family had become extinct.148 But themuch younger Aldous Huxley, more in tune with the pessimistic spirit of theage, set his novel Brave New World in a sinister, neon-lit totalitarian state,where children were produced in factories according to eugenic guidelinesand reared collectively. The past, when “humans used to be viviparous,” wasregarded with horror, and the name of “mother” was an insult.149 Andthe result was a culture of mindless conformity, where the capacity for love andjoy was lost in empty pleasure, wasteful consumption, and easy sensual gratifi-cation. For Huxley, the end of motherhood meant the end of civilization.

While affirming reproductive choice, feminists and others were thusdeeply apprehensive about its consequences. Only a handful actually sawchildlessness as a positive option. “I have no experience of maternity, nor ofthe desire for maternity, which is generally attributed to women,” wroteStella Browne in 1915. “. . . As it is, many women have no maternal longingsat all, and they should never become mothers.”150 Winifred Holtby com-plained that the “legend of the frustrated spinster” reinforced the stereo-typed notion that women were incomplete without children and brandedwomen who decided against marriage and motherhood with the stigma ofabnormality. “Puritan morality,” Holtby concluded, “taught unmarriedwomen that the loss of virginity doomed them to the torments of Hell in thenext world; twentieth-century morality teaches them that the retention ofvirginity dooms them to the horror of insanity in this one.”151 But by sepa-rating sexuality and reproduction, the birth control movement in fact pavedthe way for the acceptance of childlessness, within or outside heterosexualrelationships. Helene Stöcker, herself childless, extolled the value of sexuallove as an end in itself. “Every genuine love is fruitful,” she wrote, “chieflybecause it enhances the vitality and happiness of the individual person.”152

Let us return to our original question—how to be both a mother and afree individual? Prewar feminists had envisaged control over fertility as animportant means to the resolution of this dilemma. Surely, they believed,reproductive freedom would enable women to combine the joys of mother-hood with those of self-realization through professional work, love, andcreativity. In the interwar era this prospect, still remote for most women,became imaginable. But the result was not the resolution but the sharpeningof the maternal dilemma. For a conflict that was originally conceptualizedchiefly as political—pitting the individual woman against the forces ofchurch, state, and patriarchy—now took on an additional, psychologicaldimension. “Women want better reasons for having children than notknowing how to prevent them,” wrote Dora Russell.153 But what wouldthose reasons be? If the main reason for childbearing was now personalgratification rather than necessity or duty, then how to weigh this form of

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gratification against others? If raised standards of child-rearing made childrenexpensive, then how to decide between this and other expenditures? How topredict whether the outcome would justify the investment? Analyses of the“woman question” now shifted their emphasis from patriarchal oppression topsychological conflicts. And what would be the effect of such conflictedmothers on their children? This will be the theme of the next chapter.

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“Babies’ Protest March.” Babies demand their mothers’ own milk, competent midwives, healthyparents, dry diapers, their own beds, sun and air, protection from flies, and good health.(American National Red Cross; Infants’ Bureau. Paris: Imprimerie G. Bataille, 1918? Artist:Jacques Carlu. Poster Archive, Hoover Institution.)


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In 1911, Ellen Key called the mother–child bond the purest of all humanrelationships and motherhood “the most perfect human condition, wherehappiness consists in giving and giving is the greatest happiness.”1 But inter-war authors emphasized the darker side of mother-love, often picturingmothers as the enforcers of the repressive norms that arrested their daugh-ters’ development. “Probably no ambitious girl who has lived in a familywhich regards the subservience of women as part of the natural order of cre-ation ever completely recovers from the bitterness of her early emotions,”wrote the novelist Vera Brittain in 1933. Virginia Woolf was haunted by theghost of her own perfect mother, whom she called (from the title of a cloyingVictorian poem) the “Angel in the House.” “She was intensely sympathetic.She was utterly unselfish . . . in short, she was so constituted that she neverhad a mind or wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with theminds and wishes of others.” Woolf imagined herself killing this dark spirit:“I turned upon her and took her by the throat . . . Had I not killed her, shewould have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing.”2

By killing the “Angel,” Woolf expressed her personal aversion to mother-hood. For many others, however, the rejection of this stereotype was a firststep toward breaking old, destructive patterns and imagining new ways ofparenting that cultivated the individuality of both mother and child. Thesenew conceptions were often expressed in the language of psychology—a dis-cipline which gained prestige as a framework for the understanding of humanrelationships. Feminists, to be sure, often found this a dangerous intellectualterrain, for many prestigious psychological theories were permeated withthe era’s fashionable misogyny. Rejecting the traditional tendency to idealizemother-love, psychologists warned that mother-love, if not guided by the adviceof experts, could be dangerous to children. But these theories were open to avariety of interpretations. Feminists—some trained in psychology—admitted


that mothers were often inept and even destructive. But they attributedthese flaws less to innate female weakness than to the wrenching emotionalambivalence felt by women who were forced to choose between their ownself-realization and their maternal responsibilities. And they claimed that thesolution to this dilemma would benefit both mothers and their children.“Close upon the heels of women’s emancipation,” wrote Dora Russell, wouldcome “the emancipation of the child.”3 After sketching in the historicalcontext, we will trace this argument as it touched on four issues: the roleof anthropology in developing a new basis for family life, the mother–childrelationship, the combination of motherhood and career, and the changingpicture of fathers and the two-parent family.

Because most historians of gender relations focus more on sexualitythan on motherhood or child-rearing, they have often identified “biologicaldeterminism” as this era’s dominant paradigm. Indeed, one widely readvolume on German women in the Weimar and Nazi eras is entitled WhenBiology Became Destiny. But a contrasting view is offered by the French his-torian Yvonne Knibiehler, who claims that the interwar years saw “the end ofthe maternal instinct.”4 The notion that mothers were innately gifted for thecare of their children had in fact been under attack since the late nineteenthcentury. Physicians and public health advocates attributed high rates of infantmortality—a tragedy that was actually due to social conditions such as poorhousing, impure water supplies, and inadequate access to pure milk—to thebehavior of mothers themselves. These reformers regarded this behavior asthe product chiefly of ignorance rather than instinct, and claimed that itcould be altered by education. “Infant mortality,” wrote Dr. Gustave Variot,the head of the prestigious Institute of Child-Nurture (Institut de puèriculture)in Paris, “is due in large part to the ignorance of mothers and nurses, and wecould save a great many babies if we propagated the essential rules of infanthygiene.”5

At the turn of the twentieth century, when sanitary methods of bottle-feeding were not yet widely available, physicians emphasized that breast-feeding was the foremost duty of all mothers. But they took pains to separatethis biological function from other behaviors that they regarded as instinc-tive. Mothers were warned that such customs as picking the child up whenit cried, feeding it when it was hungry, and rocking it to sleep could allhave dire consequences.6 By the end of World War I, many infant-welfarecenters had been taken over or subsidized by local governments, whichemployed paid and volunteer social workers to visit the homes of mothersand to educate them in proper child-rearing techniques.7 School courses inbaby care were offered to girls in many public school system; France madesuch courses a standard part of school curricula for girls from eleven tothirteen years of age in 1923, and many British and German schools alsorequired them.8

In the interwar years, these efforts were crowned with success. Improvedsanitation and housing, lower birthrates, immunizations against some child-hood diseases, and the development of sanitary methods of bottle-feeding

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resulted in a spectacular decline in infant mortality. Death rates in the firstyear of life fell by more than 50 percent: in Germany from 199 per thousandlive births in 1901 to 68 in 1933; in France from 142 in 1901 to 66 in 1938;in Britain from 138 in 1900 to 68 in 1930; in the Netherlands from 149in 1901 to 66 in 1938.9 Partly due to these results, interwar child-rearingexperts shifted their emphasis from the physical to the mental health of chil-dren. The new interest in children’s emotional lives was also encouraged bychanges in family structure. During the interwar period, falling birthrates,raised educational aspirations, and a gender ideology that promoted full-timemotherhood encouraged intensive concern with the individual child. Inworking-class families, improved housing, paid vacations, and a rising stan-dard of living that brought an end to most forms of child labor encouragedincreased investment in children.10

In regard to the maternal role, the newly prestigious field of psychologytransmitted contradictory messages. On the one hand, psychologists pre-sented motherhood as an imperative of normal female biology. The Dutchphysician Theodoor Hendrik Van de Velde, the author of some of the mostpopular works of advice on sexuality, tersely summed up the female characterin the Latin phrase: “propter solum ovarium.” “Only through her ovaries,”declared Van de Velde, “is a woman that which she is.”11 Sigmund Freud,whose ideas gained popularity among educated people during this period,claimed that women who rebelled against femininity were afflicted with “penisenvy,” which could be resolved only through the experience of motherhood(preferably of a male child).12 Freud’s disciple Karen Horney denied the uni-versality of “penis envy” but not the supreme value of maternity “the blissfulconsciousness of bearing life within oneself,” which she claimed was oftenenvied by men.13 The woman who decided against motherhood was pilloriedas an emotionally disturbed or sexually perverted man-hater. “The legend ofthe Frustrated Spinster,” complained the British novelist Winifred Holtby, “isone of the most formidable social influences of the modern world.”14

On the other hand, women’s innate capacity for child-rearing (as distinctfrom mere biological reproduction) was widely called into question. In theprewar era, the field of psychology had been dominated by Darwiniantheories that attributed the behavior of children chiefly to genetic tendenciesthat parents and teachers could do little to modify. Educators advised moth-ers against over-involvement in a process that was driven by its own naturallaws.15 Advice manuals warned that too much maternal indulgence mightundermine the parents’ most important goal—the building of a strong moralcharacter. In the interwar period, psychologists were still less inclined to leavechild-rearing to maternal instinct. Some important theorists—for example, theAmerican Arnold Gesell, a pioneer in the field of developmental psychology—attributed the child’s development to innate biological patterns.16 But thewidest influence was gained by two environmental theories—behaviorismand psychoanalysis.

Behaviorism, which was associated chiefly with the American psychologistJohn Watson and gained its greatest influence in the English-speaking

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cultures of the United States and Britain, denied any form of geneticdeterminism and claimed that the human personality was entirely shaped bya process of conditioning that began at birth. Each mother, said Watson,should know that “almost nothing is given in heredity and practically thewhole course of development of the child is due to the way I raise it.”17 Butthis was not meant as an endorsement of maternal wisdom, for behavioristsblamed all of the many forms of unhappiness that beset individuals or entiresocieties on the fatal errors of mothers.

Like other intellectual trends of this era, behaviorism was shaped by theimpact of World War I, which had revealed the vulnerability of the individualpersonality to stress, of society to unrest and revolution, and of nationsthemselves to defeat, decadence, and decline. All of these fears underlay thebehaviorists’ dire warnings against spoiling, a practice that they attributed tosmall families and lazy or frivolous mothers. The spoiled infants of today, theycautioned, would become the criminals or revolutionaries of tomorrow.Dr. Frederick Truby King, a native of New Zealand who became Britain’sforemost authority on baby care, argued for a rigid infant feeding scheduleon psychological as well as medical grounds. He accused mothers who weretoo indulgent to follow such a schedule of laying “the natural foundations offailure later on—failure through the lack of control which underlies all weak-ness of character, vice, and criminality.”18 In the older child, symptoms suchas anxiety and nervousness, and behaviors such as thumb-sucking, masturba-tion, or precocious sexual curiosity were blamed on misguided mothering.19

Although the most prominent child-care experts were male, they foundample support among female physicians, nurses, and educators, some ofwhom wrote their own advice books. The wilful and cosseted child, said theGerman Hildegard Hetzer in her popular manual, would never learn “to liveup to the expectations that life in human society imposes.”20

Psychoanalysis, though less influential than behaviorism, became wellknown for its sensational exposure of the hostility and sexual tension thatunderlay parent–child relationships. From its outset in the prewar years, psy-choanalysis in both its Freudian and Jungian versions had rejected the senti-mental Victorian image of the mother as her son’s guardian angel, and hadportrayed her as a seductive figure whose will to domination, if not success-fully rejected, would destroy his personality. Freud extended this theory togirls by making their development toward normal heterosexuality dependenton the transfer of their primary attachment from their mothers to theirfathers. In the interwar era he changed his view of the human personality toinclude not only a sexual instinct that worked toward the continuation of life,but a death instinct that worked toward its extinction—an instinct that couldhave driven the extraordinary destructive energies unleashed by the war.21

A younger generation of analysts, some of whom were women, incorpo-rated the new awareness of the dark side of human nature into their interpre-tation of the mother–child relationship. Melanie Klein, who was born to aViennese Jewish family in 1882, studied analysis under Freud, SandorFerenczi, and Karl Abraham, and worked as a child psychiatrist in Berlin and

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later in London, where she established residence in 1927. Klein traced theorigins of psychic development to the first months of life, rather than tothe period (the fifth or sixth year) of the Freudian “Oedipus complex.” Andshe also broke with Freud by identifying the relationship to the mother,rather than the father, as the child’s most important formative experience.According to Klein’s “object relations” theory, the infant’s perception of themother alternated between feelings of love when she satisfied its needs andintense anger and insecurity when she withheld satisfaction. Both of thesefeelings became part of the child’s personality, which was as naturally inclinedto hostile and “bad” as to docile and “good” behavior. Klein and other childanalysts helped to found the Child Guidance movement, which attributedchildren’s “bad” behavior to emotions that must be understood rather than(as the behaviorists did) to habits that must be de-conditioned.22

Another school of psychoanalysis that was popularized through the ChildGuidance Movement was that of Alfred Adler, a Viennese analyst who hadbroken with Freud in 1911 because of a disagreement over the role of the sexdrive in the human personality. Adler believed that self-assertion and the needto belong to a community, rather than sexuality, were the motive forces inhuman behavior. He identified the major barrier to mental health as the“inferiority complex,” a feeling of insecurity and inadequacy for which theindividual often compensated through antisocial behavior. Adler, whosetheories were disseminated in many advice manuals, traced this problem toparents—both those who treated their children harshly and those whospoiled them. He urged parents to find positive ways of building theirchildren’s confidence and self-esteem.23 Adler and other popular psycholo-gists prescribed empathy rather than authority as the guiding principle ofparent–child relationships.

To feminists, this cultural climate presented new problems and newopportunities. On the one hand, women were subject to new pressures, bothto bear children and to raise them according to the dictates of an elite ofexperts. On the other hand, no psychological theory held undisputedhegemony—all gave rise to debates in which many points of view, includingthose of feminists, could be represented. This chapter will draw heavily onthe work of three prominent feminists of the interwar era who also becameknown as experts on child-rearing: the British Dora Russell, the FrenchMadeleine Vernet, and the German Adele Schreiber.

In these women’s memories of their childhood, the mother–childrelationship was an important theme. Schreiber, the daughter of a Jewishphysician who had converted to Catholicism was born in 1872 in Vienna.Her mother, though educated and gifted, nonetheless showed conventionalprejudices by forbidding her daughter to study medicine. “I was dissatisfied,”she wrote. “Family relationships were too constricting, and the customs thatregulated a girl from a respectable family were too narrow—there was nogoal for my youthful energies.” Schreiber’s separation from her motherthrough a move to Berlin was thus a necessary phase in her growth.24 Vernet,who was born in 1877, admired her politically committed mother, who

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supplemented the family income by taking in foster children for the publicwelfare authorities. Madeleine first realized her vocation for journalism andsocial activism by protesting in print against the inadequate funding providedfor such services.25 The much younger Dora Russell was born Dora Black in1894 and recalled a happy, tomboy childhood full of “noisy and uproariousplay . . . which never seemed to trouble my mother. She would come to theback door . . . and cheer us on, or rush out to pick up one of us and see to acut knee.”26 Unlike Schreiber and Vernet, Black attended university (atGirton College, Cambridge). Until she fell in love with a much older man,the eminent philosopher, mathematician, and pacifist Bertrand Russell, shefully intended to pursue an academic career.

All of these women were professionally involved in fields related to childwelfare. And although at first they identified themselves more as socialiststhan as feminists, all three became prominent advocates of the rights orwomen as well as those of children. In 1906, Vernet set up an orphanage nearParis that cared for children on welfare. Supported by contributions fromlabor unions, the orphanage sponsored a school that featured coeducation,a secular curriculum, and nonauthoritarian pedagogy—all very controversialin that era.27 She also advocated such causes as birth control and pacifism ina periodical founded in 1917, La Mère Éducatrice (The Mother-Educator).Schreiber first worked as a journalist who specialized in issues regardingwomen and children. Among the founders of the League for the Protectionof Mothers in 1905, she split off from this group in 1910 and founded herown organization, the Association for the Rights of Mothers and Children(Verein für Mutter- und Kindesrecht). After World War I, Schreiber headedthe relief efforts of the “mother and child” division of the German Red Crossand served as a delegate of the Social Democratic Party to the Reichstag from1920–24 and again from 1928 to 1933. She became a highly visiblespokesperson for socialism, feminism, and international understanding.28 In1927, Dora and Bertrand Russell set up a school, which became famous, ornotorious, for its unconventional pedagogy.29

All of these women combined their professional lives with marriage, andtwo were mothers. But they adopted this way of life with some ambivalence,for all started out as conspicuous advocates of sex reform and free love.Schreiber became notorious not only for her work on behalf of unwed moth-ers but for her affair with the man she later married; Vernet bore a child outof wedlock and wrote a famous attack on marriage which she retracted aftermarrying her companion; Dora reluctantly married Bertrand in order tolegitimate their child (who eventually inherited his father’s title).30 Vernetand Schreiber kept their birth names when married, and Russell changed hersunwillingly. Schreiber, who married at the age of thirty-nine, had no childrenand regarded her political work as an alternative expression of her capacity fornurture.31

These women found support for their decision to combine marriage andmotherhood with professional work in the ideology of “new feminism”—anideology that was introduced in chapter 6. The “new” feminist of the

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interwar era refused to choose between love and professional fulfillment—after all, no such choice was required of men!—and proclaimed her right tohave both (or, as a later generation would put it, to “have it all”). As SheilaJeffreys has pointed out, this ideology could encourage divisive criticism ofwomen who decided for whatever reason not to marry.32 But its central mes-sage was positive: equality must not require the servile imitation of men.Rather, society must be re-structured to involve both men and women innurture and family life as well as work. “Equality means men coming upto our standards half the time,” said Dora Russell to Dale Spender in1982, “. . . It does not mean that we should deny our nurturing, our strengthas mothers, to meet theirs!”33 But would such a re-structuring of genderroles ever be possible? And what would be its implications for familialrelationships and child-rearing?

M, F, P: TE A

As in the prewar era, social scientists of the interwar era turned to the originsand history of the family for answers to questions such as these. Two theoriesstill competed for legitimacy, one of which claimed that both families andstates had originally been mother-headed, and the other that some form ofrecognized fatherhood and male supremacy existed in all human cultures andcould thus be considered a part of human nature.

Nostalgic visions of an age when women ruled briefly energized feministand pacifist groups as the war drew to a close. In France, an organizationknown as Action des Femmes appealed to a world weary of war with its dreamof a matriarchal paradise of peace, order, and prosperity. A member of thegroup, Héra Mirtel, imagined this fortunate “Herland” in a utopian novel of1920 entitled From the Fatherland to the Motherland (De la Patrie à laMatrie). The imagined “motherland” was a colony built by emigrants fromFrance, which was divided into units of 1,000 inhabitants. Property was col-lectively held, the work day was limited to six hours, and community ritualswere presided over by a committee of benevolent female rulers clad in purplerobes—in fact, this was a matriarchal version of the Fourierist phalanstery. Ofcourse, the national anthem of this happy country began “Allons, enfants dela Matrie!”34

A more down to earth tone was adopted by Mathilde Vaerting, a Germanpsychologist who was appointed in 1923 to a professorship in Jena, thusbecoming only the second woman to hold such a position at a German uni-versity. In 1921, she had published a book entitled A New Basis for thePsychology of Man and Woman under her own name and that of a fictionalmale co-author (whom she called Matthias Vaerting). Vaerting combinedtraditional, evolutionary thinking with the newer functionalist approach thatemphasized the ways in which institutions filled basic human needs. Genderroles, she argued, were constructed more by culture than by biology, andtheir function was to structure power and authority.

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If gender was a functional rather than a biological identity, it followed thatwomen could play the dominant role as well as men—a claim that Vaertingbuttressed with the copious data from anthropology and prehistory(described in chapter 1) that seemed to prove the existence of a matriarchalage. While citing the research of Bachofen and his defenders, however, shedenied their central premise: that women rulers, due to their innately maternalnature, had created a peaceable and nurturing utopia. Instead, she insisted (ashad some prewar theorists such as Wilhelmine Drucker) that female rulerswere no less tyrannical than their male counterparts. The issue was not thesex of the rulers, but the corrupting effects of power and oppression.Vaerting urged her contemporaries to forget the matriarchal Neverland andconcentrate on achieving equality between the sexes. “It is absolutely essen-tial,” she concluded, “that humanity should discover ways and means for thepermanent realization of the ideal of sex equality, and for the permanent pre-vention of any form of monosexual dominance. In default, the millenniumsthat lie before us will be no less wretched than those which are now drawingto a close.”35 Vaerting encountered little but hostility and rejection from hercolleagues at Jena, who accused her of promoting “feminism in the guise ofscience.”36 But she was widely quoted by feminists and socialists throughoutEurope during the interwar years.

In a war-torn world, the fantasy of a world ruled by benevolent andmotherly women was still appealing. And utopian hopes had been raised bythe new Soviet state, which announced to its credulous Western admirers thatby restructuring the marriage relationship, child care, and the family it hadinaugurated a new age of gender equality. Robert Briffault was a physician ofmixed French and Scottish ancestry who after serving on the Western Frontsettled in London and became noted for popular works on philosophy,psychology, and anthropology. His monumental and massively learned work,The Mothers, which was published in 1927, ascribed to mothers, who trans-mitted values to the young during their long period of maturation, the keyrole in the creation of human civilization. Admitting that actual matriarchy—the political dominance of women—had probably never existed, Briffaultnonetheless claimed that the first families had consisted of a mother and heroffspring supported by a matrilineal clan, and had allowed women moreinfluence than they possessed in the modern West. Appalled by his wartimeexperiences, Briffault called on mothers to save men from themselves. “Themale child is born cruel. It is his natural propensity to inflict suffering and todestroy. Only social education can develop a tender disposition in him to anydegree.”37

But visions of a world where women ruled were deflated by the era’s lead-ing anthropologist. Bronislaw Malinowski was a native of Poland who, afterstudies in Germany and Britain and a research trip to the South Seas, wasappointed to a chair in anthropology at the University of London in 1927.Malinowski’s first research interest was the origins of the human family.Adopting the fieldwork method—which involved the intensive study of asingle culture—he traveled to the Trobriand Islands in 1914. He did not

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undertake this work in a totally impartial spirit, for he had already beenconvinced by his mentor, Edward Westermarck, that all civilizations recognizedfatherhood.

Malinowski chose the Trobrianders as his subjects partly because theyseemed to be in much the same state as the prehistoric people imagined byBachofen. Living in matrilineal clans, they did not recognize the biolog-ical role of the father, and preferred to believe (or so they told their inquisi-tive visitor) that babies were implanted in women’s wombs by spirits.Nonetheless, Malinowski noted that they recognized both male supremacyand the social role of the father. The mother’s brother was the head of thefamily, and the mother’s husband helped to raise her children. Malinowskiconcluded that whatever its views of reproductive biology, every culturerecognized the need for a male as “guardian, protector, and regent” ofthe family. This assertion seemed to fly in the face of the empirical data—theTrobrianders, for example, permitted unmarried people of both sexes to havemany sexual partners before settling down with a spouse. But Malinowskiaccepted their rather improbable assurances that their sexually active unmarriedwomen, though they had no knowledge of contraception or abortion,almost never became pregnant, and therefore that mother-headed familieswere rare.38

As Malinowski confirmed the importance of fatherhood, he also suggestednew approaches to the paternal role. Among the Trobrianders, the mother’shusband was not a patriarch (that role was allotted to the mother’s brother)and was therefore free to act as an indulgent and nurturing parent, almost asa mother. Under the name of “father,” the child recognized “the man inwhose loving and protecting company he has grown up. . . . The father isa close companion of his children. He takes also an active part in the tendercares lavished on the infants, invariably feels and shows a deep affection forthem, and later on shares in giving them instruction.”39 Malinowski wasdeeply attracted to this model of nurturing fatherhood, which he contrastedwistfully to the authoritarian behavior of the Western father.

In the role of public intellectual to which his professional eminence hadraised him, Malinowski debated Briffault in a BBC broadcast of 1931 entitled“Marriage, Past and Present.” Briffault criticized the marriage laws of his ownera and looked forward to the decline of the patriarchal family and its replace-ment by the mother-headed household that he claimed was natural tothe human race. Malinowski responded that marriage and the two-parentfamily were honored by all human cultures—even in polygamous families, headded, children knew who their parents were—and thus clearly fulfilled basicand universal human needs. Reviling the Bolsheviks and all their works, heasked rhetorically if a woman, “however intelligent, feminist, or progressive”would or should ever freely consent to “undergo the hardships and dangers ofchildbirth in order to give over her child to a glorified foundlings’ hospital orState incubator?” If not, she would need a husband and a father for her child.Whatever their disagreements, the two social scientists shared their era’s over-riding concern for the socialization of men. Malinowski identified fatherhood

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as the best inducement to “the male to face his responsibility and take his sharein the process of reproduction and of the continuity of culture.”40

Malinowski’s views prevailed partly because they accorded with a climateof opinion that regarded the two-parent family as the basis of social order.But matriarchal theories still remained popular in some feminist circles. Forexample, Dora Russell believed that she had persuaded her husband Bertrandthat “the laws enforcing patrilineal descent were contrary to biologicalcommon sense . . . Matrilineal descent was clearly the more logical.”41 Shewas disillusioned when in the course of a contentious divorce BertrandRussell successfully sued her for the custody of their two children.

In Sweden, the vision of a world ruled by women was once again invokedto protest another war. Elin Wägner was a Swedish novelist and disciple ofEllen Key who belonged to the Fogelstad School, a group of feminists whocombined socialist convictions with a deep respect for the traditions of ruralsociety, and especially for women’s craft and homemaking skills. Somemembers of this group, including Kerstin Hesselgren and Elizabeth Tamm,entered politics as parliamentary representatives and social reformers (theirachievements have been discussed in chapters 6 and 7). But Wägner objectedthat the price of political success was assimilation into male-dominatedsociety. She herself upheld Ellen Key’s notion of femininity as a source ofalternative cultural values. In a book entitled Alarm Clock (Väckerklocka),published in 1941, she claimed that the defeat of a peaceable matriarchy bythe violent forces of patriarchy had inaugurated a disastrous history ofinjustice, warfare, and environmental destruction. Could it be that Westerncivilization had simply taken a wrong turn? Could it be that only theoverthrow—not the reform—of patriarchy could reverse this destructivecourse? The ancient mother-world might be a myth, she concluded, but itshould nonetheless not be forgotten.42

T E C

Feminists of the interwar era had high hopes that a new scientific under-standing of childhood would transform the practice of motherhood. TheBritish novelist Winifred Holtby, for example, rejoiced that “during the pasttwenty years children in Europe and America have been considered, propiti-ated, indulged and studied as perhaps they never had been before.”43 But theliterature of child psychology was difficult to interpret, for psychologistsoften contradicted each other. Behaviorists claimed that the child had noessential nature, but was entirely shaped by its rearing. This might be takento imply that each child’s development was unique. But developmentalpsychologists such as Arnold Gesell insisted that the child developed in stagesthat were measurable by tests and statistics, and that too much emphasis onindividuality could disrupt this normal process. As for psychoanalysts, theybelieved that the child’s personality was produced by mysterious subcon-scious forces which parents could not hope to understand. Considering howconfusing these prescriptions often were, it is not surprising that mothers

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failed to live up to them, or that handbooks for parents denounced maternalmalpractice.

Feminists turned these to their own purposes, arguing that women whoseown individual development had been stunted by discrimination anddisadvantage could never become good mothers. For example, the Britishsocialist Wilma Meikle traced mothers’ deficiencies to the restrictionsimposed by conventionally female upbringing. The average mother feltobliged to behave as “a little pocket saint . . . There is no fun left in her. Sheaccepts motherhood in a spirit of self-immolation and sadly braces herself tomeet its claims, instead of rejoicing in it in a spirit of simplicity and being ajolly comrade to her children.”44 In Vera Brittain’s novel Honourable Estate,the heroine Janet was trapped in an unhappy marriage, and was forced tobear a child in whom she saw “only the unwelcome image of his father”Obviously the child, Denis, became the innocent victim of his mother’s angerand resentment.45 In a story later cited by Simone de Beauvoir, KatherineMansfield likewise described a young mother who was traumatized by invol-untary childbearing. “She was broken, made weak, her courage was gonethrough child-bearing. And what made it doubly hard to bear was, she didnot love her children. . . . No, it was as though a cold breath had chilled herthrough and through on each of those awful journeys; she had no warmthleft to give them.”46

Among all the various forms of frustration that perverted maternal love,that of the sexual instinct was most often deplored. Dora Russell tracedmothers’ fussy preoccupation with hygiene to the prudish aversion to bodilyprocesses that was fostered by traditional female education. And most of thesexual problems suffered by adults were laid at the door of mothers whohad been unable to overcome their own inhibitions sufficiently to provideinformation to their children. There were still respectable households, com-plained the French suffragist and anti-prostitution activist Ghenia Avril deSainte-Croix, where anyone who even mentioned “purity, morality, sexualmisconduct, love, marriage, or even babies” would be considered danger-ous.47 Too often, warned Adele Schreiber, the “unhealthy prudery” of mothersconveyed the message that the naked body and the sexual organs were“something especially dirty, something to be ashamed of,” instead of givingthe necessary explanations.48

Though convinced that maternal behavior could be distorted by sexualrepression, feminists preferred environmental to psychoanalytic explanations,which often came too close to biological determinism and gender stereotyping.Mothers’ emotional problems were often attributed to the oppression anddisadvantage that they suffered. A novel entitled The Judge, by the formersuffrage activist Rebecca West, portrayed Marion, a woman whose personal-ity was warped by the experiences of seduction, abandonment, and a forcedand loveless marriage. Her sexualized relationship with her infant son,Richard—“she became vexed with love for him, and longed to clasp him, tocrush him as she knew she must not”—was the pathological result of thesedestructive experiences.49 The psychoanalyst Karen Horney, who was not

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only a disciple but also a perceptive critic of Freud, argued that the psychol-ogy of women was shaped not by innate “penis envy,” but by social factorssuch as male supremacy and female subordination in the family. Maternaloverinvestment in children, moreover, arose from the general tendency ofwomen who were deprived of other avenues to self-fulfillment to seek alltheir satisfaction in love and personal relationships.50

The French physician and socialist activist Madeleine Pelletier, whoseprofession put her in touch with the latest psychological theories, interpreteda news story about a jealous mother who had killed her daughter-in-law insimilar terms. “Who is guilty?” asked Pelletier, “no one, or rather society. Ifthe opportunities of women were not so limited, then mature women wouldlead an active life which would distract them from household intrigues andfrom morbid passions.” Freud merely confirmed Pelletier’s long-standingconviction that “the family is not a paradise . . . hatred in the family is morethe rule than the exception. The family should disappear.”51

But most feminists did not share Pelletier’s pessimism, but rather imag-ined new forms of family life that would insure what Dora Russell identifiedas the child’s first right, “the right to be happy.”52 Many were inspired byAdler, who claimed that confidence and self-esteem were the most importantcharacteristics of healthy children. Adele Schreiber, a strong advocate ofGermany’s new democracy, believed that confident children grew intoresponsible citizens. She advised enlightened mothers to reject “ancienttraditions of subordination and obedience, which forbade the child to thinkindependently,” to respect their children’s individuality, and above all not to“break, oppress, intimidate or corrupt them.”53 The Swedish Alva Myrdal,a child psychologist who in 1936 founded the Social Pedagogical Institute,a training school for early childhood teachers, also believed that child-rearingshould promote democratic values. “In a modern democracy, there is noone to obey, neither lord nor priest. . . . Why should we raise children fora society that no longer exists?”54

But where was the child’s true “individuality” to be found? How toresolve the contradiction between theories that attributed children’s person-ality wholly to parental influence and others that admonished parents torespect their children’s independence? The answer given by psychologists wasthat independence could not be equated with mere spontaneity or permis-siveness. Like other traits, it needed to be inculcated by correct conditioning,and this required a demanding combination of pedagogical involvement andemotional distance. According to her daughter, Alva Myrdal’s approach tochild-rearing aimed both to create perfect human beings and to encourageindependence—aims that sometimes conflicted: “Alva’s ideal of libertyturned out to jar with the ideal of perfecting us.”55

Proper child-rearing required the restraint of most traditional forms ofmaternal behavior. The mother–child bond, once idealized as the epitome oflove and selflessness, was now associated with a harmful overprotectivenessthat might well undermine children’s confidence and produce the dreaded“inferiority complex.” Mothers who comforted their children whenever they

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fell down, warned the advice column of Vernet’s periodical, La Mère Éduca-trice, actually made them more anxious. “On the contrary, isn’t it better todiscourage their tendency to be too sensitive, and to expect them to deal withminor accidents with courage?”56 According to Dora Russell, over-involvedmothers produced emotional cripples: “gradually he [the child] will lose hisadventurous impulses and think that dangers lurk around every corner andrefuse to go anywhere without his mother. This is her triumph. Now sheknows that he indeed loves her.”57 But not only excessive indulgence, butalso excessive strictness could deform the childish personality. As MelanieKlein advised, “bad behavior” must also be accepted. “A child that can neveract up and can never be rude is never normal,” wrote a contributor toSchreiber’s anthology on child-rearing, and concluded that such a painfullyinhibited child would never meet the standard of independent, self-sufficient,and rational adulthood that modern society required.58

The rearing of self-reliant children required a judicious mixture of permis-siveness and vigilance. Intellectual curiosity was an important trait, but onlyif carefully directed. Feminist child-rearing experts insisted that children mustbe given access to scientific knowledge that would enable them to explorethe physical world, and allowed to play without too much interference fromparents. However, almost all urged that warlike toys must be banned fromthe playground. In fact, pacifists assigned to mothers an important role inpreventing future wars. Vernet’s journal, La Mère Éducatrice, which devotedas much space to peace as to child-rearing, published two pictures—one of a boy with a toy gun, the other of a mother mourning her son—overa caption. “Mothers! Before you give your child a toy gun—think what gunsdo to mothers!”59 Parents were also exhorted to encourage gender equality,particularly in active sports. Images of healthy outdoor play paid tribute tothis era’s cult of physical vitality: “today we prize the well-rounded trainingof both mind and body,” said Schreiber, “and particularly for girls.”60

As we have seen, feminist educators condemned the prudish custom ofkeeping children ignorant of sexuality and reproduction. But they certainlydid not advise mothers to leave children to explore sexuality on their own—a form of negligence that was widely believed to have disastrous conse-quences! A large body of literature advised parents how to present the rightinformation at the right time. As we have seen, prewar literature on sex edu-cation focused on the procreative role of females, often to the total exclusionof the father’s contribution. This tradition was continued by the Frenchphysician Germaine Montreuil-Straus (whose activities as an educator andpublic health worker have been explored in chapter 7). In 1925, shepublished a children’s coloring book entitled Maman dis-moi (Mother, TellMe). Making no mention whatever of fathers, the book described pregnancy,birth, and lactation, and ended with a picture of a grateful son embracing hismother.61

The Scandinavian birth-control crusader Elise Ottesen-Jensen urgedparents to discuss the father’s role, albeit in rather vague terms. “Fatherplanted a little seed in your own little mother,” she advised them to say,

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“there it lay and slept in Mamma’s care.”62 In 1942, the work of Ottesen-Jensen as well as that of other reformers such as Alva Myrdal, Ada Nilsson,and the members of Social Democratic women’s groups resulted in theincorporation of sex education classes in Swedish public schools.63

Sexual enlightenment was portrayed as a sensitive task that demandedpsychological insight and a talent for storytelling. The British birth-controlreformer Marie Stopes, whose Mother, How was I Born? was among the era’smost influential sex-education manuals, advised parents to start their teach-ing early, when the child was too young to feel embarrassment, and to stressthe positive side of sexuality. Questions should be answered “truly, and ifpossible beautifully.” If properly instructed, the child would find this story“thrilling, and also solemn.”64

And the parent’s task did not end with the child’s physical maturity. Forincreasing opposition to child labor and heightened educational expectationsextended the period of childhood through adolescence. The prescribedresponse to adolescent development was a restrained but nonetheless highlyvigilant concern. Mothers must respect the child’s growing need forindependence and avoid harsh judgments based on the outmoded standardsof the past. “At no time do parents know their children as little as duringadolescence,” wrote Schreiber, “but children never need their parents somuch as between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.”65

However hopeful, these prescriptions for the renewal of parent–childrelationships expressed an underlying anxiety about the mother–childrelationship. Mother-love, once idealized as a flowing font of love and altru-ism, was now regarded as a force that was dangerous if not kept under tightcontrol. Two personal accounts—those of Alva Myrdal’s two children, JanMyrdal and Sissela Bok—suggest that this era’s scientific child-rearing methodsmay not always have achieved their aim, the production of confident andhappy children. Jan portrayed his mother, despite her pedagogical expertise,as an inept parent who “simply was not good with children” and a cold andarrogant person.66 Sissela found Alva delightful, but aloof—an attitude thatthe young girl sometimes found disturbing, and sometimes enabling. Sheadded that her busy mother showed good judgment by hiring a warm andvivacious young woman to be a “substitute mother” to her and her youngersister.67 And many feminist writers on child-rearing would also have approvedof this decision. If mothers were indeed flawed, then one could argue thattheir influence should be diluted by the involvement of other adults—fathersor expert care-takers—in the care of children. After all, why should child-rearing, which was an important social task, be entrusted only to mothers?This will be the theme of the next two sections.

T E M

As we have seen from previous chapters, public debates on the maternal rolewere driven by economic concerns. As women were blamed for taking jobsaway from men, powerful groups opposed the employment of married

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women—an opposition which they justified by pointing to the importanceof the mother’s full-time presence in the home. A family configurationcomposed of breadwinner and full-time mother was now presented both aspleasing to God and as highly beneficial to children. In 1937, a series of arti-cles in the newspaper of the French Catholic organization, The Women’sCivic and Social Union (L”Union féminine civique et sociale) contrastedthe healthy and well-disciplined children of the housewife-mother with theneglected brood of the career woman. “When these babies [of the house-wife] are adults,” concluded one such article, “they will owe their sense ofresponsibility and their motivation to do their duty, come what may, to awoman who sacrificed herself for them day in and day out just because shewas their mother.”68 This organization cited the results of research thatshowed that most employed mothers worked only out of economic necessityand would gladly quit their jobs.69

As we have seen, feminists faced both theoretical and practical difficultiesin formulating an effective answer to such arguments. Some, to be sure, stillrallied behind the socialist ideal of collective child-rearing as a means both tothe support of working mothers and the socialization of children. AlvaMyrdal, who knew that her own decision to hire a full-time governess wasbeyond the means of most women, campaigned along with her colleagues inthe socialist women’s groups for public day-care in Sweden.70

Some socialists even praised the Soviet Union, where this ideal seemedto be on its way to realization. Dora Russell, Madeleine Pelletier, HeleneStöcker, Beatrice Webb, and many others traveled eastward to observethe new society, and especially its educational institutions, firsthand. Butdespite many positive impressions—even the enemies of the Soviet Union,wrote Dora Russell, had “to admit the loving care which the Russians giveto their children”—most were troubled by the regimentation and conform-ity that pervaded the Soviet child-care centers.71 The notion that the childbelonged to the state, though popular in the prewar era, had been discred-ited by the experience of World War I. “Children belonging to society!”exclaimed Vernet, “the rule of the barracks!”72 States that “educate andprepare their human material for starvation, slavery, and slaughter,” wroteDora Russell, were “not to be trusted with our children.”73

Unlike these socialists, whose attitude was ambivalent, liberal feministswere thoroughly horrified by Bolshevism and reacted by defending thefamily, which with all its faults now seemed a bulwark of civilized values. Forthe German liberal politician and feminist leader Gertrud Bäumer, the homepreserved the “orderly rhythm of life, the feel for connection and structure”that were the basis of all social morality.74 The British theologian and peaceactivist Maude Royden rejected the notion of motherhood as “a mereepisode—the birth of the child—followed by its rearing in some Utopiannursery or co-operative creche,” and declared that the “factory-made child”was even less satisfactory than other mass-produced items.75 Aspirations tofully socialized child-care were deflated by the political controversies as wellas the financial crises of the interwar era.

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But while affirming the importance of strong familial relationships, bothliberal and socialist feminists questioned the necessity for the mother’sconstant presence. They pointed out the real difficulties of raising children inthe home—an environment designed to suit the comfort and taste of adults.Mothers who prided themselves on giving up their jobs and becoming full-time homemakers, said the French socialist Marguerite Martin in the socialistperiodical La Voix des Femmes (The Voice of Women), often actually mistreatedtheir children by punishing normal childish rambuctiousness because itendangered the household furnishings.76 Children were too often punishedfor the mistakes of adults, lamented Adele Schreiber, who deplored the plightof the only child—“spoiled and at the same time deprived of real happiness,”burdened by the emotional demands of adults, and vulnerable to “all formsof nervousness and neurosis.” Schreiber’s remedy: “This child belongs ina kindergarten!”77

This period’s most influential preschool educator was the Italian educatorMaria Montessori, whose “Children’s House” (Casa dei Bambini) wasdesigned to be a child-centered and child-proof educational environment. Inthe interwar era, Montessori enjoyed international prestige, and was invitedto many countries to give lectures and training courses and to visit the manynursery schools that used her system.78 Montessori declared that children’sright to grow “according to the laws of their nature” was violated by adultswho treated them as “something inert and helpless for which they must doeverything.” In the conventional home, she wrote in 1936, parents who didnot want to be “disturbed or annoyed” attempted to confine and restrict thechild “until he reaches an age when he can live in the adult world withoutdistress . . . prior to this, he has to obey the parents like a person deprived ofcivil rights.”79 The Children’s House provided a more enabling setting forchildren’s growth, work, and activity.

As we have seen, the Children’s House was originally intended tocontribute to a project that was popular in the prewar era—the creation ofcooperative households. In the interwar years, this project found littlesupport. To be sure, those paragons of progressive thought, Gunnar and AlvaMyrdal, worked with an architect, Sven Markelius, to build an apartmenthouse with a central nursery in Stockholm, which opened in 1932. But fewpeople in Sweden—least of all the Myrdals themselves, who designed theirown beautiful villa—or in other Western countries found the communal lifeappealing.80

But its separation from its original, utopian context probably increased theappeal of Montessori’s system to educators in many countries. In Vienna, agroup of young socialist women led by Lili Roubiczek, a Montessori student,founded a nursery school for poor children which they called a Children’sHouse (Haus der Kinder) in 1922 and persuaded the city’s socialist govern-ment to include similar facilities in new public housing projects.The new systemgained the support of the well-known psychologist Anna Freud (daughter ofSigmund), who later praised the Children’s House as the seed-bed of adultautonomy: “for the first time, not the praise or disapproval of adults, but joy

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in the success of one’s own work came into its own as a suitable impetus.”81

In Amsterdam, likewise, a group of teachers pioneered the Montessorimethod, which was later adopted by many Dutch public schools.82

Although Montessori and her colleagues identified themselves more aseducators than as feminists, the system was praised in the feminist press.Madame Montessori, observed an editorial in the British feminist periodicalTime and Tide, recommended “that every mother should be freed from theincessant care of the home for some part of each day. . . . The Children’sHouse not only relieves the mother of the care of the child while she is atwork, it also awakens her to a higher sense of responsibility.”83

But attempts to expand early childhood education beyond these privateinstitutions failed. In Germany, socialist educators campaigned to makekindergarten classes a part of a comprehensive and secular public schoolsystem open to children of all classes and religions. But at the Imperial SchoolConference, held in 1919, the socialists were overruled by their conservativeand religious colleagues, who voted to keep kindergartens in private hands.84

In Britain the very limited increase in the number of public nursery schools,from fourteen in 1919 to twenty-eight in 1929, was due (according tothe historian Kevin J. Brehony) both to budgetary constraints and to “thepatriarchal view that the best place for young children was at home withtheir mothers.”85 France had a public system of early childhood education,the Écoles Maternelles (founded by the educator Pauline Kergomard in the1880s), but according to the feminist newspaper La Française, these institu-tions were underfunded and inadequate, their hours were too short to serveworking families, and their teachers often lacked training.86 And in Sweden,a parliamentary initiative by socialist women to gain public support fora national system of nursery schools failed in 1937.87

The failure to build public institutions was not only due to insufficientfinancial resources, but to a widespread belief that the raising of smallchildren should be entrusted to the mother herself. And this view was held bya large group of women, including not only religious conservatives but alsosocialist feminists such as Madeleine Vernet. Vernet based her hopes for peaceand the reconciliation of social conflicts on the mother–child relationship,which despite her knowledge of psychology she still believed to be the onlysource of tenderness in a mechanized and impersonal world. She hoped thatwomen’s claims to political and social equality would strengthen, rather thanweaken their commitment to motherhood. Though a strong supporter ofequality in marriage, she opposed full-time work for mothers.88 “A womanowes nothing to her husband, even the sweetness of home—she gives it tohim if she chooses. But she owes a nest to her little one.”89

But Vernet’s views were so controversial among her readers that in 1926she opened the pages of her journal to their responses. Many readers agreedwith Vernet, particularly working-class women who were more likely thantheir middle-class counterparts to view work outside the home as a burden.But other correspondents objected that child-rearing did not require thevigilance of the mother hen: “real affection,” wrote one reader, “is not

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a function merely of constant presence, but it resides in the invisible links thatunite human beings.” Surely, the new household technology would lightenthe burden of domestic work and give women the time to develop theirindividual interests. And thus “this heartbreaking problem, which sets hermaternal heart against her conscience, will cease to exist, because her life willbe a harmonious whole, in which each of her great duties—conjugal,maternal, and human—will be able to be completely realized.”90

In the hostile climate of opinion created by the economic crises of theinterwar era, feminists in many countries defended the compatibility of careerand motherhood. Negative stereotypes of employed mothers and theirneglected children were counteracted with positive pictures of the workingmother as the mainstay of her family. “Women’s work is ceasing to beprovisional,” wrote Adele Schreiber, “Economic circumstances often requireboth parents to work. And the more important her professional work is toa women, the less inclined she will be to give it up.”91 Feminists also citedchanging demographic patterns: in periods of high birthrates and short lives,a woman’s entire adult life might well have been occupied with the care ofdependent children, but now the period of full-time parenthood haddecreased as life expectancy had lengthened.

And thus arose a new problem: how to fill the so-called empty years?A contributor to La Mère Éducatrice pointed out that maternity, though thenoblest of callings, “does not take up the whole life of woman,” who after thechild-rearing phase could return to “the place in society that she has neverreally left.”92 Doctor Houdré-Boursin, the author of popular French adviceliterature on maternity and child-rearing, advised that children should beraised at home until the age of three or four, “but when they start school, andthe mother has free time during the day, then why not contribute her skills tosociety?”93 Dora Russell developed an ambitious life plan for the mother ofthe future: “the ideal would be for a woman to continue her education atleast till eighteen, have her first child at twenty-four, then perhaps threeothers at two-year intervals. . . . At thirty-five every mother of four childrenwould, in a community of good schools, convenient houses, and well-runrestaurants, be free to take part again in public life.”94 Winifred Holtby heldup her own mother, a local politician, as a paragon of post-parentalindependence. “I can visit or leave her without compunction, knowing thatshe has her life to live as much as I have mine.”95

But all this was more easily said than done. Vera Brittain, who in 1926married George Catlin, a professor at Cornell, remarked that “my life with G.had raised in acute form the much-discussed issue so tritely summarized as‘marriage and career.’ ” When her career as a journalist failed to thrive inIthaca, Brittain decided on what she called a “semi-detached” marriage andspent half of every year in London. She bore two children and tried to con-tinue her writing. “My life has been nothing but the two children,” she wroteto George, “with intervals of spasmodic effort to keep my end up in theworld of journalism.” When her autobiography, Testament of Youth, wasfinally completed, she exulted: “How wonderful it was to have produced

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such a large book and brought up John and Shirley, too!”96 Dora Russell,who bore four children (two by Bertrand Russell and two by another part-ner), realized in 1931 that she was “a very different person from the youngwoman to whom having a baby had been an inconvenient interruption tointellectual life. . . . I had become a professional mother-figure.”97 Anddespite her success and prominence, Alva Myrdal felt confined by her familialresponsibilities. “Since she wanted to combine home life, marriage andchildren with other significant work, she felt increasingly underutilized in herwork capacity,” wrote her daughter. “. . . Already she was surprised by her lotand somewhat dissatisfied with it.”98 To whom could these overburdenedmothers turn for help? Perhaps to the fathers of their children?

F F

Child-rearing, said the German socialist leader Clara Zetkin in 1906, “mustnot just be the work of mothers, but the common work of parents.”99 But inthe writings of feminists of the prewar era, such positive views of the father’srole were few. Indeed, campaigners for the legal right of mothers to con-trol their children often painted a dismal picture of the father as a remote,uncomprehending, drunken, or abusive figure. Utopian fantasies of heroicsingle mothers and matriarchal communities conveyed the message thatchildren flourished in the absence of their fathers. Interwar feminists shiftedtheir support to the egalitarian married couple and the cooperative two-parent family. But if he was no longer an authoritarian patriarch, how did thefather fit into this new family unit?

During this era, the paternal role evolved in response to long-termchanges in family structure. With the transformation of independent craftsmenand farmers into wage-earning employees, fathers no longer controlled theirchildren’s labor power. The shortening of workdays and the provision bymany employers of paid vacations—a new policy during this period—gavefathers more time and opportunity to interact with their children. And thedomestic servants upon whom middle- and upper-class mothers haddepended were now much less available. All of these changes created conditionsin which the erstwhile patriarch could become a parent.

But feminist educators insisted that fathers must be educated to assumethis new role. And the first lesson must focus on discipline in general, andcorporal punishment in particular. “It is hard to believe that one still has tocampaign against the beating of children,” wrote Schreiber, “but surveysshow that this is still the most popular educational method, because it is theeasiest.”100 Dora Russell regretted that the typical father was “a symbol ofmoney and power rather than love,” who was known to his children only as“someone who comes home only for a short time and then is either tired andcross or else full of loving indulgence.” And though men were “responsiblefor this state of affairs,” she believed that it was often “harder uponthem than it is upon their children.”101 Popular psychological theoriesadmonished parents that harsh discipline often motivated antisocial behavior,

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but that reasonable treatment encouraged confidence, self-esteem, andindependence.102

When appropriately exercised, paternal authority was presented as a necessarycorrective to the flaws and shortcomings of mothers. Fatherless families nowacquired a negative image. Single mothers, said the British socialist MargaretCole, tended to “so exaggerate their function of protective love that the childcannot get loose or grow up at all.”103

Psychologists held up the more distanced and objective masculine style asthe best antidote to excessive motherliness. According to Freud, a shift inorientation from maternal nurture to paternal authority was a necessary stagein the growth of both boys and girls. One of Madeleine Vernet’s correspon-dents remarked that parenthood should be a “happy collaboration” in whichthe mother’s indulgence was balanced by the father’s “firmer authority andclearer sense of purpose.”104 Dora Russell likewise called on fathers to savechildren from maternal overprotection. The mother, she said “wants herchild for herself just as long as she can have him. . . . Fathers, from the fact oftheir longer absences, are not so intimately tangled with their children. Theysee them more as the outsider sees them, and judges them more objectively.”105

Most theorists did not prescribe the fusion of parental roles, but rather anew division of parental labor. As shortened workdays and paid vacationsmade leisure and tourism available even to working-class people, the fatherbecame the leader of the family’s sports and recreational activities.106 Andamid this era’s cult of health and physical vitality, this role acquired a highprestige. Adele Schreiber’s calendar for mothers was full of photographs ofhealthy, smiling, naked children enjoying beaches and woodlands with theirfathers. “The healthy, tough, and enterprising child is usually also the intelli-gent child,” read the caption of a picture of a child frolicking in the ocean,“an earlier era encouraged an indoor life and torpid passivity; today werecognize the value of balanced training of body and mind, and especially forgirls.”107

Recreation could have an educational purpose; Schreiber admonished thefather to be “a laughing teacher, a sunny educator . . . and as a comrade insport and play, on walks through nature, in planting the garden.”108

In Virginia Woolf’s novel, To the Lighthouse, which told the story of a largefamily, the Ramseys, on vacation, Mr. Ramsey (though hardly “sunny”)embodied the same conception of the paternal role. By leading his childrenon an adventurous expedition to a lighthouse, Mr. Ramsey also (symbolically)led them out of the shelter of maternal love and into the more demandingadult world, a trip that required “above all, courage, truth and the power toendure.”109

Most feminist authors assumed that the father, however important hisinfluence, would never replace the mother. “Even though, in modern society,the father may not have a good deal of time to bring up his offspring directly,the time which he does give and the attitude which he takes up can beof quite disproportionate effect,” wrote Margaret Cole.110 A few, however,contended that the sharing of parental responsibility would provide the basis

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for the emancipation of the mother to pursue professional or personalinterests outside the home. In 1938, Alva Myrdal spoke to parents in a radiobroadcast provocatively titled “The Forgotten Father.111 She believed thatonly the sharing of parental responsibility would “make children possible” forworking women. “Greater participation by fathers in child care, greaterwillingness to take turns in awakening early in the morning and staying athome on recreational nights,” she suggested, “would certainly adjust parent-hood much more easily into modern life.”112 But Alva Myrdal herself didnot have such a partner; Sissela Bok wrote that Gunnar Myrdal “was theopposite of the fathers Alva called for in her talks about parenting.”113

Madeleine Vernet insisted that parental roles must be different—thefather’s job was to provide material, and the mother’s to provide moralsecurity. But some of her readers advocated a more flexible division oflabor.114 “I must say, much to the credit of my companion,” wrote one cor-respondent, “that he has never been afraid of dressing or bathing Baby, inorder to leave me free to attend to an occupation away from home.”115 “Whydon’t fathers take part in the cares and responsibilities of parenthood?” askedanother correspondent. “Why does he almost always leave the motherexhausted, worn out by pregnancy, childbirth, breast-feeding, and the total careof small children? This is another aberration of our double sexual morality!”116

Dora Russell asserted that parenthood must rest on “mutual cooperation,”and was confident that “men unhampered by masculine pride and womenwithout foolish dignity or feminist bias [would] find all the arduous andtrifling activities involved in this task both exciting and delicious.”117

Only a nonsexist approach to child-rearing and education could preparethe new generation for this momentous change in the gender division oflabor. The first step, said feminist educators, was to involve children of bothsexes in the same household chores. Schreiber observed that boys were oftenwilling and adept participants in the domestic work that was usually loadedon girls, stunting their physical and educational development. “The fullcomradeship of the sexes in later life,” she added, “and the basis for a marriageof equal comrades can be built or destroyed by the child’s upbringing.”118 Theschool, too, was given a role in the teaching of gender equality. Feminists ofthis era generally supported school instruction in child-rearing for girls, anda few declared that boys, too, should take these courses. Vera Brittain regret-ted that “very little attention is given in girls’s schools to mothercraft, andnone at all in boys’ schools to fathercraft.”119 And the American-born lawyerand birth-control activist Chrystal Eastman commented in the Britishfeminist periodical Time and Tide that home economics should not be onlyfor girls. “Why not welcome the idea of a compulsory course in DomesticScience, but insist that it be general for boys and girls alike? Those who likeit, of either sex, can take it up as a trade. Those who do not like it (and thiswill be the vast majority of both boys and girls) will not be injured by havinglearned to take care of themselves. . . . And it is impossible to exaggerate theimportance of such common training in freeing the women of generations tocome.”120

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M A

The reception of psychology hastened the decline of maternalism and itsexaltation of mother-love as a benevolent force in the family and society. Forfeminists this trend had mixed consequences. On the one hand, the tendencyto make mothers responsible for all of the problems of society fueled thebacklash against feminism, and could justify repressive measures designedto return women to their natural and God-given role. On the other hand, thedemise of the idealized “angel in the house” could liberate the individualwoman to decide against motherhood or to rebel against stereotypedexpectations and look for new ways of mothering. Some envisaged the life-plan—including a briefly interrupted career, institutional child-care, anegalitarian division of parental labor, nonsexist methods of child-rearing, andthe prospect of a “post-parental” phase—that was adopted and developed bythe “new” feminists of the 1960s. But the elaboration of this complexstrategy did not solve but heightened the maternal dilemma. For in theabsence of social support, it could be realized by only the most energetic andprivileged of women, and sometimes not even by them. The contrastbetween aspiration and reality highlighted the difficulties that faced a womanwho wished to be both a mother and an autonomous individual. Under suchcircumstances, feminists’ interpretation of the maternal role increasinglyemphasized ambivalence, discontent, and psychic conflict. And this themewould become even more prominent in the period after World War II.

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F M S

R : T P E , –

T L W W II

In the years that immediately followed World War II, the ideology ofpatriotic motherhood seemed to have reached its apogee. The trend towardyoung marriages and large families that was known as the “baby boom”affirmed life and hope after the death and despair of the war years. Not onlydid many women leave their wartime jobs for full-time motherhood, butnew welfare-state policies, some of which fulfilled long-standing feministdemands, supported mothers, children, and families. Many commentatorspredicted the imminent demise of feminism. But the opposite occurred.Within a quarter of a century, a new women’s movement energized a vocalgroup among the younger generation. At the same time, the development ofnew contraceptive techniques and increases in women’s educational level andworkforce participation seemed to usher in a new era in human history, whenmotherhood would become an option to be chosen rather than a destiny tobe accepted.

But as it ceased to be a destiny, motherhood emerged even more fully asa dilemma. The two trends that have been traced throughout this book—heightened standards of maternal care on the one hand, women’s drive forindependence and self-realization on the other—clashed in the postwar era.By 1970, many leaders of the new feminist movement claimed that thematernal dilemma was insoluble under existing conditions, and made thatclaim the basis of a new analysis of sexism, the subordination of women, andpatriarchy itself. After sketching in the historical context—World War II and itsaftermath—this chapter will examine three major postwar issues: laws affect-ing mothers, children, and reproduction; mothers in the labor market; andthe rebellion against maternity.

Unlike World War I, during which suffrage and other organizations wereat the height of their influence, the war of 1939–45 inspired little feministactivity. In countries ruled by totalitarian regimes, such as Germany, Italy,and Austria (as of 1938), feminist organizations had been abolished wellbefore the war, and most of their leaders had been condemned to exile orsilence. In the democracies, feminist groups had steadily lost membership


and funding and by 1939 were in decline. During the interwar years, theleaders of these organizations had followed the example of other progressivereformers and shifted their emphasis from the rights of women to those ofhuman beings, especially of those who belonged to the racial, ethnic, andpolitical groups that were persecuted by the Nazis and fascists.1

During the war, feminist activity was brought to a temporary halt in themany countries that were occupied by the Nazis. For example, most of theFrench organizations (with the exception of the Catholic Women’s Civic andSocial Union) were disbanded and their periodicals discontinued in 1940.In Great Britain—for a while the only belligerent nation that preserveddemocratic government—most feminist leaders followed the precedent of1914 and threw their support behind the mobilization of women. But bycomparison to World War I, when women had been rewarded for theirpatriotism with the right of suffrage, World War II brought meager gains.Child allowances payable to mothers, which activists such as EleanorRathbone had demanded since World War I, were part of the new postwarwelfare-state legislation, but such measures had long since lost their connectionto feminism. Social services such as day-care centers, which were providedduring the war, were discontinued in its aftermath. Although women inseveral countries received the right to vote in the wartime and postwar eras—in France in 1944, in Italy in 1945, in Belgium in 1948—this resulted morefrom a general commitment to democracy and postwar reconstruction thanfrom specifically feminist activity.2

Postwar societies were haunted by the still vivid memory of fascist dicta-torships. Despite their bombastic praise for the traditional family, boththe Italian and German regimes had undermined it by abolishing all rights topersonal privacy and making reproduction a public function that served thestate. In other respects the two regimes differed. Mussolini’s policies werestraightforwardly natalist, combining harsh restrictions on access to birthcontrol and on the employment of married women with forms of publicassistance—such as child allowances payable to fathers—that strengthenedmale supremacy in the home and in the state.3

The Nazi regime also enacted some benefits to families, such as familyallowances (also usually payable to fathers), loans to married couples, andfinancial and institutional assistance to unmarried mothers. But unlike thoseof the Italian regime, Nazi policies were more concerned with racial puritythan with natalism. Eugenic measures enforced prolific reproduction on theracial elite and compulsory sterility on stigmatized minorities, including thehandicapped, mentally ill, and racially tainted.4 In wartime, the ideal of patrioticmotherhood was degraded through macabre celebrations of Mother’s Day,which exhorted mothers to take pride in the death of their sons.5 However,National Socialist propaganda did not always present women in stereotypi-cally domestic or maternal roles. In the immediate prewar and wartime years,posters that urged married women to join the work force portrayed womenas heroic workers in many occupations.6

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The Nazi women’s organizations—the National Socialist Women’sAssociation (NS Frauenschaft), the German Women’s Bureau (DeutschesFrauenwerk), and the League of German Girls (Bund deutscher Mädel )—cannot be called feminist, for they had no freedom to set their own agendasor to criticize government policies. But a faint and distant memory of thefeminist movement was kept alive by Gertrud Bäumer, who continued toedit Die Frau—formerly the organ of the League of German Women’sAssociations (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine)—until 1944. Always a patrioticGerman, Bäumer usually avoided censorship by publishing articles on politi-cally neutral topics. Her political stance combined cautious criticism (whichsometimes attracted the unfavorable notice of the Propaganda Ministry) withhalf-hearted approval of the Nazi regime. In 1940, she reprinted a speech bySS chief Heinrich Himmler that exhorted Germans to respect unmarriedmothers (of course, only those of the racial elite), who bore valuable off-spring for the nation, and warned women who refused their maternal dutythat they were no better than deserters (in fact, the Nazis made abortiona capital crime in 1943).7 In an anguished letter, Dorothee van Velsen, aformer leader of the German Women Citizens Association (DeutscherStaatsbügerinnenverband) asked Bäumer why—since protest was out of thequestion—she could not simply have ignored this distasteful tirade. Bäumerresponded that her readers deserved to be informed about important policyquestions, and the speech had made some useful points. She added defen-sively that “you can’t come up with any magazine in Germany, that . . . goesas far with criticism and independent thinking as Die Frau.”8 In Germany aselsewhere, the horrors of total war discredited these and other Nazi policies.9

After World War II, all the Western European states committed themselvesto the support of families and children. State subsidies—known in Britain as“family allowances” and in Germany as Kindergeld (money for children)—helped parents with the costs of child-rearing. Many feminists of the interwarera had supported family allowances on the condition that the money be paiddirectly to mothers—a demand that was fulfilled in Britain and theScandinavian countries. France allotted a special subsidy, or “allocation desalaire unique,” to mothers who did not work outside the home. In othercountries such as West Germany, Ireland, and Italy, however, familyallowances were distributed as a wage supplement, and thus usually to themale breadwinner.10 Postwar family policies were strongly natalist: France,declared General de Gaulle, who served a brief presidential term in 1945–46,needed twelve million beautiful babies.11 And in the short run, these policieswere successful. In France, live births per 1,000 women aged 15–49 increasedby about a third, from 60 in 1935 to 82 in 1960; during the same period thisbirthrate grew in Britain from 54 to 77; in Norway from 55 to 78; in theNetherlands from 77 to 90.12

But though in some ways a return to interwar natalism, postwar policiesreacted to the recent experience of totalitarianism by emphasizing privacy.The invasion of the family by the state, declared Helene Weber, a Catholic

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delegate of the German Christian Democratic Union (Christlich-demokratischeUnion, or CDU), had violated “a divinely endowed order, which predates allpolitical institutions and to which the state must accommodate itself.”13

In more secular language, the West German sociologist Helmut Schelskypraised the family as a bulwark against the coercive pressures of the state andas a safe haven for the “formation and development of the individual.”14 Thepatriotic duty of motherhood was not enforced by new coercive measures.15

In fact, the cheerful prospect of rising birthrates dispelled long-standing fearsof population decline and created an atmosphere in which coercive laws—such as those that in some countries still restricted access to contraceptionand abortion—could be challenged. And though compulsory sterilizationcontinued in Scandinavia, eugenic theory—now associated with anti-Semitism and genocide—had fallen into such disrepute that the notions ofpopulation “quality” which had been invoked to justify coercive policies dur-ing the interwar years all but disappeared from discussions of reproduction.16

The general revulsion against totalitarian family policies also contributedto dramatic changes in experts’ view of the maternal role. Starting around1938, a reaction against the stringent methods prescribed by experts of theinterwar era was already well under way.17 By the war’s end, the frighteningspectacle of totalitarian states and their uniformed, regimented, banner-carrying youth groups—in Hitler’s own words, “tough as leather, hard asKrupp steel”—had discredited parental sternness. The sociologist TheodorAdorno, himself a refugee from Germany, asserted that strict and rigid child-rearing produced an “authoritarian personality” prone to prejudice andaggression, while more affectionate methods encouraged independentthought and constructive citizenship.18 Another testimony to the importanceof parental affection came from the psychiatrist Anna Freud, who with herfamous father Sigmund Freud had taken refuge in London. Freud and herBritish colleague Dorothy Burlingame concluded from their work in day-carecenters and with the many children who were evacuated from bombed-outcities that the separation of the child from the mother was the most damagingof wartime traumas.19

The British psychiatrist John Bowlby, who had also worked with institu-tionalized children, based his theory of “maternal deprivation” on AnnaFreud’s research. Another important influence was Melanie Klein’s picture ofthe infant psyche as a boiling cauldron of mixed loving and hostile emotions,chiefly directed at the mother. Bowlby warned that infants might react totheir mothers’ absence, even for short periods, with overwhelming feelings ofanger and guilt—anger at mother for leaving, guilt at perhaps having drivenher away—that might cause permanent psychological damage. The mother’sconstant and consistently loving presence, he declared, was “as important formental health as are vitamins and proteins for physical health.”20

Bowlby’s theories appealed to postwar policymakers who aimed to raisebirthrates and reconstruct families. They were often used to justify suchdiscriminatory policies as the closing of day-care centers and the denial ofemployment opportunities to married women. Nonetheless, most mothers

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responded positively to Bowlby’s emphasis on love and spontaneity.21

Likewise the American pediatrician Benjamin Spock, whose Common-SenseGuide to Baby and Child Care was translated into several Europeanlanguages, urged mothers to cultivate their own and their babies’ capacity forlove and expressiveness. “Enjoy your baby,” urged this influential manual.22

Postwar psychological theories contributed to the process of change thathas been noted in earlier chapters: the transformation of motherhood from alifetime identity to a finite and limited job. For although experts consideredintensive maternal care to be indispensable in the first five years of life, they adv-ised that the school-age child needed independence.23 A definition of full-timemotherhood as an intense but short-term obligation fit well into the familypatterns of the postwar era. Couples of all social classes now planned theirfamilies, and children were typically born close together during the first yearsof the marriage.24 And because female life expectancy had increased fromabout 50 years in 1900 to about 74 years in the 1960s, women could expectto live for 40 years after their youngest child entered school.25 Instead ofresponding to the newly prosperous economy as they had been expected todo, by withdrawing from the labor force, women entered it in ever greaternumbers, and the fastest growing segment of the female labor force was thatof older married women.

Thus though it is often characterized as conservative, the postwar era wasmarked by rapid changes in the family, the status of women, and the maternalrole. In this process of change, traditional feminist organizations played onlya minor role. After the war, these groups—for example, the National Councilof French Women (Conseil national des femmes françaises), the GermanWomen’s Circle (Deutscher Frauenring, a successor organization to theBDF), the League of Swiss Women’ Associations (Bund schweizerischerFrauenvereine), the British Six Point Group (which in 1949 merged with theNational Council for Equal Citizenship) and Women’s Cooperative Guild—continued their work, which was centered on issues such as the politicalrights of women and the reform of family law. But these groups did notattract many younger women.

An obstacle to innovation in some areas was the growth of mammothwomen’s organizations within Western European communist parties, ofwhich the French and Italian were the largest. The women’s organizationssponsored by these parties, the French Union des femmes françaises (Union ofFrench Women, or UFF) and the Italian Unione donne italiane (Unionof Italian Women, or UDI) recruited large numbers of predominantly working-class women. Under pressure to accommodate to a conservative politicalatmosphere, the communist parties abandoned many of the progressive viewson women’s issues that they had promoted during the interwar era.26

Communist women continued to assert the right of mothers to work outsidethe home, aided by social services and collective child care. But they oftendownplayed these demands to join in the popular cult of domesticity andnatalism.27 In Britain, where there was no strong communist party, thepolitical interests of working-class women were represented by the women

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activists of the Labour Party. These women, though many were veteran fem-inists, placed national issues, such as those involved in the building of thewelfare state, before specifically female concerns.28 Not until the rise of a newfeminist movement after 1968 would left-wing women openly rebel againstthe male leadership of their parties. And the very existence of these groups,whatever their views, fueled a right-wing reaction against any form offeminism, which was often (however mistakenly) denounced as a part ofa larger communist plot to subvert the family, religion, and the security of theFree World.

Partly because of the conservatism of both liberal and communistwomen’s organizations, many of this era’s most innovative approaches toissues concerning women and their status were produced by intellectualswho, though deeply concerned with the status of women, did not identifythemselves as feminists. They were often unfamiliar with the feminist theoryof the past—names such as Helene Stöcker, Olive Schreiner, Nelly Roussel,and Charlotte Perkins Gilman fell into oblivion. Ignorant of history, thesepostwar thinkers often struggled to reconstruct ideas and theories that theycould more easily have derived from the rich literature left by a century and ahalf of feminist thought and practice. As Karen Offen has so rightly pointedout, they laboriously “re-invented the wheel.”29 But the absence of historicalconsciousness also left room for fresh ideas. These thinkers were the criticsbut also the products of postwar culture—a culture that emphasized individ-ualism, privacy, and self-realization. By turning their attention away fromabstract theories and toward an exploration of the experiences and feelings ofmothers themselves, they laid the foundation for a new feminist movementthat would declare that “the personal is the political.”

“I S F T D”: T L S M

During the postwar era, the restoration of the father-headed family seemed astep toward normality and stability. Callously overlooking the many familiesleft without fathers, the German sociologist Helmut Schelsky predicted thatwith the return of male heads of household the women who had been “over-emancipated” in wartime would wish only to retire to the privacy of thehome. Likewise, the French sociologists Mattei Dogan and Jacques Narbonneconcluded in 1955 that women were unlikely to make much use of theirnew right of suffrage.30 But in fact, feminist issues surfaced almost immedi-ately. Postwar debates on these issues—including the parental rights ofmothers, state benefits to the family, and the legalization of birth control—were often marked by a new emphasis on individual self-realization andpersonal liberty.

The right of mothers to participate equally with fathers in decisionsconcerning their children had been guaranteed in some countries, notablyScandinavia and Britain, in the interwar years. But this right was still contestedin the rest of Europe. The most conspicuous postwar debate on this issue

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occurred in West Germany, where the new constitution of 1949 (known asthe Basic Law, or Grundgesetz) stated that “men and women have the samerights.” But the application of this constitutional guarantee to family lawrequired a protracted struggle.31 In the debate on the Basic Law in 1948,Frieda Nadig, a parliamentary delegate from the Social Democratic Party,argued—as had socialists of earlier generations—that the family was notthe stable creation of a divine order but the product of historical changeand that the mother-headed family should be recognized by law and custom.32

The moderate German Women’s Circle (Deutscher Frauenring) defendedthe marriage relationship but agreed that patriarchy was alien to thedemocratic principles of the new West German state. A “collegial” form ofmarriage, argued a position paper submitted by this group, would promotethe stability of families. Else Ulich-Beil, a leader of the German Women’sCircle who was also a divorced mother, noted that patriarchal laws hadprovided “the fertile soil where all kinds of unfairness and double standardsof morality flourished. Let us have the courage to begin again,” she urged,“in the spirit of freedom and true devotion.”33 As Elizabeth D. Heinemanremarks, these arguments differed from those of the past by emphasizingindividual rights rather than traditional assumptions that mothers weresuperior parents.34

The ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU), headed by ChancellorKonrad Adenauer and his Minister for Family Affairs, Franz-JosefWuermeling, continued to defend the father-headed family as a bulwark ofsocial order.35 But when cases concerning parental rights went before thecourts, decisions supported the growing consensus in favor of parental equal-ity. In 1959, the Constitutional Court (the equivalent of the AmericanSupreme Court) declared most forms of paternal authority unconstitu-tional.36 In other countries, equality of parental rights, which was alsosupported by both left-wing and liberal women’s organizations, took longerto achieve: until 1970 in France (where fathers still retained authority overtheir children’s financial affairs); until 1974 in Belgium; until 1975 in Italy.37

The status of the unmarried mother and her child was also revived by fem-inist politicians and reformers. But the postwar preoccupation with thereconstruction of the two-parent family made these mothers invisible, andthe new prestige of psychology worked to their disadvantage. At the turn ofthe century, negative images of the single mother had been partly dispelledby sympathy for her plight and concern for the child who, as a valuablecitizen, was held to deserve state support. Starting in the 1920s, however,psychologists created a darker picture of the single mother. In the postwarera, the American psychologist Leontine Young was a highly regardedauthority in Britain as well as in the United States. Young completely ignoredthe social context of single pregnancy and attributed it to the bad judgmentof emotionally disturbed young women. She urged that the children of singlemothers should be relinquished for adoption.38 Likewise John Bowlby,whose theory of maternal deprivation apparently did not apply to thechildren of unmarried parents, advised social workers not to be deterred by

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“punitive or sentimental attitudes” from removing the child and placing it foradoption whenever possible.39 In Britain, unmarried mothers were granteda small, means-tested allowance from the state, but were often pressured orshamed into giving up their children.40

The writers of the German Basic Law refused to give equal status to thechildren of unmarried parents and substituted a rather vague clause from theWeimar Constitution that guaranteed “equal conditions” for their “physicaland spiritual development.”41 The German law that placed children born outof wedlock under state guardianship was also preserved (with the provisionthat the mother could be appointed guardian under some circumstances).Not until the 1970s, under pressure from a new feminist movement, wasthe German unmarried mother given the same legal rights as her marriedcounterpart.42

The issue of single motherhood raised a broader question: what form ofmotherhood should the state support? The postwar welfare state was basedon a model of the “normal” family consisting of an employed male bread-winner, a full-time housewife, and their dependent children, and channeledmost benefits to the family through its male head. But some countriesdefined the family more broadly. In Scandinavia, child allowances were paiddirectly to mothers, whatever their employment status, and thus supportedmother-headed families, including those of unmarried mothers. In Germanychild benefits were first distributed as a supplement to the paycheck of thefamily breadwinner, who was usually the father, and only families with threeor more children were eligible. For that reason most single mothers, whonormally did not have such large families, were excluded. But by 1964, thelaw was changed to detach these subsidies from wage payments, to startpayments with the second child, and to direct payments to either parent—incase of disagreement, to the parent who paid the most toward the child’ssupport.43

Another policy that was particularly controversial was “single earnerbenefit,” allotted by the French and Belgian governments to full-time mothers.Catholic women’s groups such as the French Women’s Civil and SocialUnion approved of this disincentive to maternal employment. But membersof liberal and left-wing women’s groups, though most shared the consensusin favor of support for families, opposed the single wage-earner benefitbecause it discriminated against employed mothers and in favor of full-timehousewives, some of whom were wealthy.44 Christiane Rochefort’s fictionalaccount of the French baby boom caricatured women who made state-supported childbearing into a career. The main character remarked scorn-fully on the Mauvin children, who owed their existence to their parents’greed: “She [the mother] had only boys, and she was proud of that. Shecould furnish at least a squadron for the fatherland, and the fatherland had aright to it—it was paid for in advance. . . . I thought of the day . . . whenthey would all be buried on the battlefield and you would see on theirtombstones: ‘Here lies Television Mauvin, Automobile Mauvin, RefrigeratorMauvin, Washing-machine Mauvin, Mixmaster Mauvin . . . and with the

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survivor’s benefits the parents could pay for a vacuum cleaner and a remod-eled basement.’ ”45 The family allowance system was reformed in 1967,making conditions for receiving the single wage benefit more stringent (in1972 it was subjected to means testing) and directing state support toparticularly needy families.46 These and other changes in family policysuggest a broader transition in state policies, which ceased to promote anofficial vision of the family and focused on reducing poverty.47

A still more important social change was the broadening of access tocontraceptive technology. Population statistics suggest that throughout theWestern world class differences in the practice of birth control narrowed, andfamily planning was practiced by all social classes. The International PlannedParenthood Federation, founded in 1952 by a group that included theSwedish birth-control activist Elise Ottesen-Jensen, supported organizationsthat promoted family planning throughout the world.48 In predominantlyProtestant nations, these organizations grew rapidly and were highlyeffective.

A shift in the positions of the Protestant Churches—for example, theGeneral Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church, which declared in 1952 thatthe use of contraception in marriage should be left up to the individualconscience—created a tolerant atmosphere. In Sweden, the NationalAssociation for Sex Education (Riksförbundet för sexuell upplysning), foundedduring the interwar era, continued its work. The Dutch Society for SexualReform (Nederlandse Vereniging voor Sexuele Hervorming) increased itsmembership from 17,533 in 1946, the year of its founding, to 202,96120 years later. By 1954 the Society supported 33 clinics and 9 consultationcenters. A similar organization known as ProFamilia was founded inWest Germany in 1952. Most laws that restricted access to contraceptionwere repealed in Austria by 1953, in Germany by 1961, and in theNetherlands by 1969. By 1960, the British Family Planning Associationsupported 334 clinics.49 Starting in the early 1960s, the distribution of thebirth-control pill greatly increased the popularity and effectiveness of familyplanning.

In France, the strength both of secular natalist and religious Catholicopinion raised more formidable barriers to this process. As determined asever to limit their families, French women were forced by the law of 1920,which blocked access to information about contraception and prohibitedabortion, to resort to illegal abortion. And the same male legislators andpoliticians—from the communist Left to the Catholic Right—who condonedthis practice in private took a sanctimonious public stand against the legalizationof contraception and abortion.50

The Second Sex, published by Simone de Beauvoir in 1949, owed its sensa-tional impact largely to its exposure of what the author called “the hypocrisyof the masculine moral code.”51 Well known as a writer and as the partner ofthe prominent philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, Beauvoir was uninterested infeminist movements, which she considered to have outlived their relevance. Asa prominent author and intellectual, she felt little need of legal emancipation.

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Rather, her engagement with the question “what is a woman” arose from herpersonal situation, which she acknowledged had been shaped by hergender.52

Beauvoir remarked that maternal biology shaped conventional definitionsof womanhood: “it is in maternity that woman fulfills her natural ‘calling,’since her whole organic structure is adapted for the perpetuation of thespecies,” she wrote in the introduction to her chapter entitled “The Mother.”But she rejected this definition and insisted that the body, though part ofwomen’s material situation, imposed no absolute determinism. In fact,reproduction had ceased to occur “at the mercy of biological chance” andwas now “under the voluntary control of human beings.” Women’s problemsarose less from their biological functions than from male-supremacist culture.The smug refusal of men to acknowledge openly what they condoned inprivate drove women into illegality, secrecy, and danger.

Beauvoir was, of course, not the first to protest against the horrors ofillegal abortion. What was new was her focus on the feelings of the womanherself, forced to “undergo the humiliation of begging and cringing” for help,caught up in “a confusion of fear and shame,” and vulnerable to physicalinjury or death. Beauvoir aimed less to change laws—indeed, twenty yearswould pass before she “came out” as a feminist—than to transform women’sconsciousness through a new understanding of their situation. How, sheasked, could they fail to “feel an inner mistrust of the presumptuous princi-ples that men publicly proclaim and secretly discard? They no longer believemen when they exalt woman or when they exalt man: the one thing that theyare sure of is this rifled and bleeding womb, these shreds of crimson life, thischild that is not there. It is at her first abortion that woman begins to‘know.’ ”53

The vituperative response to Beauvoir’s book, which came equally fromright and left, left no doubt that abortion, birth control, and female sexualitywere still taboo topics.54 Nonetheless, a few activists dared to mention theunmentionable. In 1955 a young and devoutly Catholic physician, Marie-Andrée Lagroua Weill-Hallé, met Évelyne Sullerot, a thirty-one-year-oldwoman who belonged to a class, which she described as “neither rich nor poor”and was the full-time mother of three small children. In 1956, Weill-Hallé,Sullerot, and a few of their friends founded an organization which they firsttermed “Maternité Heureuse” (“Happy Motherhood”) and later endowedwith the more official-sounding name of the French Association for FamilyPlanning.55 Following the letter of the law, the group limited its publicity toits members, and never openly advocated the legalization of abortion. Butthe prevention of illegal abortions was always among its aims.

The young housewives and professionals who founded this group did notdefine themselves as feminists, and justified their participation with personalnarratives. Sullerot described the consequences of unwanted pregnanciesamong her circle of friends—consequences that included marital conflict,thwarted professional ambition, the trauma of illegal abortion, and theenforced “silence about all that.”56 The literature produced by Weill-Hallé

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and her supporters offered few of the social and eugenic arguments that hadbeen so often used by interwar activists. To be sure, a population problemexisted—that of world over-population—but not one that threatened Franceor Europe. Individual well-being and marital harmony now emerged as thesupreme and uncontested values of the birth control movement. Weill-Hallécited cases from her own files to show the destructive psychologicalconsequences of the rhythm method, the only contraceptive practice that wassanctioned by the Church. “How many nights of love,” she lamented “areruined by false religious ideals!”57

At first this movement was supported neither by established feministgroups nor by the communist UFF, which maintained that birth control wasa falsely personal solution to larger economic problems. “Birth control andvoluntary motherhood are a trap for the masses,” declared the communistleader Jeanne Vermeersch. “It is a weapon in the hands of the bourgeoisieagainst social legislation.”58 As a countermeasure, the French CommunistParty (PCF) launched a highly conspicuous campaign to raise childallowances.59 In fact the birth controllers did not oppose social legislation.Most shared the conviction of Catherine Valabrègue, who produced some ofthe earliest books on birth control, that “methods that allow couples to havea child at the moment that they think most favorable” actually workedtogether with welfare-state policies to encourage marriage, childbearing andfamily formation.60

Though rejected by the ossified orthodoxies of right and left—Sullerotlater recalled that her opponents sometimes quoted Lenin and sometimesSt. Paul—family planning fit better into the agendas of newer and moreexperimental religious groups.61 Among these was a group known as YoungWomen (Jeunes Femmes), which was composed chiefly of young Protestantwomen, both single and married, and included many wives of pastors. Thegroup’s periodical, Ariane, often contained uncomfortable and honest dis-cussions of private life. Some contributors admitted that they had not wantedchildren; others that they had more children than they desired; all that theirexperience of parenthood was fraught with emotional conflicts.62 In thehopeful years leading up to Vatican II, some young Catholic women criticizedthe position of their church. The sacralization of fertility, wrote GenevièveTexier and Andrée Michel, served the ends of “the male who, proud of hisreproductive potency, makes the family an instrument of his supremacy in theeconomic, social, and political realms.”63

By the mid-1960s, growing public support for the legalization of contra-ception put pressure on all the political parties. In 1965 the PCF reluctantlychanged its position to affirm women’s “right to be mothers” under the bestpossible conditions.64 In 1967 new legislation allowed contraception to beprescribed by physicians, though advertising was still restricted, funding frompublic insurance was denied, and parental consent was required for womenunder eighteen.65

Meanwhile, the same transition in public opinion had occurred in someother countries. In Italy, the initiative came from within the communist

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women’s groups, which began discussing contraception in 1961. Thecontinued opposition of the Party’s male leadership was a major cause ofthe formation of independent “New Left” and feminist groups in 1968. Thelaw prohibiting the sale or advertisement of birth control in Italy waschanged in 1971.66 These changes were accompanied by an extraordinarydecline in religious belief and practice: in 1956 80 percent, but by 1975 only35 percent of all Italian women attended Mass regularly.67 In Belgium anorganization promoting family planning, the Belgian Society for SexualEnlightenment (Belgische Vereniging voor sexuele Voorlichting) was foundedin 1955, and the law of 1923 which had outlawed access to contraceptionand abortion was modified in 1973 to permit limited access to birth control.68

The only Western European country (apart from Spain and Portugal, whichwere still ruled by dictatorships) that saw no legal changes during this periodwas Ireland, where a movement by new feminist groups in the late 1960s forthe legalization of contraception could not prevail over the oppositionof the Catholic Church.69 The hopes of some Catholic women for a changein the Church’s position were finally dashed by the encyclical HumanaeVitae, which was promulgated in 1968.

Abortion proved to be a still more controversial issue. Laws were liberalizedto permit therapeutic abortions in Sweden and Denmark in the 1930s, inNorway and Finland in the 1950s, and in the Netherlands and Britainin 1967.70 The struggle for the liberalization or repeal of abortion laws beganwith the rise of new feminist movements in the 1970s.71

Though in many ways similar to that of earlier birth-control movements,postwar rhetoric was more openly individualistic and assertive. Birth-controllersof earlier generations had usually surrounded their claims to individual libertywith protestations of patriotic devotion and commitment to maternity. Butfor this generation—which Yvonne Knibiehler has called “the generation ofrefusal”—motherhood often seemed the enemy of individual autonomy, anancient biological yoke that could now be cast off. Forgetting (to the greatsurprise of the historian Philippe Ariès, who supported the movement) thatthe practice of contraception in France went back at least a century and a half,activists hailed the dawning of a new era.72 “One can never sufficientlyemphasize that this is the first time since the beginning of the world thatwoman faces a future when she will no longer be enslaved to the laws of herbody, and when she will be able to make choices and plans,” exulted Sullerotin 1967.73 Birth control, wrote Dr. Weill-Hallé, would “free up (women’s)time to develop her talents and to exercise them for the benefit of the largerhuman community.”74 And few doubted that these goals could be attainedby entering the paid labor market.

“W’ T R”

Among the trends that we have noted is the transformation in conception ofmotherhood from a lifelong status to a role—an identity that could be takenon, thrown off, or combined with other identities. In 1956, Alva Myrdal and

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Viola Klein announced that women now occupied two roles: at home and atwork.75 Of all the social transformations of the postwar era, the rapid increasein the employment of wives and mothers was the most conspicuous. Untilthe 1950s, such employment had been seen as a sign of bad times, poverty,and male unemployment. While strongly defending the right of women towork regardless of marital and parental status, most feminists of the interwaryears had assumed that in the absence of financial necessity only a professionalelite would choose to combine motherhood and career. And socialdisapproval of the employment of married women had reached a high pointduring the interwar era.76

But after an initial trend toward full-time motherhood, such attitudesgradually faded into obsolescence during the postwar era. An influx of mar-ried women transformed the labor force. The pace of change differed amongWestern European countries, but the trend was consistent: in France, wheremany married women had always been employed, the percentage of suchwomen in the female workforce rose from 49 percent in 1954 to 53 percentin 1962; in Britain, where married women had customarily stayed home, thepercentage rose from 43 percent in 1955 to 50 percent in 1967; in Italy,where the number of employed married women actually declined from 1945to the mid-1960s, it increased dramatically after 1970.77 The class compositionof the female work force also changed: whereas in earlier eras working-classwomen had been the most likely to seek employment, by 1960 women fromhigh-income families, chiefly those with professional qualifications, were dis-proportionately represented in the labor force.78 Well-trained women foundopportunities in the expanding social-services sector and in the schools,kindergartens, and medical facilities that were bursting with the offspring ofthe baby boom. The average age of the female work force rose, for thewomen who entered after a period of full-time motherhood often held theirjobs until retirement.

Unlike previous generations of married women workers, who had usuallyclaimed that they worked out of economic necessity, these women tendedto regard their work as an exercise of personal choice. They demanded therepeal of laws that had permitted, and in some cases required, the dismissal ofwomen from employment—chiefly in desirable jobs in the civil service—upon their marriage, and had empowered husbands to forbid their wives towork. In Britain, the “marriage bar” for teachers was struck down during thewar; similar laws in Germany were repealed in 1953 and the right ofhusbands to prevent their wives from working was revoked in 1957.79 In theNetherlands, a civil servant, Mevrouw Tendeloo, protested against herdismissal when she married, and was supported by a coalition of feministgroups, which argued that decisions about employment were best left to theindividual woman and her husband. The Dutch regulation was finally struckdown in 1957.80

“The married woman who leaves her home each day and goes off to workhas become a familiar, if controversial figure in Western society,” wrote theBritish sociologist Pearl Jephcott in 1962. “Some see her as a symbol of

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freedom, but to others she is the epitome of irresponsibility and neglect.”81

Feminists’ attitudes toward the employment of mothers were based less ontheory than on empirical research. The declared aim of the researchers wasimpartial data-gathering, but in fact they were also influenced by their ownlife history as academically qualified, middle-class professional women whooften struggled with the new dilemma summed up in the phrase “women’stwo roles.”

Évelyne Sullerot—whom we have already met as a leader of the birth-control movement—was born in 1924 into a French Protestant family, spenther adolescent years in the Resistance, and upon the death of her mothertook on responsibility for her family. After the war she trained as a teacher,but gave up this career to raise four children. Later, having found a newvocation as a volunteer in the cause of birth control, she continued her studiesand became a highly successful academic sociologist.82

Alva Myrdal (whom we have met in earlier chapters) had produced threechildren, founded an education college, and authored several books, butuntil the 1950s was still chiefly known as the wife of the prominent sociolo-gist Gunnar Myrdal, who became a diplomat. In 1948, her life seemed at astandstill, for her own professional work had been interrupted by her hus-band’s move to a position with the United Nations in Geneva, and she hadno occupation but that of housewife and hostess. “She entered a period ofdesperate powerlessness that I did not recognize at the time but understoodlater,” recalled her daughter, Sissela Bok, “She felt, I believe, buried alive,locked into the superficial role of hostess while shielding a wifely role thathad become nothing but a mask.”83 When she herself was offered a job withthe United Nations, she took it in 1949, even though this involved leaving herfamily for Paris and later New York—a decision for which her daughters, thenaged thirteen and fifteen, never completely forgave her.84

The Dutch sociologist A.J. Schellekens-Ligthart, who in 1957 publishedone of the first studies of Dutch working mothers, was also known as a modelof a new and still controversial female life-plan. A highly competent academicresearcher, Schellekens-Ligthart was also married and the mother of severalchildren.85

The Swiss Iris Meyer-Huber, a native of Basel who qualified as a lawyer in1941, married a fellow lawyer, Peter von Roten, in 1946. The couple shareda legal practice until the birth of their daughter, Hortensia, in 1952. In thatyear Iris von Roten temporarily withdrew from the legal profession and con-centrated on the writing of her book, Frauen im Laufgitter (Women in thePlay-Pen), which appeared in 1958. Meanwhile, she cooperated with herhusband, who was elected to the Swiss parliament in 1949, and with theLeague of Swiss Women’s Associations (Bund Schweizerischer Frauenvereine)in preparing a parliamentary initiative to grant Swiss women the right to vote,which they alone among all their Western European contemporaries did notyet possess. The initiative was rejected by Swiss voters in 1959, and Swisswomen did not win the right of suffrage until 1972.86

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The works produced by these and many other researchers asked whymothers worked outside the home. The results were based on the responsesof mothers themselves, often supplemented by detailed studies of the sub-jects’ workplaces, households, and communities. The subjects included bothmiddle-class and working-class women, and the researchers acknowledgedand analyzed class differences.

Working-class mothers, such as the British factory hands interviewed byPearl Jephcott, emphasized that they worked chiefly in order to earn money.Nonetheless, most asserted that employment was also a choice, for underconditions of full male employment few married women who were livingwith their husbands needed work to survive. Rather, the wages of mothersserved to enhance the family’s standard of living by making it possible to pur-chase the consumer goods that, after wartime shortages, were now finallyaccessible.87 Even in Germany, where so many families were fatherless,researchers gave scant attention to the single mothers and widows who didnot fit into this bright and shining picture of newfound affluence.88 Manyworking-class mothers complained that domesticity was boring, particularlywhen the children were in school and the mothers had “nothing to look atbut these four walls.” They enjoyed the sociability of the workplace: “youget a laugh mixing with the girls.”89 But, despite a strong preference foremployment, these women identified themselves chiefly as wives and moth-ers, were in general not ambitious for advancement, often chose to work parttime when their children were of school age, and admitted to guilt about theeffects of their working on their families and households.90

By contrast, middle-class women with university degrees, and particularlyprofessionals who had worked before marriage, often expressed frustration atwhat they considered the waste of their talents in the home. “I certainly thinkthat it is a pity that so many women, because they want a family, are more orless forced to spend their time doing domestic work, when they might bedoing something more socially useful,” said a British participant in a surveyby Judith Hubback entitled Wives who Went to College. Educated womenmade bad wives and mothers, said another participant, because “we are doingwork for which we are entirely untrained and usually dislike.”91 For thesewomen, few of whom mentioned financial motives, work was primarily a psy-chological necessity, and domestic obligations often an obstacle to overcomerather than, as for the working-class women, a primary obligation.

Starting in 1936, Alva Myrdal had included among her many projects anambitious study of women and employment, which was sponsored by theInternational Federation of Business Women. The research, which involvedinterviewing women in three countries—Sweden, the United States, andBritain—was complete by 1950, but Myrdal’s new career with the UnitedNations left her little time to write. Therefore, she entrusted the writing ofWomen’s Two Roles: Home and Work, which appeared in 1956, to a collabo-rator, the British sociologist Viola Klein, who had already published a bookon gender relations.92 Klein and Myrdal began by defining the maternal

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dilemma: modern women “were guided by conflicting aims: on the one hadthey want . . . to develop their personalities to the full . . . on the other hand,most women want a home and family of their own.”93 Though they took thesocial context into account, the authors presented this chiefly as a personalproblem that could be solved by women’s own efforts. Motherhood, theyproposed, should no longer be regarded as a life-long task, but as a phasewhich could be planned in the new perspective afforded by women’s length-ened life-expectancy. Female lives must be lived in three phases: the firstdevoted to study and career training, the second to full-time child-rearingand family, and the third to full-time work.

For Myrdal, the “phase model” was new, for in her earlier book, Familyand Nation (1940), she had advocated lifetime employment supported bychild-care and other social services. In the 1950s, however, she and Klein seemto have been persuaded by current psychological theories that the “imper-sonal” atmosphere of a day-care center might reduce the child’s “sense ofsecurity, and lead to other undesirable results,” and that therefore “mothersshould take care of their own children during the first years of their lives.”94

The end of the second phase, which (assuming that a woman married in herearly twenties, had three children at two-year intervals, and returned to workwhen the youngest was nine) would normally occur when the woman wasabout forty years old, would probably be marked by an “acute emotional crisis.”But the retired mother’s feeling of “emptiness and lack of purpose,” could bedispelled by returning to what was assumed to be a rewarding career.95

Women could “have it all”—just not all at the same time.Myrdal and Klein did not regard careers for mothers purely as therapy;

indeed, they insisted that, in a rationally planned society, no adult shouldremain idle, and that women after the period of “active motherhood” hadnot only the right but also the duty to work outside the home.96 Nonetheless,only well-off professional women—especially Myrdal, a native of prosperousand benevolent Sweden—could have seen employment chiefly as a psycho-logical rather than an economic necessity. And only in the full-employmenteconomy of the 1950s could anyone have assumed that the woman who re-entered the labor market at forty, after twenty years of absence, would beable to build a career. But the authors declared that no major “change inthe organization of work,” but only a change in women’s attitudes, wouldsolve the maternal dilemma. “The best of both worlds has come within theirgrasp,” wrote the authors, “if only they reach out for it.”97

How did this optimistic prospect correspond to the real lives of workingmothers? Many social science researchers drew a more realistic picture.Mothers who worked outside the home seldom actually took a break fortwenty years, as Myrdal and Klein recommended. Many returned when theiryoungest child entered school, and some never quit at all; for example, by1974 about one-third of German working mothers continued full-time workthroughout the childbearing period.98 And, rather than “phasing” employmentand motherhood, they combined both in a work week that sometimesexceeded ninety hours.99

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Although some women—particularly in countries such as Germany, whichgave little social support to working mothers—complained openly of fatigue,stress, and health problems, others took pride in the seamless performance oftheir double role. A.J. Schellekens-Ligthart, a Dutch sociologist who wrotethe first study of working mothers in the Netherlands, assured the public in anewspaper interview that, however absorbing her academic career, her familycame first. “When the children come home from school, they almost alwaysfind me here. I have lots of time for them after school, and when they are inschool I have plenty of time for work and study. The evenings are for myhusband—I can hear all about his work and his music, and when he is playingin a concert, I am there.”100 Contrary to the expectations of Myrdal andKlein that entry into the labor market would radicalize women, the new wayof life often seemed merely another version of self-effacing femininity.101

But the effect produced by Myrdal and Klein was in fact more subversive.By identifying motherhood as one of two equally valuable “roles” rather thanas women’s primary function, they had separated it from biological deter-minism and classified it as a cultural construction which was open to changeand transformation. And if women’s roles could change with culture, thenwhy not also those of men? Although in the 1930s Alva Myrdal had urgedfathers as well as mothers to share child-care responsibilities, by 1956 herconfidence in men had diminished and she had put the burden entirely onwomen. But this bias was soon pointed out by Eva Moberg, a young Swedishliterary critic who was also active in liberal political circles. “We have to getaway from the ‘two roles of women,’ ” she wrote in 1962. “Both men andwomen have one chief role, that of a human being. And in the role of humanbeing, it is a moral duty, but also a great satisfaction . . . to take good care ofour offspring.”102 Alva Myrdal agreed; in the preface to a volume edited bytwo Swedish social scientists, Edmund Dahlström and Rita Liljeström, shereferred to “the two roles of men” whose “role in the family must be radicallyenlarged.”103 In his own contribution to this book, which was published in1962, Dahlström concluded that the welfare state should no longer encouragea division of labor which allotted child-care to women and employment tomen, but should instead enable both men and women to work in and outsidethe home.104 In the mid-1960s Swedish social policy was reoriented towardthe working couple through the provision of public child-care and othersocial services.105

Other responses to Women’s Two Roles were more conservative: for exam-ple, the German sociologist Elisabeth Pfeil considered that Klein and Myrdalwere wrong to imply that paid work could have equal priority with maternalobligations.106 And Évelyne Sullerot raised another disturbing question:though working mothers themselves usually assured her that their husbandswere supportive, her experience with the husbands themselves suggestedotherwise. The couples who attended her lectures on women and employ-ment, she recalled, often found themselves quarreling vociferously in thequestion period.107 By 1970, the work of married women outside the homehad begun to be accepted by public opinion.

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Considering the monotonous and unrewarding character of most wagedwork—especially of the jobs open to women—it is surprising that feministsshould have seen employment in itself as the road to emancipation. Thisproblem was noted by Simone de Beauvoir, who contrasted the interestingcareers of middle-class professionals with the monotonous tasks of assembly-line workers. “There is no doubt that they get economic independence onlyas a class which is economically oppressed; and on the other hand, their jobsin the factory do not relieve them of housekeeping burdens.”108 However themiddle-class origins and professional ambitions of most of these researchersinclined them toward an optimistic view of what they hailed as a new femalelife-plan. Problems that faced even the best qualified women—discriminationin hiring, pay inequality, gender segregation, sexual harassment—were hardlymentioned. Instead, the mere act of entering the workplace was hailed as astep toward personal liberation. “She claims the right to decide, or at least tohave some voice in the decision, whether she will work when she is a motheror not. And this assertion of her individuality changes her consciousness andgives her life a new meaning,” concluded the German researcher ElizabethPfeil.109 Through re-entry into the work world, said the British sociologistJudith Hubback, woman must “evolve from exclusive femaleness towards thefulfillment of a wider personality.”110

“B M O B”

Although this era’s discussion of the maternal role was in a long tradition,the social changes of the postwar era brought it into a new phase. Earliergenerations of feminists had assumed that the commitment of most womento motherhood was necessary to the future of society, which was otherwisethreatened by a “twilight of parenthood.” But during the postwar babyboom such fears temporarily receded. Motherhood seemed to be undergoinga transformation from a lifetime identity to only one—and for some women,the less rewarding—aspect of a double role. Under these circumstances,would women continue to bear children? And, if so, then why?

The context for the discussion of this question was set by popularpsychologists who during this era shifted their focus from the personality ofthe child to the mother–child relationship. Continuing the trend towarddefining childbearing as a source of personal satisfaction rather than a duty,many told women that the only valid reason for having children was the over-whelming sense of fulfillment that they derived from motherhood. “Theprovision of constant attention day and night, seven days a week, three hun-dred and sixty-five days in the year, is possible only for a woman who derivesprofound satisfaction from seeing her child grow from babyhood throughthe many phases of childhood . . . and knows that it is her care which hasmade this possible,” wrote John Bowlby.111

A woman who did not feel this “profound satisfaction” was often por-trayed as a bad mother. Spock explained that effective child-rearing did notdepend on objective knowledge—“you know more than you think you do,”

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he reassured mothers—but on the mother’s attitude. He warned thata mother who was not completely and spontaneously loving might raisea child who was, if not mentally disturbed, then at least “cold and unrespon-sive.”112 The British psychologist Donald Winnicott, also a highly respectedauthority, affirmed that “the mother’s pleasure has to be there or else thewhole procedure is dead, useless and mechanical.”113 The shift of emphasisfrom objective factors such as hygiene and nutrition to the mother’s subjectivestate created an impossible standard—what mother, however devoted, couldmaintain a positive attitude day in and day out? And, like other theorists ofthis period, these psychologists assumed that all mothers lived in middle-classcomfort and took no account of the many problems and crises that could dis-turb the emotional equilibrium of mothers in less fortunate circumstances.114

Thus even as they glorified motherhood, child psychologists stronglyimplied that many, even most women were unqualified for it. Widely citedworks on the psychology of women transmitted the same message. Accor-ding to the Freudian analyst Helene Deutsch, who devoted the secondvolume of her massive work on women’s sexual lives (published in 1945) tothe topic of motherhood, narcissism—the love of self—and masochism—theneed for self-sacrifice—were core elements of the female personality. Byperfectly merging her own ego with that of her child, the mother couldgratify both of these needs.115 But unresolved “masculine wishes,” amongwhich Deutsch classified all drives toward individual development, couldimpair this delicate adjustment. And few modern women could ignorethe claims of the ego. “There is hardly a woman,” Deutsch remarked, “inwhom the normal psychic conflicts do not result in a pathologic distortion, atsome point, of the biologic process of motherhood.”116 However perfectlyperformed, moreover, the maternal role offered no permanent satisfaction:the more self-sacrificing the mother, the greater her sense of loss when herchild grew up and became independent. The only defense against this threatwas the production of numerous children, a path that was now “largelybarred as a result of cultural influences.” Deutsch implied that, for mostwomen, the maternal dilemma was insoluble—motherhood stood in the wayof individual self-realization, and often brought more psychic conflict thanpleasure.117

Simone de Beauvoir, who cited Deutsch copiously, turned the psychologist’stheory on its head by attributing the mother’s misery not to her own failedpersonal adjustment but to the maternal role itself. For Beauvoir, as for herpartner Jean-Paul Sartre, full membership in the human race involved thetranscendence of the body and its limitations through the development of anautonomous self expressed through intellectual or artistic creativity. But sheasserted that under existing conditions transcendence was attainable only bymales, who were not encumbered but empowered by their reproductivefunction: “the advantage that man enjoys . . . is that his vocation as a humanbeing in no way runs counter to his destiny as a male.”118

Woman by contrast was trapped in immanence and the body, alienatedfrom her creative potential and enslaved to “her whole organic structure that

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is adapted for the perpetuation of the species.”119 Deluded by the culture’sglorification of motherhood, women might believe that child-rearing itselfwas a path to transcendence. But Beauvoir rejected this possibility. Whenthey were both adolescents, her friend Zaza had declared that “ ‘bringingnine children into the world as Mama has done is just as good as writingbooks.’ ” Beauvoir recalled that she “couldn’t see any common denominatorbetween these two modes of existence. . . . To have children, who in turnwould have more children, was simply to go on playing the same old tune adinfinitum; the scholar, the artist, the writer created other worlds, all sweet-ness and light, in which everything had purpose. That was where I wished tospend my life.”120 Though conceding to Deutsch that women bore childrenin order to gratify narcissistic wishes, Beauvoir condemned this as a false andharmful fantasy. The vicarious identification of one individual with anothercould only violate the right of both to develop in freedom. Not only couldmaternity not confer “transcendence by proxy,” but it was not “enough tocrown a woman’s life.”121 In a famous formulation, she characterizedmaternity as “a strange mixture of narcissism, altruism, idle daydreaming,sincerity, bad faith, devotion, and cynicism.”122

Beauvoir broke decisively with earlier feminist theorists and their vision ofa chosen, enlightened and socially supported “new motherhood.” To besure, she suggested in her conclusion that the position of mothers might beimproved in some future socialist state, but such utopian visions had lostmost of their credibility in the postwar era, and she did not develop this idea.Her central message was pessimistic: the maternal dilemma (at least underexisting conditions) was insoluble, for maternity was the enemy of autonomy.“There is one feminine function which is almost impossible to exercise infreedom,” she concluded, “and that is maternity.”123

The Second Sex was widely read and exceedingly controversial. Beauvoirwas attacked from all sides: conservative critics invoked religious doctrines,socialists the importance of reproduction to society, communists the evils of“bourgeois individualism.”124 Some feminists asserted that motherhood wasa rewarding task, and criticized Beauvoir’s identification of human potentialwith maleness.125 But others affirmed and developed her insights.

In 1958, the appearance of a book entitled Frauen im Laufgitter(Women in the Playpen), by the lawyer and activist Iris von Roten, causedalmost as sensational a reaction in Switzerland as Beauvoir’s book in France.Von Roten, who had read Beauvoir, also aimed to gain an overview of the“problems of women’s lives, that arise from the double role—individualperson, female person—in the context of male-dominated society.”126 VonRoten broke decisively with the mainstream Swiss women’s movement,whose propaganda in favor of woman suffrage featured a domestic andnonthreatening image of the Swiss woman. Like Beauvoir, von Roten charac-terized motherhood as a “burden without dignity” (“Bürde ohne Würde”).Conventional idealization of mothers thinly disguised men’s disgust forwomen’s reproductive functions: “they regard themselves as fully superior towhat they regard as the shame of the female sex.”127 And as for mothers’

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fabled devotion to their children, it too often became a kind of vicarioussatisfaction for women whose lives were otherwise empty. This kind of“mother-love,” which was threatened by children’s independence and auton-omy, was more likely to have harmful than beneficial effects.128 When it waspublished in 1958, the book attracted so much negative criticism that vonRoten’s former allies in the League of Swiss Women’s Associations immedi-ately distanced themselves from her radical ideas, which they feared woulddiscredit the suffrage movement.129

In the 1960s, many younger feminists saw their own situations reflected inBeauvoir’s book. When the British sociologist Anne Oakley read The SecondSex, she had two small children. “I was trying to adjust to the role of full-timemother and not succeeding very well. . . . I found it really inspiring, incommon with many other people—many other women.”130 Joyce Goodfellow,another British reader of the same generation, also concluded that Beauvoirwas right: “I feel the book should carry a health warning: ‘Beware of breeding;it cramps ambition, intellectual opportunity, and the bank balance, and itisn’t fair to the children.’ ”131

Whatever their opinions of Beauvoir, her readers agreed that she hadbroken the taboos that still constrained the discussion of motherhood.“There was nothing else that did what The Second Sex did in terms of analyz-ing why women are in the state they are in,” remarked Ann Oakley.132

Encouraged by Beauvoir, mothers of the 1960s often openly expressedambivalent feelings. They complained about the social conditions of thepostwar era—cramped housing, a lack of child-care facilities, and the dangersof an urban environment now dominated by automobile traffic—whichafforded mothers little relief from the company of their young children. Buttheir problems were even more psychological than practical. “I rememberhaving spent four years and three months without ever being without smallchildren for more than a few hours,” wrote Évelyne Sullerot. “Such a taskrequires the extinction of all personal life. One loses the sense of time. Withincreasing sleep deprivation, the days go by like a dream. . . . The frustrationof every continuous effort gives rise to a peculiar sense of monotony andconfusion. Repetitions, interruptions, new starts.”133 A young Britishmother, Val Charlton, recalled that the birth of her son in 1970 was “atremendous shock . . . I really hated it; I loved him, but I hated the way oflife. I was isolated, I was in the place by myself, I thought I was goinginsane.” Even before she joined a feminist group, Charlton had decidedthat “this is ridiculous, we can’t live like this, we need to do somethingabout it.”134

As had their predecessors of the interwar years, feminists of the 1960sdebunked the myth of mother-love by focusing on the pathological side ofthe mother–child relationship. In 1967, a new feminist movement wasinitiated in the Netherlands by an influential essay entitled “Woman and herDiscontents”(“Dit onbehagen bij de vrouw”) by the literary critic Joke Kool-Smit, who a year later joined the founders of a new organization called the“Men’s and Women’s Society” (Mann-Vrouw Matschaapij). Kool-Smit

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declared that motherhood could never be a creative activity, for the motherdid not “create” her children—whether they were smart or stupid, difficultor easy to raise was largely a matter of luck.135 In 1966 the British literaryscholar and Marxist theoretician Juliet Mitchell charged that the channelingof women’s pent-up energies into child-rearing damaged their children.“Anything the child does is . . . a threat to the mother herself, who hasrenounced her autonomy through this misconception of her reproductiverole. There are few more precarious ventures on which to base a life.”136 Andin Penelope Mortimer’s novel of 1962, The Pumpkin Eater, the mother of alarge family realized that, having sacrificed her personal development, shehad nothing to give her children: “In fact, lacking now my own instincts,values, and beliefs, I had nothing to offer them, and what they offered me—dependence, love, trust—seemed a monumental responsibility which I couldno longer bear.”137

How could mothers and children be freed of this pathological bind? Onesolution was to shorten the period of full-time motherhood and allow thewoman to return as soon as possible to her interrupted career. In the 1950s,almost all advice to mothers, including the influential work of Klein andMyrdal, had discouraged day care for children under school age. Andmothers seem to have agreed, for few worked full time when their childrenwere young.138 Socialist and communist women’s groups campaigned for theexpansion of public day care, but without much success. In fact, day-carecenters had acquired a negative image as the last resort of the poor anddesperate. But by contrast, working mothers of school-age children assertedthat their children did not suffer, but on the contrary gained in independenceand self-reliance.139

By 1960, Bowlby’s theory of “maternal deprivation” came under an evermore intense critique. Among the first and most vocal critics was Iris vonRoten, who wrote in 1958 that “the male-supremacist arrangement throughwhich mothers are responsible for all their children’s needs for a quarter-century . . . is doubly tragic. For it is in the interests neither of mothers norof children.” As long as children were sure of their parents’ affection, shecontinued, they were better off in a well-run day-care center than in anisolated home.140 Results based on institutionalized children in wartime,wrote the Norwegian sociologist Åse Grude Skard, were not applicable to themore secure lives of children whose mothers worked predictable hours andleft them with loving substitute caretakers. Besides, the mother too hadneeds: “a woman is more than just a milieu for her child or her children—shehas her own value as a human being and the problem must also be consideredfor what may serve her interests and development.”141 Many authors of the1960s urged their readers (in the words of the French feminists Texier andMichel) to “distinguish between the quality and the quantity of contactsbetween mother and child.”142 The establishment of experimental day-carecenters, often staffed by parents, was among the first projects of “newfeminist” groups after 1968.143

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Another way of lightening the burdens of maternity was to expand therole of fathers. In the interwar era, as we have seen, feminist theorists hadadvocated the transformation of the patriarch into a nurturing parent. Notuntil the postwar era, however, did the laws of most countries support a flexibledivision of parental labor. In Sweden, social scientists coined the phrase “sexroles” to replace the customary definitions of motherhood and fatherhood.“Both men and women have one role, that of a human being,” asserted thesociologist Edmund Dahlström in 1962. “For both sexes, this role wouldinclude child care.”144 The sociologist Per-Olaf Tiller reversed Bowlby’stheory to lament the absence of fathers from their children’s lives, which lefttheir sons without male role models.145 The concept of egalitarian parent-hood was brought into Swedish policy discussions through the work of the“Sex-Role group,” which was founded in 1964 and included influentialacademics, journals, and leaders of parties and trade-unions.146 By 1968, theequalization of parental roles had become a goal of the new feministmovements in all countries. The French birth-control activist CatherineValabrègue noted in that year that laws would soon give mothers and fatherssimilar rights and responsibilities—why should they not drop outworn rolesand create a new style of family life?147 Juliet Mitchell recommended thedeconstruction of the nuclear family and its replacement by diverse house-holds and institutional settings in which child-rearing responsibility could beshared by parents, teachers, and other adults.148

The Dutch feminist Joke Kool-Smit looked forward to the day whenwomen could see themselves “first as human beings, and only secondly aswomen.”149 But was this idea of the “human” truly gender-neutral, or was itmodeled on men’s lives? And in either case, what were its implications formotherhood—a distinctively female function? Did motherhood belong to aset of outworn expectations that the modern human being could simply castoff? This fear was expressed in 1949 by the American anthropologistMargaret Mead, who had a wide readership in Europe. Mead speculated thatthe blurring of gender boundaries might threaten continuance of the humanrace, which required that “women had to be willing to accept men as lovers,live with them as wives, and conceive, bear, feed and cherish their children.Any society disappears which fails to make these demands on its members andto receive this much from them.”150 Many feminist writers of this era assertedthat the desire for children was so deeply rooted that women would,of course, continue to become mothers. “The dearest desire of the majorityof women will always be to have children,” wrote Valabrègue.

But why, if motherhood plunged them into a painful dilemma? “Theyounger generation of women wish to become mothers—they wish to carefor their families and surround themselves with harmony,” stated ElisabethPfeil, “and at the same time they want to contribute to the support of theirfamilies and exercise a profession.”151 To a woman caught in this dilemma,maternity might well bring not the fulfillment, but rather the splitting of theself. The British sociologist Viola Klein argued that pressures to reconcile the

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demands of her two roles by acting “confident and businesslike” in the work-place and “sensitive, adaptable, unassertive . . . domestic . . . and if possiblenot too intelligent” in the home doomed the modern woman to emotionaldistress.152 Beauvoir’s contemporary, Françoise d’Eaubonne, pictured themodern woman in the grip of a wrenching conflict between mind and body,striving “to reconcile the subjectivity that she possesses as a human being andthe object that she becomes as a servant of love and the species.”153

Subjectivity as a human being, objectification as a mother—these wereantitheses that could not be reconciled. Even before the rise of a new feministmovement around 1968, a few thinkers directly stated that the refusal ofmotherhood was a step toward autonomy. Chief among these was Simone deBeauvoir, who rejected Mead’s contention that women must remain in the“iron grip of the species.”154 Though she conceded that motherhood, when“freely assumed and completely wanted,” might be rewarding, Beauvoirstated plainly that under existing conditions, it was slavery—an opinion thatshe never changed.155 In 1986, the year before Beauvoir’s death, she wasasked by Yolanda Patterson whether she still believed that “maternityprevents women from finding her own identity.” Beauvoir responded that “asit exists today, I think so. Because the woman is too much of a slave.”156

As she recounted in her memoirs, she and Sartre decided against parenthoodearly in their relationship. Not only did she feel no narcissistic desire torediscover herself in a child, but she refused to engage in “a purposeless andunjustifiable increase in the world’s population . . . I never felt as thoughI was holding out against motherhood: it simply was not my natural lot inlife, and by remaining childless I was fulfilling my proper function.”157

The postwar era, which began in 1945 with a return to motherhood,ended noisily in 1968 when a new generation claimed the right to refuse it.“There is no reason, except the moral prejudice that women who do not havechildren are shirking a responsibility, why all women should consider them-selves bound to breed,” wrote Germaine Greer, the British author of a widelyread book, The Female Eunuch (1970).158 “Boss of my own belly!” (Baas ineigen buik!)” read the placards carried by Dutch feminists who picketed agynecological congress in 1970.159

Should we have children, or have none?The choice belongs to us alone.

proclaimed German demonstrators in 1971.160 “The only rational attitudetoward what society has made of maternity is to refuse it,” declared a Frenchmanifesto entitled “Slave Motherhood” in 1972.161 The words of this vocalminority signaled a broader trend. By 1966, the end of the postwar babyboom was marked by a slight but noticeable fall in birthrates in all of theWestern European countries. From a postwar peak of 18.3 births per 1,000population in 1959, France’s birthrate declined to 17.4 in 1966; that of theNetherlands from 21.3 in 1961 to 19.2 in 1966; that of England and Walesfrom 18.5 in 1964 to 17.7 in 1966.162 The continuation of these trends

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would result in birthrates below replacement rate by the mid-1980s and innegative growth rates after 2000.163 The “twilight of parenthood,” predictedby writers of the interwar era, had begun.

The thinkers of the postwar era provided a basis for the new feminism thatdeveloped after 1968. Their contributions were important. By repudiatingthe cult of patriotic motherhood they defined childbearing as an individualchoice, which might be supported but should not be constrained by the state.By validating individual experience, they laid the epistemological foundationfor a new feminist scholarship. Nonetheless, their ideology of gender equal-ity raised as many questions as that of the earlier generations who had stressedgender difference. For in their zeal to avoid biological determinism, the post-war thinkers had created an ideal of the “human” which in fact was modeledon male occupational, sexual, and ethical patterns. “Maternity, far from beingpresented as the supreme destiny of women,” suggested d’Eaubonne,“should be relegated to the important, but non-essential, status of paternityin the lives of men—that is to say, the fulfillment of a life that is already suffi-cient in itself.”164 The living out of this ideal brought, not a gender-neutralequality, but new forms of subordination. The “three-phase” life-plan, theequation of career success with emancipation, the double burden—all thesewere attempts to fit female existence into male dominated structures of workand family life. Even the renunciation of motherhood was an admission ofinequality—for men did not experience the same pressure to choose betweencareer success or other aspirations and parenthood. And in the world of workthat women now entered in great numbers, they would encounter new formsof discrimination, inequality, and marginalization.

Therefore, a new generation of feminists soon discovered the difficultieswith the assertion of a gender-neutral, “human” identity that was in practicemale-identified. Some decided that a radical critique of male supremacy couldonly come from an oppositional position—a positive female identity. In1970, the Italian group Rivolta Femminile reclaimed motherhood as a dis-tinctive aspect of that identity: “The transmission of life, respect for life,awareness of life are intense experiences for woman and values that she claimsas her own.” And the discussion turned again to the maternal dilemma—tothe conflict between the claims of the generically human and the distinctivelyfeminine aspects of identity. “Woman’s first reason for resentment againstsociety is being forced to face maternity as a dilemma.”165 The debate on themeanings of gender equality and gender difference would be continued bya new feminist movement.

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D

Between 1970 and the present lies a great deal of history, which includedmany changes in the status of women and of mothers. Nonetheless, the oldproblems persist. And of all these problems, the maternal dilemma is amongthe most intractable. The difficulty of reconciling maternal and familialresponsibilities with individual aspirations is still a major obstacle to theequality of women in Western Europe and elsewhere. In this book, we haveseen how the maternal dilemma was defined and debated by feminists duringthe early and middle years of the twentieth century. What light can this historythrow on the present?

First of all, our story calls many prevailing views of the relationship offeminism and motherhood into question. These views fall roughly into twocategories. Post-structuralist theorists criticize feminists of past and presentfor purveying (in Judith Butler’s words) “universalistic claims” based on the“ostensibly transcultural structures of femininity, maternity, sexuality,” andthus creating a “normative and exclusionary” category of “women” thatignores differences of class, race, and sexual orientation.”1 This assertionthat feminists were and still are too preoccupied with motherhood and otherdistinctively female functions is contradicted by the more popular trendknown as “post-feminism.” Its proponents accuse feminists of a disrespect forthe “real concerns of women,” the most important of which they identify asmotherhood and family life.2

Neither of these accusations is borne out by the complex reality. It is truethat the feminists discussed in this book sometimes—by no means always—showed insensitivity to differences of class, religion, and sexual orientationamong women. It is not true, however, that they shared a “normative” con-ception of female nature that was centered on motherhood. On the contrary,their views of motherhood were exceedingly diverse. Maternalists such asEllen Key exalted it as “the most perfect realization of human potential thatthe species has reached”; individualists such as Simone de Beauvoir dismissedit as “a strange mixture of narcissism, altruism, idle daydreaming, sincerity,bad faith, devotion, and cynicism.”3 Some feminists became mothers andothers remained childless. Some were married; some were single; some livedin nonmarital relationships with partners of the same or the opposite sex.Some had large and some had small families. Some advocated, and othersopposed, birth-control and abortion. Some pictured women as naturallygifted for motherhood, while others deplored their ineptitude. Some

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believed that children should be raised by their mothers, and others that theywere better off in day-care centers; some urged all women to become mothers,and others wished to confine motherhood to a qualified elite. Some portrayedchild-rearing as a blissful, others as a hellish experience. Some believed thatmothers should be paid for childbearing, others that they should beemployed outside the home. Some stigmatized unmarried and childlesswomen as “abnormal”; most defended them against discrimination.

Despite the considerable diversity among feminists’ views, certain trendsare perceptible over the period covered by this book. One of these certainlyled away from an essentialist view of motherhood as biological destiny ormoral imperative. Increasingly, feminists thought of motherhood as a role—an identity that was not innate but assumed, and might be refused or com-bined with other roles. From the beginning of our period, some feministsasserted that childbearing and child-rearing was not enough to fill up the lifeor engage the talents of the modern woman—she needed some other focus.Many agreed with contemporary psychologists that an excessively intense orexclusive commitment to motherhood signaled maladjustment or mentaldisturbance. By 1970, the picture of motherhood as one of “women’s tworoles”—the other usually defined as paid work—could be found in mostfeminist literature.

Another trend of our period—the rationalization of child-rearing as ascience—likewise distanced it from any form of biological determinism.Though only mothers could bear children, the rearing of these childrenmight—and some experts believed that it should—be entrusted to otheradults, even to men. The notion of childbearing and child-rearing as servicesto the state—even as a female analogue to military service—was advanced bysome feminists, particularly in the period before World War I. However, theydid not imply that motherhood was a biological destiny—it was a choice,for which women required incentives in the form of subsidies, social services,or expanded political rights. By the end of our period, this cult of patrioticmotherhood had been discredited by the traumatic experience of totalitarianregimes. Increasingly, feminists saw parenthood as an individual decisionthat was motivated by desire rather than duty. For those who had no suchdesire, childlessness emerged as a viable—though still highly controversial—option.

But by portraying motherhood as a choice that might sometimes berefused, these feminists did not downgrade its importance. Precisely becauseit was a choice, many asserted that it could for the first time become a vocation.And they emphasized that women’s reluctance to bear children did notalways arise from an aversion to motherhood. Under existing conditions, theobligations of motherhood conflicted with women’s other aspirations,whether to education, career success, financial or personal independence, orother goals. Because these feminists believed that motherhood was a culturalconstruction that had evolved throughout prehistory and history, theyinsisted that the conditions under which women bore and raised childrenshould and must be changed. We have seen that they proposed a host of

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solutions to the maternal dilemma, including new forms of social support formothers, collective child-care, new forms of the family and household,the enhancement of the father’s role in child-rearing, the sequencing ofchildbearing and career obligations, and many others. In our own day, thesesolutions are still discussed. But the dilemma remains.

Many feminists of the period 1890–1970 portrayed motherhood as thedistinctive contribution of the female citizen. The cult of patriotic mother-hood offends today’s sensibilities. But, as the political scientist CarolePateman points out, “motherhood and citizenship remain intimately linked,”for the survival of nations depends on the willingness of women to bearchildren.5

Today’s Western European governments recognize that parenthood is anindividual choice that the state can encourage but cannot compel. Thenations of Western Europe have made great progress toward such goals asequal opportunity in education and in the workplace, universal access tocontraception and sex education, the right to abortion, the elimination ofthe disadvantages suffered by unmarried parents and their children, andthe acceptance of diverse forms of the family—which now include same-sexcouples, single parents, and communal households—as suitable environmentsfor children. And despite remaining restrictions on reproductive choice,women control their fertility to a degree that is unprecedented in history.European governments encourage childbearing through positive incenti-ves such as child allowances, generous maternity and parental leaves, andgovernment-subsidized services for children.

In some ways, the maternal dilemma can be seen in a positive light, as theresult of these favorable circumstances. For the greater her freedom of choiceand the broader her options, the more complex is the individual’s decisionfor or against childbearing. In the present, increases alike in control overfertility and in women’s ambitions for career success and self-realization havemade this decision increasingly difficult: “What was once the most naturalthing in the world,” writes the German sociologist Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim,“has now become very complicated, at least among certain groups. Nothingis spontaneous any more, everything is considered.”6

But mothers’ choices are also constrained by the continued existence ofgender inequality. The history of the twentieth century has been marked asmuch by continuity as by change, and the issues confronting women in 2000were surprisingly similar to those that they faced in 1970. “While many peoplehave come to believe that the situation of women has been greatly improvedover the past twenty years,” wrote Barbara Helfferich, the Secretary Generalof the European Women’s Lobby in Brussels, in 2000, “current statistics andanecdotal evidence paint a different picture.”7

In the European Union, overall employment rates for women are steadilyincreasing. According to one recent estimate, labor force participation ratesfor women between the ages of 30 and 34 years ranged from 61 percentin Italy to 83 percent in Sweden.8 The European Commission reported thatabout 70 percent of European women of working age were employed in 1997.9

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And mothers are almost as likely to be employed as other women in similarage-groups. For example, in France in 2000, 81 percent of women with onedependent child, 69 percent of those with two children, and 49.3 percent ofthose with three or more children were employed.10 Women’s work is impor-tant to their families—in 1996, 59 percent provided half or more of theirhouseholds’ total income—and most women prefer employment to full-timehousekeeping even in the absence of economic pressure.11 However, inequal-ities in pay and status persist; in France, for example, the average differencebetween men’s and women’s salaries was 27 percent in 1998.12 Women tendto be concentrated in low-paying and gender-segregated jobs; they are morelikely than men to work part time (sometimes by choice); and they are morevulnerable than men to unemployment.

The reason that is most often given for these disadvantages is still thematernal dilemma—the problem of combining work obligations and familylife. “Having children is highly relevant to women’s participation in the labormarket,” stated a report of the Economic and Social Committee of theEuropean Union in 1997. Many European governments now subsidize childcare. For example, in 1990 the majority of children below school age inFrance, Belgium, and Denmark spent at least some time in public child-carefacilities.13 But recent budgetary crises have limited the growth of all publicservices.14

In 2000, the European Union’s Economic and Social Committee urgedthat “it is essential for men to shoulder their share of responsibility for home,children, and the elderly.”15 However, the role of men in the home has notincreased in proportion to that of women in the workplace. In Sweden,where parental leave is available to both women and men, only one-fifth ofmen, but almost all women took advantage of this provision in the periodbetween 1974 and 1990.16 With the increase in single-mother households,many children also grow up without fathers or other stable male caretakers.

As it did in the past, the prospect of motherhood still shapes the mentalitiesand life-plans of women. Despite governmental and private measures thatencourage girls to enter occupations previously dominated by men, they stilltend to choose typically “female” occupations in education, the social services,retail sales, and office work, partly because they believe that these jobs, whichoffer flexible hours and the possibility of part-time work, can be easily com-bined with motherhood.17 Women are rare in the top echelons of industry, busi-ness, the academic world, and politics. And the lives of employed mothers areexhausting. “Every day, they have to combine two types of work: professionalwork and maternal work,” wrote Yvonne Knibiehler of French professionalwomen. “And each one affects the other. The have to organize their time:full-time, part-time, optional time, compulsory time, convenient time, savedtime, parental time, free time. . . each week, each day, each year, over thecourse of their lives. Time becomes their obsession.”18

Recently, a new “population crisis” has brought the conditions underwhich mothers raise children into the news. Birthrates have fallen off steadilysince 1966 and are now are among the lowest in the world: as of 2003, the

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average number of children born to each Belgian woman was 1.48; to eachGerman woman 1.29; to each French woman 1.8; to each Italian women 1.2;to each Swedish woman 1.29; to each British woman 1.6.19 In an eerie repriseof earlier natalist rhetoric, pessimistic pundits predict the dying out ofEuropean nations. “Europe’s population is shrinking and greying—withgrim consequences,” proclaimed The Economist in 2003. The bankruptcy ofpension funds, a struggle between generations for resources, even Europe’s“slow and inexorable exit from history” are numbered among the possible con-sequences of these demographic trends.20 In Germany, a forthcoming book byElisabeth Niejahr is entitled “The Republic of the Old” (Altenrepublik). 21

In this context, the warnings of earlier generations of feminists thatwomen who are forced to choose between child-rearing and individual self-realization may avoid motherhood take on a new relevance. European gov-ernments propose yet more family-friendly social policies as a solution. Butthe effect of such measures on birthrates is limited; European women are waryof natalism, which they associate with the authoritarian regimes of the past,and resist pressures to produce more children for the state.22 The improve-ment of material conditions, however important, is clearly not enough. Thedisadvantages suffered by mothers are due to a more basic problem—thecontinuance of what Charlotte Perkins Gilman called “our androcentricworld.” Male experience is the norm upon which all institutions of Westernsociety—education, the family, the workplace—are based. Women are nowallowed to take on roles previously reserved for men. But the price of inte-gration into the male world is increased stress and conflict. Expected bothto live up to male norms and to fulfill distinctively female functions suchas motherhood, women are still caught between “two roles.” As CarolePateman observes, only in a changed system in which women do not experiencegender difference as disadvantage and subordination will the maternal dilemmabe resolved.23

However, an interpretation of low birthrates that focused exclusively on anyone issue—including gender relations—would be oversimplified. As Knibiehlerwisely reminds us, childbearing is not an industrial process that responds toeconomic conditions and market incentives. Nor is it a social problem thatcan be solved by public intervention. The decision to bear a child is moreemotional than rational, and is driven by such psychological forces as theneed for love, connection, and self-affirmation, the desire to re-live one’sown childhood, even a longing for continuity beyond one’s own death.24

And therefore maternalists such as Ellen Key, Nelly Roussel, or Dora Russell,who extolled the gratification and fulfillment to be gained from parenthood,cannot simply be dismissed as the purveyors of reactionary gender stereo-types. In our own era, both men and women aspire to these rewards.

As conspicuous a present-day phenomenon as the refusal or limitation ofchildbearing is the growth in the genuine desire for children—a desire thatcan emerge only when childbearing is, or is thought to be, freely chosen. Onesign of this desire is the overwhelming popularity—particularly in the richcountries of Europe and North America—of reproductive technologies that

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overcome infertility and promise children to the childless. The future may seethe disruption of the entire concept of “motherhood”—who is the mother,the donor of the egg, the birth mother, the woman who raises the child? 25

And eugenics, now practiced not by states but by individual parents who aimto determine the characteristics of their offspring, has made a comeback. The“right of the child to choose its parents,” fanciful when asserted by Ellen Keyat the turn of the twentieth century, is now seriously asserted as lawsuits onbehalf of handicapped children charge parents with “wrongful birth.” Clearlythese new technologies bring new dangers as well as new opportunities tomothers and families.

The desire for children is encouraged by some aspects of Europe’s post-industrial culture. Unlike their American contemporaries, Western Europeanwomen and men are now reevaluating the work ethic that defines individu-al worth through career success and financial gain. The demand for 35-hourwork weeks, long vacations, and early retirement ages expresses a deep andwidespread desire for more time to develop the emotional and affective sideof life. More than ever, the home is a retreat from the workplace, and thefamily—which now exists in many different forms—is an environment forself-realization. Western adults still associate children with the qualities thatthey miss in themselves—spontaneity, curiosity, energy, imagination. Thus, asElisabeth Beck-Gernsheim points out, contemporary parents expect thatchild-rearing will fulfill their emotional needs and help them to live richer andmore balanced life. “From their children they expect a kind of salvation,”writes Beck-Gernsheim of some parents, “and a cure for the pathologies ofadulthood.”26

This brings us to the question we have addressed repeatedly in this book—why have children? According to the French historian Philippe Ariès, aprofound attitudinal change may shape child-rearing and family life in thetwenty-first century. As we have seen, the twentieth century began as “the cen-tury of the child.” The fall in birthrates and the decrease in the number ofchildren per family—a trend that by the 1920s was common to all socialclasses—was motivated largely by concern for the child as an individual.Careful investment in the health and education of its children often servedthe interests of the family in upward social mobility. Ariès sees the “babyboom” after World War II as a response to unprecedented prosperity andsecurity. It was also a period when the renewal of family life and reproductionhad a strong emotional and political appeal. For Ariès the low birthrates after1970 represent a new pattern. They might also be interpreted as the contin-uation of a cultural trend that began in the 1920s—the redefinition of par-enthood from a duty to a form of self-fulfillment. Today the planning ofreproduction focuses less than in the early years of the twentieth century onthe welfare of the child and more on that of the parents, for whom child-rearingis but one of many priorities. As the family unit becomes less stable, more-over, the investment in its future through the rearing of a new generationbecomes less important. This does not, of course, mean that today’s parentsdo not love their children. However, they tend to integrate the child into a

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total life-plan—in the words of Ariès, as “one of the various componentswhich make it possible for adults to blossom as individuals.”27

In social policy, too, the child is no longer the supreme concern.28 In part,this is due to striking improvements in child health. High death rates andpoor health among infants and children no longer threaten the survival ofnations. Public attention is now focused on other periods of life—on thefetus and the gene, which are the objects of medical, scientific, and religiouscontroversy, and upon the elderly, the fastest-growing group in all Westernsocieties. If these trends continue, the twenty-first century will not be “thecentury of the child.” But what it will be, only time will tell.

Whatever the future may bring, feminists in the present face many of thesame challenges as were confronted by the generations whose lives and workwe have considered. The “maternal dilemma” is not only still present, but isexperienced by an increasing number of women. For the near future, at least,it will continue, for both women’s desire for children and their drive for indi-vidual self-realization are trends that are here to stay. In their approach tothese issues, present-day feminists must wrestle with the same problems thatperplexed earlier generations. How should we reconcile the social with theindividual dimensions of reproduction? How can we emphasize the impor-tance of motherhood as a “social function” while still defending it as an indi-vidual and personal decision? How can reproductive freedom be protectedagainst the new pressures that may result in the future, as in the past, fromnatalist pressures? How can women’s claims to equal opportunity in theworkplace be reconciled with their special needs as mothers? How can wecreate a child-friendly society without discriminating against those who preferto remain childless? What new forms of family and community life will enableboth men and women to participate in the joys and stresses of child-rearing?What are the opportunities offered to women by new reproductive technolo-gies, and what are the dangers? In our approach to these questions, our knowl-edge of history provides us with invaluable resources. We can be guided bythe wisdom of past generations and learn from their rich legacy.

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I

1. Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House, in Eleven Plays of Henrik Ibsen (New York:Random House, n.d.), Act III.

2. Nelly Roussel, untitled article, Les Annales de L’Arriège, July 19, 1905, in clippingscollection, Fonds Roussel, Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand, Paris (BMD).

3. Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann, and Claudia Koonz, “Introduction,” inRenate Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann, and Claudia Koonz, eds., When BiologyBecame Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York: MonthlyReview Press, 1984), xi–xiv (quotation xii).

4. Denise Riley, “Am I That Name?” Feminism and the Category of “Women” inHistory (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 58, 97.

5. Ellen Key, Über Liebe und Ehe, trans. Frances Maro (Berlin: Fischer, 1906), 222.6. “Maternité esclave,” quoted in Yvonne Knibiehler, La Révolution maternelle:

Femmes, maternité, citoyenneté depuis 1945 (Paris: Perrin, 1997), 171; see alsoYolanda Astarita Patterson, Simone de Beauvoir and the Demystification ofMotherhood (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1989), 25.

7. Karen Offen, “Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism in Fin-de-Siècle France,”American Historical Review 89 (June 1984): 648–676 (quotation 654).

8. Karen Offen, “Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach,” Signs14 (1988): 119–158 (quotation 152).

9. Joan Wallach Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights ofMan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), passim.

10. Riley, “Am I That Name?,” 1–17.11. Karen Offen, “Challenging Male Hegemony: Feminist Criticism and the

Context for Women’s Movements in the Age of European Revolutions andCounter-Revolutions,” in Sylvia Paletschek and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, eds.,Women’s Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: A EuropeanPerspective (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 11–30.

12. Hubertine Auclert, “Les Femmes dans l’État,” in Le Vote des Femmes (Paris:Giard and Brière, 1908), 22–26 (quotation 22).

13. Spain was ruled by dictatorships from 1923 to 1931 and from 1939 to 1975;Portugal from 1926 to 1974; Italy from 1922 to 1945; Germany from 1933 to1945.

14. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin andSpread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso, 1991).

15. Cf. Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’sMovement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).

16. Cf. George M. Fredrickson, “From Exceptionalism to Variability: RecentDevelopments in Cross-National History,” The Journal of American History 82(September 1995): 587–604; Ian Tyrell, “Ian Tyrell Responds,” AmericanHistorical Review 96 (October 1991): 1068–1072; Hartmut Kaelble, Der

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historische Vergleich: Eine Einführung zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurtam Main: Campus Verlag, 1999).

17. Theda Skocpol, “The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry,”Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (April 1980): 174–197.

18. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and HistoricalDifference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 3; cf. SylviaPaletschek and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, “Concepts and Issues,” in Paletschekand Pietrow-Ennker, eds., Women’s Emancipation Movements, 3–10.

19. John Knodel and Etienne van de Walle, “Lessons from the Past: PolicyImplications of Historical Fertility Studies,” in Ansley J. Coale and Susan CottsWatkins, eds., The Decline of Fertility in Europe: The Revised Proceedings of aConference on the Princeton European Fertility Project (Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1986), 390–419.

20. Collections of articles: Ulla Wikander, Alice Kessler-Harris, and Jane Lewis, eds.,Protecting Women: Labor legislation in Europe, the United States, and Australia,1880–1920 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1995); Seth Koven andSonya Michel, eds., Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Originsof Welfare States (New York: Routledge, 1993); Gisela Bock and Pat Thane, eds.,Maternity and Gender Policies: Women and the Rise of the European WelfareStates, 1880s–1950s (London and New York: Routledge, 1991); Jane Lewis, ed.,Women and Social Policies in Europe: Work, Family and the State (Aldershot:Edward Elgar, 1993); Valerie Fildes, Lara Marks, and Hilary Marland, eds.,Women and Children First: International Maternal and Infant Welfare,1870–1945 (London and New York: Routledge, 1992); Paletschek and Pietrow-Ennker, eds., Women’s Emancipation Movements; Johanna Gehmacher, ElizabethHarvey, and Sophia Kernlein, eds., Zwischen Kriegen: Nationen, Nationalismenund Geschlechterverhältnisse in Mittel- und Osteuropa, 1918–1939 (Osnabrück:Fibre, 2004); Mary Jo Maynes et al., eds., Gender, Kinship, Power: A Comparativeand Interdisciplinary History (New York: Routledge, 1996). Comparative works:Susan Pedersen, Family, Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britainand France, 1914–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993);Alisa Klaus, Every Child a Lion: The Origins of Maternal and Infant HealthPolicy in the US and France, 1890–1920 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,1993); Silke Neunsinger, Die Arbeit der Frauen—Die Krise der Männer: DieErwerbstätigkeit verheirateter Frauen in Deutschland und Schweden, 1919–1939(Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2001); Teresa Kulawik, Wohlfahrtsstaat undMutterschaft: Schweden und Deutschland, 1870–1912 (Frankfurt am Main: CampusVerlag, 1999); Wiebke Kolbe, Elternschaft im Wohlfahrtsstaat: Schweden und dieBundesrepublik im Vergleich, 1945–2000 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2002);Karen Offen, European Feminisms 1700–1950: A Political History (Stanford,CA: Stanford University Press, 2000); Richard J. Evans, The Feminists: Women’sEmancipation Movements in Europe, America, and Australasia, 1840–1920(London and New York: Croom Helm and Barnes and Noble Books, 1977).

21. Richard J. Evans, The Feminist Movement in Germany, 1894–1933 (London: SagePublications, 1976), 115–175, 235–281; Marie-Louise Janssen-Jurreit,“Nationalbiologie, Sexualreform, und Geburtenrückgang—Über dieZusammenhänge von Bevölkerungspolitik und Frauenbewegung um dieJahrhundertwende,” in Gabriele Dietze, ed., Die Überwindung der Sprachlosigkeit:Texte aus der neuen Frauenbewegung (Darmstadt and Neuwied: Luchterhand,1979), 139–175; Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family,and Nazi Politics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), 1–51 and passim.

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22. Anna Davin, “Imperialism and Motherhood,” History Workshop 5 (1978): 9–65.23. Karen Offen, “Minotaur or Mother? The Gendering of the State in early

Third Republic France,” Conference on “Gender and the Origins of the WelfareState,” Harvard University, 1987, mimeographed. I am grateful to the author forallowing me to use this unpublished typescript. See also Offen, “Exploringthe Sexual Politics of Republican Nationalism,” in Robert Tombs, ed., Nationhoodand Nationalism in France from Boulangism to the Great War, 1889–1918(New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 195–209.

24. Elisabeth Badinter, Mother Love: Myth and Reality: Motherhood in ModernHistory [1980] (New York: Macmillan, 1981), 4.

25. Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, “Introduction: Mother Worlds,” in Koven andMichel, eds., Mothers of a New World, 1–42 (quotation 2).

26. See e.g., Carol Smart, “Disruptive Bodies and Unruly Sex: The Regulation ofReproduction and Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century,” in Carol Smart, ed.,Regulating Womanhood: Historical Essays on Marriage, Motherhood, and Sexuality(London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 7–32 and other essays in this volume;and Anna Davin, Growing Up Poor: Home, School and Street in London,1870–1914 (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1996), 208–215.

27. Hubertine Auclert, “Programme électoral des femmes,” La Citoyenne(August 1885), cited in Karen Offen, “Minotaur or Mother?”

28. Badinter, Mother Love, xxiii.29. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural

Selection (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), 288–317 (quotation 316).30. Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood; A Social History of Family Life (New York:

Knopf, 1962); Hugh Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Societysince 1500 (London and New York: Longman, 1995).

31. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan [1651], in Edwin A. Burtt, ed., The EnglishPhilosophers from Bacon to Mill (New York: Random House, 1967), 193.

32. George Alter, “Theories of Fertility Decline: a Non-Specialist’s Guide tothe Current Debate,” in John R. Gillis, Louise A. Tilly, and David Levine, eds.,The European Experience of Declining Fertility, 1850–1970: The Quiet Revolution(Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992), 13–27; John C. Caldwell, “The DelayedWestern Fertility Decline: An Examination of English-Speaking Countries,”Population and Development Review 25 (September 1999): 479–513; RonLesthaeghe and Chris Wilson, “Modes of Production, Secularization, andthe Pace of the Fertility Decline in Western Europe,” in Coale and Watkins, eds.,The Decline of Fertility in Europe, 261–292.

33. See the chart in Bock and Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies, 17; andSimon Szreter, “Falling Fertilities and Changing Sexualities in Europe since c. 1980:A Comparative Survey of National Demographic Patterns,” in Franz X. Eder,Lesley A. Hall, and Gert Hekma, eds., Sexual Cultures in Europe: Themes inSexuality (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 159–194.

34. Francine van de Walle, “Infant Mortality and Demographic Transition,” in Coaleand Watkins, eds., The Decline of Fertility in Europe, 201–233; and John Knodel,“Demographic Transitions in German Villages,” in Coale and Watkins, eds.,The Decline of Fertility in Europe, 337–389.

35. Cunningham, Children and Childhood, 177.36. Cf. Viviana Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of

Children (New York: Basic Books, 1985).37. Hubertine Auclert, Les Femmes au gouvernail [1914] (Paris: Marcel Giard,

1923), 327.

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38. Cf. Caldwell, “The Delayed Western Fertility Decline.”39. H.G. Wells, Socialism and the Family (London: A.C. Fifield, 1906), 57; on

the legal revolution see e.g., George K. Behlmer, Child Abuse and Moral Reformin England, 1870–1908 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982); AnnaDavin, Growing Up Poor, 199–217; Edward Ross Dickinson, The Politics ofGerman Child Welfare from the Empire to the Federal Republic (Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1996).

40. Cf. Jacques Donzelot, The Policing of Families, trans. Robert Hurley (New York:Pantheon Books, 1979).

41. “Amended Draft: Declaration of the Rights of the Child,” quoted in Edward Fuller,The Rights of the Child: A Chapter in Social History (Boston, MA: Beacon Press,1951), 74.

42. For example, Davin, Growing Up Poor, 208–214.43. Offen, “Challenging Male Hegemony,” 18.44. Lady Sybil Smith, “Men are Men and Women are Women,” Votes for Women,

August 26, 1910.45. Mabel Atkinson, The Economic Foundations of the Women’s Movement (London:

Fabian Society, 1914), 22, 24; see also Riley, “Am I that Name?” 55–56.46. Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, Woman and the Law: A Series of Four Letters by

Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy (London: Women’s Emancipation Union, 1896), 6.47. Helene Stöcker, “Die neue Mutter,” in Stöcker, Die Liebe und die Frauen

(Minden: J.C.C. Bruns Verlag, 1905), 75–83 (quotation 76).48. Mrs. Donald Shaw, “Woman’s Sphere—Past, Present and Future,” The Vote,

February 24, 1912.49. Lenore Davidoff, “The Family in Britain,” in F.M.L. Thompson, ed., The

Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750–1950, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1990), 71–129.

50. Shaw, “Woman’s Sphere.”51. Wells, Socialism and the Family, 31.52. Cf. Shari Thurer, The Myths of Motherhood: How Culture Reinvents the Good

Mother (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 225.

“A W”: M P H

1. Ellis Ethelmer (Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy), Woman Free (Congleton:Women’s Emancipation Union, 1893), 5. For another discussion of the materialcontained in this chapter, see Ann Taylor Allen, “Feminism, Social Science, andthe Meanings of Modernity: The Debate on the Origins of the Family in Europeand the United States, 1860–1914,” American Historical Review 104 (1999):1085–1113.

2. John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women [1859], rpt. in Millicent GarretFawcett, ed., On Liberty, Representative Government, The Subjection of Women(New York: Oxford, 1912), 432.

3. Ernest Legouvé, Histoire Morale des Femmes (Paris: Didier, 1874), 7, 247; seealso Karen Offen, “Ernest Legouvé and the Doctrine of ‘Equality andDifference’ for Women: A Case Study of Male Feminism in Nineteenth-CenturyFrench Thought,”Journal of Modern History 58 (1986): 452–484.

4. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (New York:D. Appleton, 1897), 597.

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5. Odette Laguerre, “Le Droit de la mère,” La Fronde, August 1, 1903.6. Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State [1883]

(New York: International Publishers, 1942) (no translator given), 8.7. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan [1651], in Edwin A. Burtt, ed., The English

Philosophers from Bacon to Mill (New York: Random House, 1939), 193.8. Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel, On Improving the Status of Women [1792], trans.

and with an introduction by Timothy F. Sellner (Detroit, MI: Wayne StateUniversity Press, 1979), 93.

9. E.A. Casaubon, La Femme est la famille (Paris: Chez Gautier, 1834), 8; cf. ClaireGoldberg Moses, “The Evolution of Feminist Thought in France, 1829–1889,”Ph.D. diss, George Washington University, 1978, 200–206; and Susan K. Grogan,French Socialism and Sexual Difference: Women and the New Society, 1803–1844(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992).

10. Susan Groag Bell and Karen M. Offen, eds., Women, The Family, and Freedom:The Debate in Documents, Vol. 1 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983).

11. Henry Sumner Maine, Ancient Law [1861] (London and New York: J.M. Dent),1954, 100. See also Rosalind Coward, Patriarchal Precedents: Sexuality and SocialRelations (London and Boston, MA: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), 35–44;and Adam Kuper, “The Rise and Fall of Maine’s Patriarchal Theory,” in AlanDiamond, ed., The Victorian Achievement of Sir Henry Maine: A CentennialReappraisal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 99–110.

12. Lionel Gossman, Basel in the Age of Burckhardt: A Study in Unseasonable Ideas(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 109–200.

13. For example, Paula Webster, “Matriarchy: A Vision of Power,” in Rayna RappReiter, ed., Toward an Anthropology of Women (New York: Monthly ReviewPress, 1975), 141–156. “Bachofen’s work has been appropriately criticized forits lack of empirical data and its substitution of mythology for history” (p. 143).Of course, very little empirical data was available before 1861!

14. Johann Jakob Bachofen, “Lebens-Rückschau” [1854], in Johann JakobBachofen, Mutterrecht und Urreligion: Eine Auswahl, ed. Rudolf Marx (Stuttgart:A. Kroner, 1954), 1–18; in English translation as “My Life in Retrospect,” inJohann Jakob Bachofen, Myth, Religion, and Mother-Right: Selected Writings ofJ. J. Bachofen, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1967), 3–21 (quotation 11).

15. The original edition is Johann Jakob Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht: eine Untersuchungüber die Gynaicratie der alten Welt nach ihrer religiösen und rechtlichen Natur(Stuttgart: Krais and Hoffmann, 1861); it is reprinted in Johann Jakob Bachofensgesammelte Werke, Vols. 2 and 3 (Basel: B. Schwabe, 1943). A useful English-language compilation of excerpts from Bachofen’s unwieldy opus is Johann JakobBachofen, Myth, Religion, and Mother-Right: Selected Writings of J. J. Bachofen,trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 1967.

16. Bachofen, Myth, Religion, and Mother-Right, 79 (quotations are from the Englishtranslation of Ralph Manheim).

17. Bachofen, Myth, Religion, and Mother-Right, 80.18. Bachofen, Myth, Religion, and Mother-Right, 100.19. Bachofen, Myth, Religion, and Mother-Right, 109.20. Joan Bamberger, “The Myth of Matriarchy,” in Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo

and Louise Lamphere, eds., Woman, Culture and Society (Stanford, CA: StanfordUniversity Press, 1974), 265; see also Coward, Patriarchal Precedents, 34.

21. Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society: Researches in the Lines of Human Progress,from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization (London: Routledge Thoemmes,

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1897), 347; John Lubbock, The Origins of Civilization and the Primitive Conditionof Man, Mental and Social Condition of Savages (London: Longmans, Green andCo., 1870); John Ferguson McLennan, Primitive Marriage: An Inquiry into theOrigin of the Form of Capture in Marriage Ceremonies [1865] (Chicago, IL:University of Chicago Press, 1970). See also Elizabeth Fee, “The Sexual Politicsof Victorian Anthropology,” in Mary Hartman and Lois W. Banner, eds., Clio’sConsciousness Raised: New Perspectives on the History of Women (New York:Harper and Row, 1974), 86–102, 94; and Thomas R. Trautmann, Lewis HenryMorgan and the Invention of Kinship (Berkeley, CA: University of CaliforniaPress, 1987), 179–204.

22. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, 50.23. August Bebel, Die Frau in der Vergangenheit, Gegenwart, und Zukunft, Zürich

(J. Schabelitz) 1883; English translation Woman in the Past, Present and Future(New York: J.W. Lovell, 1887); Paul Lafargue, La Question de la femme (Paris:Édition de “l’Oeuvre Nouvelle,” 1904). On socialist theories of primal matriarchysee Françoise Picq, “Sur la théorie du droit maternel: Discours anthropologiqueet discours socialistes,” Ph.D. diss, Université Paris IX, 1979.

24. Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology [1876], Vol. 1 (New York: Appleton,1901), 654.

25. Edward Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage [1891] (London:Macmillan, 1903), 117.

26. Otis Tufton Mason, Woman’s Share in Primitive Culture (New York: D. Appleton,1899), 281–282.

27. Mona Caird, The Morality of Marriage and Other Essays on the Status and Destinyof Women (London: C. Redway, 1897), 23.

28. Cicely Hamilton, A Pageant of Great Women [1910] (London, n.p., 1948).29. Aline Valette, Socialisme et sexualisme: Programme du Parti Socialiste Féminin

(Paris: A-M. Baudelot, 1893), 68.30. Valette, Socialisme et sexualisme, 92.31. Valette, Socialisme et sexualisme, 54; see also Marilyn Boxer, “Au service de la

Patrie: Motherhood and French Socialism,” paper presented at American HistoricalAssociation, January 5, 2002.

32. Céline Renooz, “Ma vocation scientifique,” in BHP, Collection Marie-LouiseBouglé, Fonds Renooz, “Predestinée: L’Autobiographie de la femme cachée”(unpub. ms, n.d). This is a hand-written manuscript in several volumes. See alsoJames Smith Allen, Poignant Relations: Three Modern French Women (Baltimore,MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 116–151; and Laurence Klejmanand Florence Rochefort, L’Egalité en marche: Le féminisme sous la troisièmeRépublique (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques desfemmes, 1989), 304–337.

33. Cf. Allen, Poignant Relations, 135.34. Céline Renooz, La Réligion naturelle restituée (Paris: Publications néosophiques,

1907).35. Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thompson, The Evolution of Sex [1889] (New

York: Scribner, 1890), 26–29, 271; see also Lucy Bland, Banishing the Beast:Sexuality and the Early Feminists (New York: New Press, 1995), 77–78.

36. Céline Renooz, Psychologie comparée de l’homme et de la femme (Paris:Bibliothèque de la Nouvelle Encyclopédie, 1989), 540.

37. Céline Renooz, L’Ère de vérité: Histoire de la pensée humaine, Vol. 2, Le Mondeancien (Paris: Marcel Giard, 1924), 10.

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38. Céline Renooz, “Renaissance morale,” brochure, n.d. in BMD, Dossier CélineRenooz.

39. J.J. Bachofen, Le Droit de la mère dans l’antiquité. Préface de l’ouvrage “DasMutterrecht” de J.J. Bachofen, trans. Groupe français d’études féministes (Paris:GFEF, 1903).

40. For more documentation, see BHVP, Collection Bouglé, Fonds Mme. BlancheFournet-Kaindler. Fournet-Kaindler was a disciple of Renooz who seems to haveplayed a considerable role in commissioning and publicizing the translation. A letterfrom the Danish Women’s Council (Dansk Kvinderad) to Fournet-Kaindler,dated July 2, 1903, states that the organization has received a copy of the translationand has placed it in its library. See also a review of Le Droit de la mère dansl’antiquité in Schweizerische Pädagogische Zeitschrift (March 16, 1906): 133.

41. J. Hellé, “Matriarcat et gynécocratie” (series title): “Le Mot et la chose,” LaFronde, October 19, 1903; “Éden,” La Fronde, December 1, 1903; “Paternité,maternité,” La Fronde, January 1, 1904; Odette Laguerre, “Le Droit de laMère,” La Fronde, July 10, 1904.

42. Hubertine Auclert, Les Femmes au Gouvernail [1914] (Paris: Giard and Brière,1923), 312–316.

43. Hubertine Auclert, Le Vote des femmes (Paris: Giard and Brière, 1908), 10.44. Nelly Roussel, editorial in Les Annales de l’Arriège, 1905, in clippings file, Fonds

Roussel, BMD.45. Jeanne Oddo-Deflou, Le Sexualisme: Critique de la préponderance et de la mentalité

du sexe fort (Paris: Librairie Illustrée, 1906), vii, 184.46. J. Hellé, “Le Mot et la chose.”47. Renooz, “Mémoirs.”48. Madeleine Pelletier, La Femme en lutte pour ses droits (Paris: Giard and Brière,

1908), 37.49. Carol Dyhouse, Feminism and the Family in England, 1880–1939 (Oxford:

Blackwell, 1989), 68–72.50. Caird, Morality of Marriage, 24–26.51. Caird, Morality of Marriage, 50.52. Caird, Morality of Marriage, 153.53. Ruth First and Ann Scott, Olive Schreiner: A Biography (London: The Women’s

Press, 1980), 289–290.54. Bland, Banishing the Beast, 167–168; Diana Basham, The Trial of Woman:

Feminism and the Occult Sciences in Victorian Literature and Society (Basingstoke:MacMillan, 1992), 178–236.

55. George Robb, “Eugenics, Spirituality and Sex Differentiation in EdwardianEngland: The Case of Frances Swiney,” Journal of Women’s History 10 (Fall 1998):108–109.

56. Frances Swiney, “Motherhood versus Womanhood,” The Malthusian, November 15,1909.

57. Frances Swiney, The Bar of Isis or the Law of the Mother (London: C.W. Daniel,1909), 53, 43. See also Swiney, The Awakening of Woman, or Woman’s Role inEvolution (London: William Reeves, 1908), 119–163.

58. Swiney, “Motherhood versus Womanhood.”59. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Primal Power,” The Suffragette, June 6, 1913.60. H. Rider Haggard, She [1887], ed. Daniel Karlin (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1991), 255–256; see also Elaine Showalter, Sexual Anarchy: Gender andCulture at the Fin de Siècle (New York: Viking, 1990), 82–88.

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61. Walter Besant, The Revolt of Man (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1882), cited inShowalter, Sexual Anarchy, 45.

62. H.G. Wells, Ann Veronica [1909] (London: Everyman, 1993), 29.63. Emilia Pardo Bazan, “La Educación del Hombre y de la Mujer: Sus Relaciónes y

Diferencias” [1892], in Leda Schiavo, ed., La Mujer Española (Madrid: EditoraNacional, 1981), 71–97 (quotation 75). On Pardo Bazan’s life and career, seeLeda Schiavo, “Introducción,” La Mujer Española, 7–23. On the reception ofthese theories by Greek feminists, see Eleni Varikas, “National and GenderIdentity in Turn-of-the-Century Greece,” in Sylvia Paletschek and BlanchPietrow-Emkers, eds., Women’s Emancipation Movements in the NineteenthCentury: A European Perspective (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,2004), 263–279.

64. Selma Sevenhuijsen, De Orde van het vaderschap: Politieke debatten overungehuwd moederschap, afstamming en huwelijk in Nederland, 1870–1900(Amsterdam: Stichting Beheer, 1987), 266–267; see also Selma Sevenhuijsen,“Mothers as Citizens: Feminism, Evolutionary Theory, and the Reform ofDutch Family Law, 1870–1910,” in Carol Smart, ed., Regulating Womanhood:Historical Essays on Marriage, Motherhood, and Sexuality (London andNew York: Routledge, 1992), 166–186.

65. “Frances Swiney’s ‘Het Ontwaken der Vrouw’ ” Evolutie, June 25, 1902.66. Wilhelmine Drucker, “Vader- en Moederschap VI,” Evolutie, February 13, 1895.67. Wilhelmine Drucker, “Vader- en Moederschap VII,” Evolutie, February 20, 1895.68. Sevenhuijsen, De Orde van het vaderschap, 142.69. Drucker, “Vader- en Moederschap VII.”70. Louis Frank, Essai sur la condition politique de la femme: Étude de sociologie et de

législation (Paris: Arthur Rousseau, 1892), xi.71. Frank, Essai sur la condition politique, xvi.72. Ellen Key, The Renaissance of Motherhood [1914], trans. Anna B. Fries (New York

and London: Source Book Press, 1970), 102–103, 23.73. Key, Renaissance of Motherhood, 27.74. Key, Renaissance of Motherhood, 26.75. Key, Renaissance of Motherhood, 27.76. Key, Das Jahrhundert des Kindes: Studien von Ellen Key [1901], trans. Frances

Maro (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1905), 42.77. Helene Stöcker, Die Liebe und die Frauen (Minden: C.C.H. Bruns, 1906), 178.78. Ann Taylor Allen, “Mothers of the New Generation: Helene Stöcker, Adele

Schreiber, and the Evolution of a German Ideal of Motherhood,”Signs 10(Spring 1985): 418–438; Allen, Feminism and Motherhood in Germany, 1800–1914(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 174–185; Bernd Nowacki,Der Bund für Mutterschutz 1905–1933 (Husum: Mathiessen, 1983).

79. See Bré’s statement in Berliner Tageblatt, February 7, 1905.80. Stöcker, “B.F.M.” in “Lebensabriss,” unpublished typescript, SPC, Helene

Stöcker Papers.81. “Erste öffentliche Versammlung in Berlin,” Mutterschutz (1905): 45–48

(quotation 47).82. Stöcker, Die Liebe und die Frauen, 178,83. Helene Stöcker, “Zur Reform der sexuellen Ethik,” Mutterschutz (1905): 3–11.84. Lily Braun, Die Frauenfrage: Ihre geschichtliche Entwicklung und ihre wirtschaftliche

Seite [1901] (Berlin: J.H.W. Dietz, 1979), 7.

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85. Lily Braun, “Das Problem der Ehe,” Neue Gesellschaft 1 (1905); rpt. in Braun,Selected Writings on Feminism and Socialism, trans. and ed., Alfred G. Meyer(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987), 124–128 (quotation 125).

86. Braun, “Das Problem der Ehe,” 126.87. Braun, “Das Problem der Ehe,” 128.88. Marianne Weber, Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild [1926] (Heidelberg: L. Schneider,

1950), 412; English translation: Marianne Weber, Max Weber: A Biography,trans. and ed. Harry Zohn (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1975), 373.

89. Marianne Weber, “Die historische Entwicklung des Eherechts,” in Frauenfragenund Frauengedanken: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1919),10–19. On Marianne Weber see Guenther Roth, “Marianne Weber and herCircle,” introduction to Marianne Weber, Max Weber (New Brunswick, NJ:Rutgers University Press, 1988).

90. Marianne Weber, Ehefrau und Mutter in der Rechtsentwicklung: Eine Einführung(Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1907), 24–79.

91. See Marie-Luise Angerer, “The Discourse on Female Sexuality in Nineteenth-century Austria,” in David F. Good, Margarete Grandner, and Mary Jo Maynes,eds., Austrian Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Providence, RI:Berghahn Books, 1996), 179–195; Harriet Anderson, Utopian Feminism:Women’s Movements in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (New Haven, CT: Yale UniversityPress, 1992), 228–237.

92. Grete Meisel-Hess, Betrachtungen zur Frauenfrage (Berlin: Prometheus, 1914),239, 240–241.

93. Marianne Hainisch, Die Mutter (Vienna: Verlag von Hugo Heller, 1913), 32.94. Rosa Mayreder, “Mutterschaft und doppelte Moral,” in Adele Schreiber, ed.,

Mutterschaft: Ein Sammelwerk für die Probleme der Frau als Mutter (Munich:Albert Langen Verlag, 1911), 156–162 (quotation 161).

95. Mayreder, “Mutterschaft und doppelte Moral,” 162.96. Stöcker, Die Liebe und die Frauen, 83.97. Otto Weininger, Geschlecht und Charakter [1903] (Vienna and Leipzig: Wilhelm

Braumueller, 1905), 295–296; Nancy A. Harrowitz and Barbara Hyams, eds., Jewsand Gender: Responses to Otto Weininger (Philadelphia, PA: Temple UniversityPress, 1995).

98. Ludwig Klages, Vom kosmogonischen Eros [1922] (Bonn: Bouvier, 1963), 226;Karlhans Kluncker, Das geheime Deutschland: über Stefan George und seinenKreis (Bonn: Bouvier, 1985), 97–107; Wolf Lepenies, Between Literature andScience: The Rise of Sociology (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1988), 258–277; Franziska Gräfin zu Reventlow, Herrn DamesAufzeichnungen, oder Begebenheiten aus einem markwürdigen Stadtviertel[1913], in Franziska Gräfin zu Reventlow, Gesammelte Werke in einem Band, ed.Else Reventlow (Munich: Langen, 1925), 750–751.

99. Otto Gross, “Vom Konflikt des eigenen und fremden” [1914], in Otto Gross,Von geschlechtlicher Not zur sozialen Katastrophe, ed. Kurt Kreiler (Frankfurt amMain: Robinson, 1980), 27–31 (quotation 27) and other essays in this volume.For historical background, see Martin Green, The von Richthofen Sisters: TheTriumphant and the Tragic Modes of Love: Else and Frieda von Richthofen, OttoGross, Max Weber and D.H. Lawrence in the Years 1870–1970 (New York: BasicBooks, 1974); and Richard Noll, The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung(New York: Random House, 1997), 69–89.

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100. Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, The Freud–Jung Letters: TheCorrespondence between Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung, ed. William McGuire,trans. Ralph Manheim and R.F.C. Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1974), 503 (Jung–Freud, May 8, 1912); see also Richard Noll, The JungCult: The Origins of a Charismatic Movement (Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1994), 151–176. Noll explains the considerable influence ofBachofen on Jung, a native of Basel whose grandfather, as rector of the univer-sity, had known the famous and eccentric scholar.

101. The Freud–Jung Letters, 504 (Jung–Freud, May 14, 1912). On Jung’s earlydevelopment and his relationship to Freud, see John Kerr, A Most DangerousMethod: The Story of Jung, Freud and Sabina Spielrein (New York: Knopf andRandom House, 1993), 105–348; and Frank McLynn, Carl Gustav Jung (NewYork: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996), 92–267.

102. C.G. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations andSymbolisms of the Libido: A Contribution to the History of the Evolution ofThought, trans. Beatrice M. Hinkle (New York: Moffat, Yard and Co., 1916),3–41, 483 (original edition C.G. Jung, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido:Beiträge zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Denkens [Leipzig: F. Deuticke, 1912]).

103. Sigmund Freud, Totem und Tabu [1913], in Freud, Gesammelte Werke chronol-ogische geordnet, Vol. 9 (London: Imago, 1940–52). Quotations are from theEnglish translation: Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo: Some Points ofAgreement between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics, trans. JamesStrachey (New York: Norton, 1952), 183, 190.

104. A few biographical facts on Hartley (1869–1929) are in Who Was Who: ACompanion to “Who’s Who” Containing the Biographies of Those who Died dur-ing the Period 1916–1928 (London: Adam and Charles Black, Limited, 1929),469–470.

105. Catherine Gasquoine Hartley, The Truth about Woman (New York: Dodd,Mead and Co., 1913); Hartley, The Position of Woman in Primitive Society: AStudy of the Matriarchy (London: E. Nash, 1914), 266.

106. For example, by Cynthia Eller, The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why anInvented Past Won’t Give Women a Future (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2000).

107. “Le Foyer intellectuel de l’Entente,” L’Entente (January 1908).108. Helene Stöcker, Die Liebe und die Frauen, 178.109. Drucker, “Vader- en Moederschap IV,” Evolutie, January 30, 1895.

F P P:F, M, L

W E, –

1. C. Gekoop de Jong van Beek en Donk, Hilda van Suylenburg (Amsterdam:Scheitema and Holkema, 1898), 454–455. For many more examples of themotherhood issue in literature, see Jean Elisabeth Pedersen, Legislating theFrench Family: Feminism, Theater, and Republican Politics, 1870–1920(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003).

2. Grant Allen, The Woman Who Did (London and Boston, MA: John Lane andRoberts Bros., 1895), 41–42.

3. For example, Denise Riley, Am I that Name? Feminism and the Category of“Women” in History (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1988);Joan Wallach Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rightsof Man (Cambridge: Harvard, 1996). See the argument of Gisela Bock, Frauen

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in der europäischen Geschichte vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Munich:C.H. Beck, 2000), 190–200.

4. Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, “The Custody and Guardianship of Children,”The Englishwoman’s Review 134 (November 15, 1881): 491–503 (quotation 493).

5. Nelly Roussel, “Die Lage der Mutter in den verschiedenen Ländern: Frankreich,”in Adele Schreiber, ed., Mutterschaft: Ein Sammelwerk für die Probleme des Weibesals Mutter (Munich: Albert Langen Verlag, 1911), 487–493.

6. Feminists of this era used two terms: the “illegitimate child,” and the “child ofunmarried parents.” These terms will be used here to correspond as nearly aspossible with the usage of the people who are quoted or paraphrased.

7. See e.g., Elinor A. Accampo, Rachel G. Fuchs, and Mary Lynn Stewart, Genderand the Politics of Social Reform in France, 1870–1914 (Baltimore, MD: JohnsHopkins University Press, 1995).

8. See Gisela Bock and Pat Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies: Women andthe Rise of the European Welfare States, 1880s–1950s (London and New York:Routledge, 1991); Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, eds., Mothers of a New World:Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (New York and London:Routledge, 1993).

9. Odette Laguerre and Ida Sée, La Protection de l’enfance (Lyon: Sociétéd’éducation et d’action féministes, 1906), 28–30.

10. For a discussion of this trend in the American context, see Viviana A. Zelizer,Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (New York:Basic Books, 1985).

11. Edward Ross Dickinson, The Politics of German Child Welfare from the Empire tothe Federal Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 35–113;George K. Behlmer, Child Abuse and Moral Reform in England, 1870–1908(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982), 193–224; Sylvia Schafer,Children in Moral Danger and the Problem of Government in Third RepublicFrance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 25–140; Estella H.Hartshalt-Zeehandelaar, “Die Lage der Mutter in den verschiedenen Ländern:Holland,” in Schreiber, ed., Mutterschaft, 528–536; Mineke Bosch, “Historyand Historiography of First-Wave Feminism in the Netherlands, 1860–1922,” inSylvia Paletschek and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, eds., Women’s EmancipationMovements in the Nineteenth Century: A European Perspective (Stanford, CA:Stanford University Press, 2004), 53–76.

12. Laguerre and Sée, La Protection de l’enfance, 28. Cf. Jacques Donzelot, The Policingof Families, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), 45–95.

13. Frieda Duensing, Verletzung der Fürsorgepflicht gegenüber Minderjährige: EinVersuch zu ihrer strafgesetzlichen Behandlung (Munich: Schweitzer Verlag, 1903);Dickinson, The Politics of German Child Welfare, 48–80.

14. Bosch, “History and Historiography of First-Wave Feminism,” 62.15. Lily Braun, Die Frauen und die Politik (Berlin: Expedition der Buchhandlung

Vorwärts, 1903), 29, 19.16. Louis Frank, L’Éducation domestique des jeunes filles: ou la formation des mères

(Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1904), xviii.17. Mary Nash, “The Rise of the Women’s Movement in Nineteenth-Century

Spain,” in Paletschek and Pietrow-Ennker, eds., Women’s Emancipation Movements,243–262.

18. Ida Blom, “Modernity and the Norwegian Women’s Movement from the 1880sto 1914: Changes and Continuities,” in Paletschek and Pietrow-Ennker, eds.,Women’s Emancipation Movements, 125–151; cf. Donzelot, The Policing of

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Families, 20–21; and Robert van Krieken, “Social Theory and Child Welfare:Beyond Social Control,” Theory and Society (May 15, 1986): 401–429.

19. Nelly Roussel, “Pour les mères,” Almanach Féministe (1907).20. Roussel, “Frankreich,” in Schreiber, ed., Mutterschaft, 487–493 (quotation 488).21. Schafer, Children in Moral Danger, 36.22. Jeanne Oddo-Deflou, ed., Congrès national des droits civils et du suffrage des

femmes (Paris: Mme. Vincent, 1908), 124–125.23. Yvonne Kniebiehler, Les Pères aussi ont une histoire (Paris: Hachette, 1987), 176.24. Ellen Ross, Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London, 1870–1918 (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1993), 148–165.25. On the founding of these movements, see Karen M. Offen, European Feminisms

1700–1950: A Political History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000),213–250; Ann Taylor Allen, Feminism and Motherhood in Germany, 1800–1914(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991).

26. Offen, European Feminisms, 213–250: Ulla Jansz, Denken over sekse in de eerstefeministische golf (Amsterdam: Sara/Van Gennep, 1990), 87–89; Emilie Benz,“Zur Geschichte der Frauenbewegnung in der Schweiz,” in Die Frauenbewegungin der Schweiz: Sechs Vorträge veranstaltet durch die Pestalozzi-Gesellschaft (Zürich:Th. Schröter, 1902), 1–33.

27. Emilie Kempin, Die Stellung der Frau nach dem zur Zeit in Deutschland gültigenGestzes-Bestimmungen sowie nach dem Entwurf eines BGB für das deutsch Reich(Leipzig: M. Schafer, 1892).

28. Voeux adoptés par le Congrés International tenu a Paris en 1896 pendant lesjournées 8 au12 avril (Paris: Société anonyme de l’Imprimerie des Arts etManufactures, 1896), BMD, dossier Congrès International 1896.

29. Elmy, “The Custody and Guardianship,” 502.30. Mary Lyndon Shanley, Feminism, Marriage and the Law in Victorian England,

1850–1895 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton, University Press, 1989), 141–155.31. National Union of Woman Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), “Parliament and Wives

and Mothers” (London: N.U.W.S.S. Publications, October 1913).32. Ute Gerhard, Unerhört! Die Geschichte der deutschen Frauenbewegung (Hamburg:

Rowohlt, 1990), 33.33. Bund deutscher Frauenvereine, Aufruf !, LAB, B Rep. 235-0 (Archiv des BDF)

Microfiche 2764.34. Kempin, Die Stellung der Frau, 91.35. Marie Stritt, Das bügerliche Gesetzbuch und die Frauenfrage: Vortrag gehalten auf

der Generalversammlung des BDF in Hamburg im October, 1898 (Frankenberg:L. Reisel, 1898). See also Anna Schulz, “Frauenforderungen an die Gesetzgebung,”in Schreiber, ed., Mutterschaft, 672–867; Dieter Schwab, “Gleichberechtigungund Familienrecht im 20. Jahrhundert,” in Ute Gerhard, ed., Frauen in derGeschichte des Rechts von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: C.H. Beck,1997), 790–827.

36. Gertrud Woker, “Schweiz,” in Schreiber, ed., Mutterschaft, 536–544.37. Maria Deraismes, Les Droits de l’Enfant (Paris: E. Dentu, 1887), 33.38. Olga von Beschwitz, Begleitschrift zu der Petition des BDF an den Reichstag

betreffend das Familienrecht (Frankenberg: L. Reisel, 1899), 9.39. Maria Cederschiöld, Den Svenska Gifta Kvinnans rättsliga Ställning: I Familjen

och Samhället, på uppdrag af Fredrika-Bremer-Förbundets Komité för Lagfrågor(Stockholm: Aftonbladets Aktieschlags Tryckerei, 1903) (translated for me byMarja-Leena Hanninen).

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40. Louis Frank, Essai sur la condition politique de la femme: Étude de sociologie et deléglislation (Paris: Arthur Rousseau, 1892), ix.

41. Marie Popelin, “L’Autorité parentale,” La Femme Chrétienne, July 5, 1898.42. Valeria Benetti-Brunelli, La Donna nella legislazione italiana (Rome: Forzani e

C. tipografi del Senato, 1908), 32.43. Aldolfo Posada, Feminismo (Madrid: Fernando Fé, 1899), 162; on the significance

of this book see Nash, “The Rise of the Women’s Movement.”44. Mme Bérot-Berger, Congrès National (n.c., n.p., 1908), 126.45. Marianne Weber, Ehefrau und Mutter in der Rechtsentwicklung: eine Einführung

(Tübingen: Mohr, 1907), 457.46. Bérot-Berger, Congrès National, 128; Ghenia Avril de Saint-Croix, ed., Dixième

congrès international des femmes: Oeuvres et institutions féminines, droits desfemmes (Paris: V. Giard et E. Brière, 1914), 537; Beschwitz, Begleitschrift, 9.

47. Elmy, “The Custody and Guardianship,” 500.48. Jacques Bertillon, De la Dépopulation de la France et des remèdes á y apporter

(Nancy: Berger-Levrault, 1896); cf. Donzelot, The Policing of Families, 177.49. Louise Ey, “Die Lage der Mutter in den verschiedenen Ländern: Portugal,” in

Schreiber, ed., Mutterschaft, 561; João Gomes Esteves, A Liga Republicanadas Mulheres Portuguesas: Uma organização política e feminista (1909–1919)(Lisbon: Comisão para a Igualdade e para os Direitos das Mulheres, 1991),89–92.

50. Jill M. Bystydzienski, Women in Electoral Politics: Lessons from Norway(Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), 20.

51. Kari Melby, Anu Pylkkänen, Bente Rosenbeck, and Christina Carlsson Wetterberg,“The Project ‘The Nordic marriage model in a comparative perspective’ and itsmain results,” in Kari Melby, Anu Pylkkänen, Bente Rosenbeck, and ChristinaCarlsson Wetterberg, eds., The Nordic Model of Marriage and the Welfare State,Copenhagen (Nordic Council of Ministers, 2001), 13–34; Ulla Manns, “Dengifta frigörelse: Reflektioner kring röstratt och myndighet i svensk kvin-norörelse,” in Melby et al., eds., The Nordic Model, 131–146 (translated for meby Marja-Leena Hanninen).

52. Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, “Grundsätze und Forderungen derFrauenbewegung” [1907], rpt. in Die bürgerliche Frauenbewegung inDeutschland, 1894–1933 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Rupprecht, 1981), 287.

53. Ellen Key, Über Liebe und Ehe, trans. Francis Maro (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1907), 398.54. Hubertine Auclert, Les Femmes au gouvernail [1914] (Paris: V. Giard, 1923).

“Faire de la paternité incertaine, au lieu de la maternité certaine, le pivot de lafamille; mettre la tâche facile du père au-dessus du travail douloureux et sacré dela véritable créatrice . . . est une absurdité autant qu’une injustice.”

55. Nelly Roussel, untitled editorial, Les Annales de l’Arriège, July 19, 1895, BMD,Fonds Nelly Roussel, clippings file.

56. Mona Caird, The Morality of Marriage and Other Essays on the Status and Destinyof Women (London: G. Redway, 1897), 31, 152.

57. Adele Schreiber, “Uneheliche Mütter,” in Schreiber, ed., Mutterschaft, 257–277(quotation 258).

58. Ada Negri, “Maternità” quoted in Schreiber, “Uneheliche Mütter,” 257.59. Weber, Ehefrau und Mutter, 561.60. Arthur Keller and Christoph J. Klumker, eds., Säuglingsfürsorge und Kinderschutz

in den europäischen Staaten: Ein Handbuch, Vol. 1 (Berlin: Verlag Julius Springer,1912), 61, 752; Schreiber, “Uneheliche Mütter,” 259; Françoise Thébaud,

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Quand nos grand-mères donnaient la vie: La maternité en France dans l’entre-deux-guerres (Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 1986), 222.

61. Keller and Klumker, eds., Säuglingsfürsorge, vol. 1, 61, 102, 489.62. Kniebiehler, Les pères aussi, 159–174.63. Gustave Rivet, La Recherche de la paternité, Avec une préface par Alexandre

Dumas fils (Paris: Maurice Dreyfous, 1890), xxxl.64. For example, Sigrid Undset, Jenny [1911], trans. W. Emme (New York: Knopf,

1929), 214–215.65. Olga Misar. “Frauen und Mütter!” Neues Frauenleben 16 (March 1914): 65–67

(quotation 65).66. La Mutualité Maternelle de Paris: Compte Rendu (Paris: Siège Social, 1925).

This and other sources can be found in the Dossier Mutualités Maternelles,BMD. See also Alisa Klaus, Every Child a Lion: The Origins of Maternal andInfant Health Policy in the United States and France, 1890–1920 (Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 1993), 10–43; Anne Cova, Maternité et droits desfemmes en France: XIX-XXe siècles (Paris: Anthropos, 1997), 29–71; Rachel G.Fuchs, “Legislation, Poverty, and Child Abandonment in Nineteenth-CenturyParis,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18 (Summer 1987): 55–80.

67. Amalasuntha, Sexueele verhoudingen in onze moderne maatschappij (Rotterdam,n.p., 1895), in IIAV, Onderlinge Vrouwenbescherming.

68. “Zesde Jaarverslag der Vereeiniging Onderlinge Vrouwenbescherming,1902–1903,” Archief van de Vereeiniging Onderlinge Vrouwenbescherming, IIAV;Hartshalt-Zeehandelaar, “Holland,” in Schreiber, ed., Mutterschaft, 528–535.

69. Archival sources on the Bund für Mutterschutz can be found in BAK, NachlassAdele Schreiber; SPC, Helene Stöcker Papers; STAH, Medizinalkollegium II, nr. 22:Bund für Mutterschutz; and BAL, rep. 77: RdI, Bund für Mutterschutz. See alsoJansz, Denken over sekse, 89; Richard J. Evans, The Feminist Movementin Germany, 1894–1933 (London: Sage Publications, 1976), 129; ChristinaCarlsson Wetterberg, “ ‘Equal or Different: That’s Not the Question’: Women’sPolitical Strategies in Historical Perspective,” trans. Jennifer Gustafson, in Drudevon der Fehr, Bente Rosenbeck, and Anna G. Jonasdottir, eds., Is there a NordicFeminism? Nordic Feminist Thought on Culture and Society (London andPhiladelphia: UCL Press, 1998), 21–43.

70. Woker, “Schweiz,” in Schreiber, ed., Mutterschaft, 536–544.71. Joseph King, M.P., Filius Nullius (London: St. Catherine’s Press, 1913); Ivy

Pinchbeck and Margaret Hewitt, Children in English Society, From the EighteenthCentury to the Children Act 1948, Vol. 2 (London: Routledge, 1973), 582–610.

72. The Rights of Natural Children: Report of the Inaugural Proceedings of theLegitimation League (London: W. Reeves, 1893), 6.

73. Ruth Brandon, The New Women and the Old Men: Love, Sex and the WomanQuestion (New York: Norton, 1990), 124–125; Lucy Bland, Banishing the Beast:Sexuality and the Early Feminists (New York: The New Press, 1995), 156–164.

74. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, quoted in Elaine Showalter, Sexual Anarchy: Genderand Culture at the Fin de Siècle (New York: Viking, 1990), 52.

75. “The Question of Children,” The Adult 2, no. 6 (July 1898): 165–166.76. “The Question of Children,” The Adult 2, no. 7 (August 1898): 204.77. Léonie Rouzade, Petit Catéchisme de Morale Laique et Socialiste (Meudon: en

vente chez l’auteur, 1904); Roussel, “Pour les Mères,” and many other articlescontained in BMD, Fonds Roussel.

78. Chambre des Députés, no. 2524, Session de 1897, Rapport au nom de la com-mission relative à la recherche de la paternité; No. 2011, Session extraordinaire de1900, Proposition de loi relative á la recherche de la paternité, No. 2078, Session

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extraordinaire de 1900, “Rapport Rene Viviani”: No. 796, Session de 1911,“Rapport Maurice Viollette.” These and other documents are held in BMD, dossierRecherche de la Paternité. For background on these men and their ideas, seeKaren Offen, “Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism in Fin-de-Siècle France,”American Historical Review 89 (June 1984): 648–676. For an excellenthistorical account of this debate see Rachel G. Fuchs, “Seduction, Paternity, and theLaw in Fin de Siècle France,” Journal of Modern History 72 (November 2000):944–989.

79. “Rapport Maurice Viollette,” 1911. For a more detailed summary of this disputesee Cova, Maternité et Droit des Femmes, 169–177; Pederson, Legislating theFrench Family, 105–161; and Fuchs, “Seduction, Paternity, and the Law.”

80. Deuxième Congrès International des Oeuvres et Institutions Féminines (Paris:Imprimerie Typographique, 1902), 782.

81. Nelly Roussel, “Ce qu’il faut lire,” L’Action, January 22, 1906; see also Jo BurrMargadant, ed., Performing Femininity in Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley,CA: University of California Press, 2000), 218–261; Pedersen, Legislating theFrench Family, 166–170.

82. Klaus, Every Child a Lion, 30–43.83. Chambre des Députés, no. 1142, Session de 1903, “Proposition de loi réglant la

recherche de la paternité,” BMD, Dossier Recherche de la Paternité; see alsoPedersen, Legislating the French Family, 144.

84. “Rapport Maurice Violette,” 1911.85. See Paul Strauss, “La Recherche de la Paternité,” Le Droit des Femmes,

November, 1912.86. Denise de Weerdt, En de vrouwen? Vrouw, vrouwenbeweging en feminisme en

België, 1830–1960 (Gent: Masreelfonds, 1980), 78.87. Frank, Essai, 202.88. The text of the Belgian law is given in Keller and Klumker, eds., Säuglingsfürsorge,

Vol. 1, 1199–2000.89. Nellie van Kol, quoted in: Selma Sevenhuijsen, De Orde van het vaderschap:

Politieke debatten over ongehuwd moederschap, afstamming, en huwelijk inNederland 1870–1900 (Amsterdam: Stichting Beheer IISG, 1987), 149.

90. On Drucker and her career, see Fia Dieteren, “De geestilijke eenzaamheid van eenradicaal-féministe: Wilhelmina Druckers ontwikkeling tussen 1885 en 1898,” inJeske Reys, Tineke van Loosbruk, Ulla Jansz, Maria Henneman, Annemarie de Wildtand Mirjam Elias, eds., De eerste feministische golf (Nijmegen: SUN, 1985), 79–100.

91. Wilhelmine Drucker quoted in Selma Sevenhuijsen, De Orde van het Vaderschap,132; Sevenhuijsen, “Mothers as Citizens: Feminism, Evolutionary Theory andthe Reform of Dutch Family Law 1870–1910,” in Carol Smart, ed., RegulatingWomanhood: Historical Essays on Marriage, Motherhood and Sexuality (Londonand New York: Routledge, 1992), 166–186.

92. Wilhelmine Drucker, “Vader- en Moederschap V,” Evolutie, February 6, 1895.93. Sevenhuijsen, De Orde van het Vaderschap, 188–250.94. Franca Pieroni Bortolotti, Alle Origini del movemento femminile in Italia,

1849–1892 (Torino: Giulio Einaudi, 1963), 235.95. Benetti-Brunella, La Donna nella legislazione italiana, 42; Betty Baer-Stein,

“Die Lage der Frau als Mutter in den verschiedenen Ländern: Italian,” inSchrieber, ed., Mutterschaft, 510–516.

96. Louisa Ey, “Portugal,” in Schreiber, ed., Mutterschaft, 564–568.97. Gertrud Woker, “Schweiz,” in Schreiber, ed., Mutterschaft, 536–544; Susanna

Woodtli, Gleichberechtigung: Der Kampf um die politischen Rechte der Frau inder Schweiz (Frauenfeld: Huber, 1975), 111–121.

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98. Cf. Ute Gerhard, Debating Women’s Equality: Toward a Feminist Theory ofLaw from a European Perspective, trans. Allison Brown and Belinda Cooper(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 95–121.

99. Beschwitz, Begleitschrift, 12.100. Weber, Ehefrau und Mutter, 564.101. Beschwitz, Begleitschrift, 12.102. Helene Stöcker, Zehn Jahre Mutterschutz (Berlin: Oesterheld, 1915), 10.103. Stöcker, “Unsere erste Generalversammlung,” Mutterschutz (1907): 76–80;

see also Allen, Feminism and Motherhood, 173–188.104. “Mitteilungen des Bundes für Mutterschutz,” Mutterschutz (1905): 254;

see Allen, Feminism and Motherhood, 173–187.105. Helene Lange, “Die Stellung der Frauenbewegung zu Ehe und Familie,” in Die

Frauenbewegung in ihren modernen Problemen (Leipzig: Quelle und Meyer,1907), 64–77 (quotation 73–74).

106. Harriet Anderson, Utopian Feminism: Women’s Movements in fin-de-siècleVienna (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 70–71.

107. Anderson, Utopian Feminism, 111–113.108. Wetterberg, “Equal or different,” 21–43. On Ellen Key’s international impact

see Tiina Kinnunen, “Eine grosse Mutter und ihre Töchter: Ellen Key und diedeutsche Frauenbewegung,” in Meike Sophia Baader, Juliane Jacobi, andSabine Andresen, eds., Ellen Keys Reformpädagogische Vision: “Das Jahrhundertdes Kindes” und seine Wirkung (Weinheim: Beltz Verlag, 2000), 64–80; andTiina Kinnunen, “ ‘Eine der Unseren’ und ‘Königin im neuen Reiche der Frau’:Die Rezeption Ellen Keys in der Frauenbewegung des deutschen Kaiserreichs,”Ph.D. diss., Tampere University, 2000.

109. Blom, “Modernity and the Modern Norwegian Women’s Movement.”110. Ida Blom, “Voluntary Motherhood 1900–1930: Theories and Politics of a

Norwegian Feminist in an International Perspective,” in Bock and Thane, eds.,Maternity and Gender Politics, 21–39.

111. Mrs. Darré Jensen, “Illegitimate Children,” Report of the International Congressof Women (Toronto: G. Parker and Sons, 1909), 220–222 (quotation 221).

112. Katharine Anthony, Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia (New York: HenryHolt and Co., 1915), 143–204; Grace Abbott, The Child and the State, Vol. 2.(Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1938), 522–534 (partial text of law,527–532).

113. Blom, “Voluntary Motherhood,” 24.114. Camilla Jellinek, Jahresbericht der Rechtschutzstelle für Frauen und Mädchen,

Heidelberg E.v. für das Jahr 1906 (Heidelberg: n.p., 1906), 7.115. Camilla Jellinek, “Das uneheliche Kind und seine Mutter in der modernen

europäischen Gesetzgebung,” Monatsschrift für Kriminalpsychologie 10(1913–14): 141–153 (quotation 153).

E E?

1. M.A. (Mabel Atkinson), The Economic Foundations of the Women’s Movement(London: Fabian Society, 1914), 18.

2. Ute Gerhard, Unerhört!: Die Geschichte der deutschen Frauenbewegung (Hamburg:Rowohlt, 1995), 148.

3. Helene Böhlau, Halbtier! (Berlin: Fontane, 1899), 298.4. H.G. Wells, Ann Veronica [1909] (London: J.M. Dent, 1993), 160–161.

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5. To name only a few of these works: Anne Cova, Maternité et droits des femmesen France: XIX-XXe siècles (Paris: Anthropos, 1997); Alisa Klaus, Every Child aLion: The Origins of Maternal and Infant Health Policy in the United States andFrance, 1890–1920 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993); Gisela Bockand Pat Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies: Women and the Rise of theEuropean Welfare States, 1880s–1950s (London and New York: Routledge,1991); Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, “Womanly Duties: Maternalist Policiesand the Origins of Welfare States in France, Germany, Great Britain, and theUnited States, 1880–1920,” American Historical Review 95 (October 1990):1076–1108; Gisela Bock, “Poverty and Mothers’ Rights in the EmergingWelfare State,” in Georges Duby, Michelle Perrot, and Françoise Thébaud, eds.,A History of Women in the West, Vol. 5, Toward a Cultural Identity in theTwentieth Century (Cambridge: Belknap, 1994), 402–431; Karen Offen,“Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism in Fin-de-Siècle France,” AmericanHistorical Review 89 (June 1984): 648–676; Elinor A. Accampo, Rachel G.Fuchs, and Mary Lynn Stewart, eds., Gender and the Politics of Social Reform inFrance, 1870–1914 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1995); SusanPedersen, Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain andFrance, 1914–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); GiselaBock, Frauen in der europäischen Geschichte von dem Mittelalter bis zurGegenwart (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2000), 231–238.

6. Eleanor A. Accampo, “Gender, Social Policy, and the Formation of the ThirdRepublic: An Introduction,” in Accampo, Fuchs, and Stewart, eds., Gender and thePolitics of Social Reform, 1–27; Joan Wallach Scott, “ ‘L’ouvrière! Mot impie, sor-dide.’ Women workers in the Discourse of French Political Economy,” in JoanWallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia, 1988),139–163; Joan W. Scott, “The Woman Worker,” in A History of Women in the West,Vol. 4, Georges Duby, Geneviève Fraisse, and Michelle Perrot, eds., EmergingFeminism from Revolution to World War (Cambridge: Belknap, 1993), 399–426.

7. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, “Système des contradictions économiques, où philoso-phie de la misère,” as excerpted and translated in Susan Groag Bell and KarenOffen, eds., Women, the Family and Freedom: the Debate in Documents, Vol. 1(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983), 191.

8. Louise A. Tilly, Industrialization and Gender Inequality (Washington: AmericanHistorical Association, 1993), 1–14; Thane, “Visions of Gender in the Makingof the British Welfare State: The Case of Women in the British Labour Party andSocial Policy,” in Bock and Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies, 93–118.

9. John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women [1869], excerpted in Alice Rossi, ed.,The Feminist Papers, From Adams to de Beauvoir (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1973), 213.

10. Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte, 1866–1918: Arbeitswelt und Bürgergeist(Munich: C.H. Beck, 1990), 77; Pedersen, Family, Dependence, 39, 77.

11. Ellen Ross, “Mothers and the State in Britain, 1904–1914,” in John R. Gillis,Louise A. Tilly, and David Levine, eds., The European Experience ofDeclining Fertility: The Quiet Revolution (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992), 48–65(quotation 53).

12. Friedrich Naumann, “Die Frauen im neuen Wirtschaftsvolke,” Mutterschutz 2(1906): 133–149 (quotation 133).

13. Kathleen Canning, Languages of Labor and Gender: Female Factory Work inGermany 1850–1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 170–217.

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14. Scott, “The Woman Worker”; Tilly, Industrialization and Gender Equality.15. S.R. Steinmetz, “Feminismus und Rasse,” Jahrbuch für Sozialwissenschaften 7

(1904): 751–758 (quotation 763).16. Offen, “Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism in Fin-de-siècle France.”17. Elisabeth Schneider, ed., Die verheiratete Lehrerin: Verhandlungen der ersten

Internationalen Lehrerinnen-Versammlung in Deutschland (Berlin: HermannWalther, 1905), 16.

18. Alice Salomon, Charakter ist Schicksal: Lebenserinnerungen (Weinheim: BeltzVerlag, 1983), 49.

19. Helene Stöcker, “Lebensabriss,” unpublished typescript, SPC, Helene StöckerPapers. Chapter 3, 9–10.

20. Aletta Jacobs, Memories: My Life as an International Leader in Health, Suffrageand Peace (New York: Feminist Press, 1996), 120.

21. Lily Braun, Memoiren einer Sozialistin: Kampfjahre (Munich: Albert LangenVerlag, 1909), 226.

22. Elinor Accampo, “Private Life, Public Image: Motherhood and Militancy in theSelf-Construction of Nelly Roussel, 1900–1922,” in Jo Burr Margadant, ed.,The New Biography: Performing Femininity in Nineteenth-Century France(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 218–261 (quotation 237).

23. Kathleen Canning, “Gender and the Politics of Class Formation,” in Geoff Eley,ed., Society, Culture and the State in Germany (Ann Arbor, MI: University ofMichigan Press, 1996), 105–142 (quotation 135).

24. Schreiner, Woman and Labour, 68.25. Lily Braun, “Einleitung,” in Adele Schreiber, ed., Mutterschaft: Ein Sammelwerk

für die Probleme des Weibes als Mutter (Munich: Albert Langen Verlag, 1912),1–4 (quotation 2); translated as “Introduction to Motherhood,” in SelectedWritings on Feminism and Socialism, trans. and ed. Alfred G. Meyer (Bloomington,IN: Indiana University Press, 1987), 112.

26. For a sensitive discussion of these issues, see Bock, “Poverty and Mothers’Rights.”

27. August Bebel, Women and Socialism, excerpted in Rossi, ed., Feminist Papers,503–504.

28. Mona Caird, The Morality of Marriage and other Essays on the Status and Destinyof Women (London: E. Redway, 1897), 132; see also Pedersen, Family,Dependence, 25–78.

29. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, De economische toestand der vrouw: een studie over deeconomische verhouding tusschen mannen en vrouwen als een factor in dem socialeevolutie, trans. Aletta H. Jacobs (Haarlem: H.D. Tjenk Willink, 1900); CharlottePerkins Gilman, Mann und Frau: Die wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen der Geschlechterals Hauptfaktor, trans. Marie Stritt (Leipzig: Heinrich Minden, 1901).

30. Susan Zimmermann, Die bessere Hälfte? Frauenbewegungen undFrauenbestrebungen im Ungarn der Habsburgermonarchie 1848 bis 1918 (Viennaand Budapest: Promedia, 1999), 283–295; Mrs. Pember Reeves, Ethel Vaughan-Sawyer, Mrs. Spence Weiss, Mrs. Bartrick Baker, Mrs. Stansbury, Mrs. S.K. Ratliffe,Miss B.L. Hutchins, and Mrs. O’Brien Harris, eds., Summary of Eight Papersand Discussions upon the Disabilities of Mothers as Workers (n.p.: Fabian Women’sGroup, 1910), 22–24.

31. “Review of Women and Economics,” Englishwoman’s Review (October 16, 1899):272–274 (quotation 273).

32. Marie Stritt, ed., Der internationale Frauen-Kongress in Berlin 1904 (Berlin:Carl Habel, 1904), 405.

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33. Lily Braun, Frauenarbeit und Hauswirtschaft (Berlin: Verlag Expedition derBuchhandlung Vorwärts, 1901); Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economics:A Study of the Economic Relation between Men and Women as a Factor in SocialEvolution [1898], Introduction by Michael Kimmel and Amy Aronson (Berkeley,CA: University of California Press, 1998), 76–121; Schreiner, Woman andLabour, 33–68. On Lily Braun see Jean Quataert, Reluctant Feminsts: Women inGerman Social Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978);on Schreiner’s life and work see Ruth First and Ann Scott, Olive Schreiner:A Biography (London: The Women’s Press, 1980), 265–297.

34. Gilman, Women and Economics, 181.35. Cf. First and Scott, Olive Schreiner, 274.36. Lily Braun, Die Frauenfrage: ihre geschichtliche Entwicklung und ihre wirtschaftliche

Seite (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1901), 286.37. Schneider, ed., Die verheiratete Lehrerin; see also James C. Albisetti, Schooling

German Girls and Women: Secondary and Higher Education in the NineteenthCentury (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 175–178.

38. Pember Reeves et al., eds., Summary of Eight Papers, 19; for a summary of thisdiscussion, see Carol Dyhouse, Feminism and the Family in England, 1880–1939(Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 54–106.

39. Gertrud Woker, “Naturwissenshaftliche Streiflichter über das Problem Mutterschaftund Beruf,” in Schreiber, ed., Mutterschaft, 221–229.

40. Ulla Wikander, “ ‘Some Kept the Flag of Feminist Demands Waving’: Debates atInternational Conferences on Protecting Women Workers,” in Ulla Wikander,Alice Kessler- Harris, and Jane Lewis, eds., Protecting Women: Labor Legislationin Europe, the United States and Australia, 1880–1920 (Urbana, IL: UniversityOf Illinois Press, 1995), 29–62.

41. Ulla Jansz, “Women or Workers? The 1889 Labor Law and the Debate onProtective Legislation in the Netherlands,” in Wikander et al., eds., ProtectingWomen, 188–209, plus many other articles in this useful volume.

42. Mary Lynn Stewart, Women, Work and the French State: Labour Protection andSocial Patriarchy, 1879–1919 (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Press, 1989), 178–179.

43. Stewart, Women, Work, and the French State, 183.44. Alfons Fischer, “Staatliche Mutterschaftsversicherung,” in Schreiber, ed.,

Mutterschaft, 299–310.45. On regulations in each country, see Fischer, “Staatliche Mutterschaftsversicherung”;

Wikander, “Some Kept the Flag of Feminist Demands Waving”; Cova, Maternitéet droits des femmes, 121–178.

46. Conférence de la condition et des droits des femmes (Paris: Imprimerie des Arts etdes Manufactures, 1901), 70, cited by Klaus, Every Child a Lion, 130.

47. Braun, Die Frauenfrage, 547.48. “La Mutualité Maternelle de Paris: Extrait des statuts,” in La Mutualité

Maternelle de Paris: Compte rendu (Paris: Siège social, 1925); see also BMD,dossier Mutualité Maternelle; Klaus, Every Child a Lion, 111–139.

49. Annarita Buttafuoco, “Motherhood as a Political Strategy: The Role of theItalian Women’s Movement in the Creation of the Cassa Nazionale deMaternitá,” in Bock and Thane, ed., Maternity and Gender Policies, 178–195.

50. Buttafuoco, “Motherhood as a Political Strategy,” 187–195; Betty Baer-Stein,“Die Lage der Frau als Mutter in den verschiedenen Ländern: Italien,” inSchreiber, ed., Mutterschaft, 510–516.

51. Teresa Kulawik, Wohlfahrtsstaat und Mutterschaft: Schweden und Deutschland,1870–1912 (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1999), 289.

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52. Rosika Schwimmer, “Wichtige Momente in der Entwicklung des Mutterschutzesund der Mutterschaftsversicherung,” in Schreiber, ed., Mutterschaft, 371–384;Sabine Schmitt, “All these Forms of Women’s Work which Endanger PublicHealth and Public Welfare,” in Wikander et al., eds., Protecting Women, 125–149.

53. Schwimmer, “Wichtige Momente,” 379–383; Gerda Neyer, “Die Entwicklungdes Mutterschutzes in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz von 1877 bis1945,” in Ute Gerhard, ed., Frauen in der Geschichte des Rechts von der frühenNeuzeit bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1997), 744–758.

54. Braun, Die Frauenfrage, 547.55. See Alice Salomon, “Das Problem der Mutterschaftsversicherung,” Die Frau 12

(September 1902): 722–732; Henriette Fürth, Die Fabrikarbeit verheirateterFrauen (Frankfurt am Main: Eduard Schnapper, 1902), 202; Karin Hausen,“Arbeiterinnenschutz, Mutterschutz und gesetzliche Krankenversicherung imDeutschen Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik: Zur Funktion vonArbeits- und Sozialrecht für die Normierung und Stablisierung derGeschlechterverhältnisse,” in Gerhard, ed., Frauen in der Geschichte des Rechts,759–771.

56. BAK, Nachlass Adele Schreiber, Vol. 29; the petition is reprinted in HeleneStöcker, ed., Petitionen des Deutschen Bundes für Mutterschutz (Berlin:Geschäftsstelle des Bundes für Mutterschutz, 1916), 9–12; and in translation inEleanor S. Riemer and John C. Fout, eds., European Women: A DocumentaryHistory (New York: Schocken, 1980), 168–170; see also Ann Taylor Allen,“Mothers of the New Generation: Helene Stöcker, Adele Schreiber, and theEvolution of a German Idea of Motherhood, 1900–1914,” Signs 10 (Spring 1985):418–438 (quotation 429); Bock, “Poverty and Mothers’ Rights.”

57. Reichsversicherungsordnung vom 19. Juli, 1911, # III, 195–200; Schmitt, “Allthese Forms of Women’s Work”; Irene Stoehr, “Housework and motherhood:debates and policies in the women’s movement in Imperial Germany and theWeimar Republic,” in Bock and Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies,213–232; Zimmermann, Die bessere Hälfte, 188–191; Margarete Grandner, “SpecialLabor Protection for Women in Austria,” in Wikander et al., ed., Protecting Women,150–187; Schwimmer, “Wichtige Momente,” 283.

58. Neyer, “Die Entwicklung des Mutterschutzes.”59. Anne Cova, “French Feminism and Maternity: Theories and Policies,” in Bock

and Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies, 117–137; Cova, Maternité etDroits des Femmes en France, 121–178; Klaus, Every Child a Lion, 191–198;Offen, “Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism”; Rachel G. Fuchs, “TheRight to Life: Paul Strauss and the Politics of Motherhood,” in Accampo, Fuchs,and Stewart, eds., Gender and the Politics of Motherhood, 82–105.

60. Salomon, “Das Problem der Mutterschaftsversicherung,” 724.61. Gilman, Women and Economics, 286–294 (quotation 286); Braun, Frauenarbeit

und Hauswirtschaft, 21–31.62. “Natuur en dwaling,” Evolutie, January 9, 1901; Ulla Jansz, Denken over sekse in

de eerste feministische golf (Amsterdam: Sara/van Gennep, 1990), 163–169.63. Dyhouse, Feminism and the Family, 118–119; Kevin Repp, Reformers, Critics,

and the Paths of German Modernity: Anti-Politics and the Search for Alternatives,1890–1914 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 287–289.

64. Ernestine Federn, “Die Einküchenhäuser in Berlin,” Der Bund (June 1909):8–10 (quotation 9).

65. Caird, The Morality of Marriage, 153.

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66. Ada Nield Chew, “The Economic Freedom of Women,” The Freewoman,(July 18, 1912): 52.

67. Braun, Die Frauenfrage, 197.68. Valeria Babini, “Science, Feminism and Education: The Early Work of Maria

Montessori,” History Workshop (1999): 44–57; Rita Kramer, Maria Montessori:A Biography (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1988), 93–94.

69. Maria Montessori, The Secret of Childhood [1936] trans. M. Joseph Costelloe, S.J.(New York: Ballantine, 1966), 120.

70. Montessori, The Secret of Childhood, 129.71. Consiglio nazionale delle donne italiane, Atti del congresso internazionale

femminile (Roma: Torre Pelice, May 16–23, 1914), 19.72. Quoted by Kramer, Maria Montessori, 124.73. Madeleine Pelletier, L’Émancipation sexuelle de la femme (Paris: Giard and Brière,

1911), 33.74. Braun, Memoiren einer Sozialistin, Vol. 2, 396–398; Anna-E. Freier, Dem Reich

der Freiheit sollst Du Kinder gebären: Der Antifeminismus der proletarischenFrauenbewegung im Spiegel der “Gleichheit,” 1891–1917 (Frankfurt am Main:Haag und Herchen, 1981), 53–65.

75. Edmund Fischer, “Die Frauenfrage,” Sozialistische Monatshefte 9 (1905): 258–265(quotation 265); Edmund Fischer, “Die Familie,” Sozialistische Monatshefte 9(1905): 535–539 (quotation 538).

76. Jeanne Schmahl, Économie domestique (Paris: C. Larny, 1901), 15.77. Ellen Key, Mißbrauchte Frauenkraft, trans. Therese Krüger (Paris: n.p., 1898), 6.78. Ellen Key, The Renaissance of Motherhood, trans. Anna E.B. Fries (New York and

London: G.B. Putnam, 1914), 121.79. Ellen Key, Über Liebe und Ehe: Essays, trans. Francis Maro (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1906),

436–440.80. Offen, “Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism”; Fuchs, “The Right to

Life.”81. Key, The Renaissance of Motherhood, 133.82. Pember-Reeves et al., eds., Summary of Eight Papers, 18.83. Pelletier, Émancipation sexuelle, 20.84. Gertrud Bäumer, Die Frau in der Kulturbewegung der Gegenwart (Wiesbaden:

J.F. Bergmann, 1904), 31. For other responses to Key, see Tiina Kinnunen,“ ‘Eine der unseren’ und ‘Königin im neuen Reiche der Frau’: Die RezeptionEllen Keys in der Frauenbewegung des deutschen Kaiserreichs,” Ph.D. diss,University of Tampere, Finland, 2000; and Kinnunen, “Eine ‘grosse Mutter’und ihre Töchter: Ellen Key und die duetsche Frauenbewegung,” in MeikeSophia Baader, Juliane Jacobi, and Sabine Andreesen, eds., Ellen Keysreformpädagogische Vison: “Das Jahrhudert des Kindes” und seine Wirkung(Weinheim and Basel: Beltz Verlag, 2000), 64–80.

85. Gertrud Bäumer, Die Frau in volkswirtschaft und Staatsleben der Gegenwart(Stuttgart and Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1914), 281.

86. Jansz, Denken over Sekse, 179.87. Cova, Maternité et droits des femmes, 102.88. Key, Renaissance of Motherhood, 138.89. Pauline Kergomard, L’Éducation maternelle dans l’école (Paris: Hachette, 1892), 2.90. Paul Strauss, Dépopulation et puériculture (Paris: E. Fasquelle, 1901), 280.91. Wally Zepler, “Das Mutterschaftsproblem” [1906], rpt., in Gisela Brinkler-Gabler,

ed., Frauenarbeit und Beruf (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1979), 284–295 (quotation 287).

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92. Hedwig Dohm, “Gesichtspunkte für die Erziehung für die Ehe,” SozialistischeMonatshefte (1909): 639–645.

93. BMD, Dossier École des Mères; Interview with Moll-Weiss in Le Figaro,August 21, 1904.

94. Linda L. Clark, Schooling the Daughters of Marianne: Textbooks and theSocialization of Girls in Modern French Primary Schools (Albany, NY:State University of New York Press, 1984), 83–84; Klaus, Every Child aLion, 81.

95. Adolphe Pinard, La Puériculture (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1904)(quotation 125).

96. Anna Davin, “Imperialism and Motherhood,” History Workshop 5 (1978):9–65. On the Pestalozzi-Froebel Haus, see, Arbeitsgruppe “Geschichte desPestalozzi-Froebel-Hauses,” ed., Das Pestalozzi-Froebel Haus: Fachschule fürPädagogik, Berlin (Berlin: Pestalozzi-Froebel Haus, 1991).

97. Marianne Hainisch, Frauenarbeit (Vienna: Hugo Heller, 1911), 25; KätheSchirmacher, “Die Frauenarbeit im Hause: Ihre ökonomische, rechtliche undsociale Wertung” [1905], rpt., in Brinkler-Gabler, ed., Frauenarbeit und Beruf,256–275.

98. Stoehr, “Housework and Motherhood,” 216–217.99. Pember-Reeves et al., eds., Summary of Eight Papers, 6.

100. Hubertine Auclert, “La fonction maternelle rétribuée” [1914], in HubertineAuclert, Les Femmes au gouvernail (Paris: Marcel Giard, 1923), 307–316(quotation 309).

101. Offen, “Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism.”102. Robert Talmy, Histoire du mouvement familial en France, 1896–1899, Vol. 1

(Aubenas Union nationale des Caisses d’Allocations Familiales, 1962), 66–98;Jacques Bertillon, De la Dépopulation de la France et des remèdes à y apporter(Nancy: Berger-Levrault, 1896), 26; Cova, Maternité et droits des femmes,29–120.

103. Voeux adoptés par le Congrès féministe International tenu à Paris en 1896pendant les journées 8–12 avril (Paris: Société anonyme de l’Imprimerie des Artset Manufactures, 1896).

104. Marilyn Boxer, “Au Service de la Patrie: Motherhood and French Socialism,”paper presented at the American Historical Association, January 5, 2002.

105. Marilyn Boxer, “French Socialism, Feminism and the Family,” TroisièmeRépublique 3–4 (Spring–Fall 1977): 128–167 (quotation 143); LéonieRouzade, Développement du Programme de la Société ‘L’Union des Femmes’ parla Citoyenne Rouzade, 13 Avril 1880 (Paris: L’Union des Femmes, 1880); see alsoBMD, dossier Léonie Rouzade.

106. Léonie Rouzade, Petit catéchisme de morale, laïque et socialiste (Meudon:en vente chez l’auteur, 1904).

107. Nelly Roussel, “Féminisme et Fécondité,”Le Rappel, October 19, 1900.108. Cova, Maternité et droits des femmes, 169.109. Atkinson, The Economic Foundations of the Women’s Movement, 15.110. H.G. Wells, Socialism and the Family (London: A.C. Fifield, 1906), 3.111. Pat Thane, “Visions of Gender in the Making of the British Welfare State.”112. Ida Blom, “Voluntary Motherhood 1900–1930: Theories and Politics of a

Norwegian Feminist in an International Perspective,” in Bock and Thane, eds.,Maternity and Gender Policies, 21–39.

113. Stoehr, “Housework and Motherhood,” 217; Schirmacher, “Die Frauenarbeitim Hause,” 256–275; Bock, “Poverty and Mothers’ Rights,” 406–407.

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114. Cf. Bock, “Poverty and Mothers’ Rights,” 409.115. Key, Über Liebe und Ehe, 407.116. Just Sicard de Plauzoles, La Maternité et la défense contre la dépopulation (Paris:

Giard et Brière, 1909), 250.117. Yvonne Kniebiehler, L’Histoire des mères, du moyen-âge à nos jours (Paris:

Éditions Montalba, 1980), 296–297. Cf. Jacques Donzelot, The Policing ofFamilies, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), 45–47.

118. Cova, Maternité et droits des femmes, 167; Klaus, Every Child a Lion, 118–125;Davin, Imperialism and Motherhood, 36.

119. Sicard de Plauzoles, La Maternité, 280.120. Boxer, “French Socialism,” 140.121. Wells, Socialism and the Family, 59.122. Jeanne Oddo-Deflou, ed., Congrès national des droits civils et du suffrage des

femmes (Paris, 1908), 53; see also Fonds Camille Béllilon, in Fonds Bouglé,Bibliothèque Historique, Paris.

123. “Woman, Endowed or Free?” The Freewoman, February 29, 1912.124. Salomon, “Das Problem der Mutterschaftsversicherung,” 329.125. Anna Maria Mozzoni, “I socialisti e l’emanzipazione della donna” [1892],

in Anna Maria Mozzoni, La Liberazione della Donna, ed. Franca PieroniBortolotti (Milan: Gabriele Mazzotta, 1975), 213.

126. Atkinson, The Economic Foundations of the Women’s Movement, 19.127. “The Spinster, By One,” The Freewoman, November 23, 1911; see also

Lucy Bland, Banishing the Beast: Sexuality and the Early Feminists (New York:The New Press, 1995), 282.

128. Schneider, ed., Die verheiratete Lehrerin, 9.129. Key, Mißbrauchte Frauenkraft, 9.130. Adele Gerhard and Helene Simon, Mutterschaft und geistige Arbeit: Eine

psychologische und sóziologische Studie auf Grundlage einer internationalenErhebung mit Berücksichtigung der geschichtlichen Entwicklung (Berlin: GeorgReimer, 1908), 321.

131. Hedwig Dohm, “Sind Mutterschaft und Hausfrauentum vereinbar mitBerufstätigkeit?” rpt., in Brinkler-Gabler, ed., Frauenarbeit und Beruf,244–255 (quotation 254).

“T R C C P”

1. Marie Stritt, “Frauenbewegung und Neumalthusianismus,” Die Neue Generation1910, 439–446 (quotation 444).

2. Mona Caird, The Morality of Marriage and Other Essays on the Status and Destinyof Women (London: G. Redway, 1897), 135.

3. Maria Martin, “Dépopulation,” Journal des Femmes, June 1896; see also KarenOffen, “Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism in Fin-de-Siècle France,”American Historical Review 89 (June 1984): 648–676.

4. Offen, “Depopulation, Nationalism and Feminism”; see also the contributionsto Gisela Bock and Pat Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies: Women andthe Rise of the European Welfare States, 1880s–1950s (London and New York:Routledge, 1991).

5. Arthur Newsholme, M.D., The Declining Birth-Rate: Its National andInternational Significance (New York: Moffat, Yard and Co., 1911), 13.

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6. Among the many, many works that deal with this subject: Robert Talmy, Histoiredu mouvement familial en France, 1896–1939 (Aubenas: Union nationale desCaisses d’Allocations Familiales, 1962); Anne Cova, Maternité et droits desfemmes en France: XIX-XXe siècles (Paris: Anthropos, 1997), 29–71; PaulWeindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification andNazis, 1870–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); RichardSoloway, Demography and Degeneration: Eugenics and the Declining Birthrate inTwentieth-Century Britain (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North CarolinaPress, 1990), passim; Ida Blom “Voluntary Motherhood 1900–1930: Theoriesand Politics of a Norwegian Feminist in an International Perspective,” in GiselaBock and Pat Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies, 21–39. The compari-son between France and the United States made by Alisa Klaus, Every Child aLion: The Origins of Maternal and Infant Health Policy in the United States andFrance, 1890–1920 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 10–43, is veryilluminating.

7. Offen, “Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism,” 661.8. Maria Montessori, Pedagogical Anthropology, trans. Frederic Taber Cooper

(New York: Stokes, 1913), 474; see also Valeria Babini, “Science, Feminism andEducation: The Early Work of Maria Montessori,” History Workshop 49 (1999):44–57.

9. John C. Caldwell, “The Delayed Western Fertility Decline: An Examinationof English-Speaking Countries,” Population and Development Review 25(September 1999): 479–513.

10. Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, “The Marriage Law of England,” Shafts(July–September 1890), 57–60 (quotation 59).

11. Francine van de Walle, “Infant Mortality and Demographic Transition,” in Ansley J.Coale and Susan Cotts Watkins, eds., The Decline of Fertility in Europe: The RevisedProceedings of a Conference on the Princeton European Fertility Project (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 201–233; see chart, p. 212.

12. “Motherhood,” Common Cause, September 8, 1910.13. Evolutie, June 11, 1895; quoted in Hugo Röling, De Tragedie van het geschlacht-

sleven: Dr. J. Rutgers en de Nieuw-Malthusiaansche Bond (opgericht 1881)(Amsterdam: van Gennep, 1987), 143.

14. Mrs. Edward Francis, “Race Suicide,” The Vote, January 21, 1911.15. Ellen Key, Über Liebe und Ehe, trans. Francis Maro (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1906), 247.16. Anna Davin, “Imperialism and Motherhood,” History Workshop 5 (1978): 9–65, 16.17. Marianne Hainisch, Die Mutter (Leipzig: Verlag von Hugo Heller, 1913),

16–17; cf. Lucy Bland, Banishing the Beast: Sexuality and the Early Feminists(New York: The New Press, 1995), 242–247.

18. An example of the first category is Christl Wickert, Helene Stöcker 1869–1943:Frauenrechtlerin, Sexualreformerin und Pazifistin: Eine Biographie (Bonn: Dietz,1991); of the second category, Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler:Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2004). For further historiographical perspectives, see Ann TaylorAllen, “German Radical Feminism and Eugenics, 1900–1918,” German StudiesReview 11 (1988): 31–56; and Ann Taylor Allen, “Feminism and Eugenics inGermany and Britain, 1900–1940: A Comparative Perspective,” German StudiesReview 23 (2000): 477–506. Many more sources on this subject are listed inthese articles.

19. Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of HumanHeredity (New York: Knopf, 1985), 85–92; see also Bland, Banishing the Beast,

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and Soloway, Demography and Degeneration, both of which show the variety ofviews that were represented within the eugenics movement.

20. See Allen, “Feminism and Eugenics in Germany and Britain”; Soloway, Demographyand Degeneration; Lesley A. Hall, “Women, Feminism, and Eugenics,” inRobert A. Peel, ed., Essays in the History of Eugenics: Proceedings of a Conferenceorganized by the Galton Institute, London 1997 (London: Galton Institute,1997), 36–51; Bland, Banishing the Beast, 222–249.

21. Bernd Nowacki, Der Bund für Mutterschutz, 1905–1933 (Husum: Matthiesen,1983), Section 4.5.

22. WLHM, EES, SA/Eug./B.1: Early Papers re Formation; see also PaulineMazumdar, Eugenics, Human Genetics, and Human Failings: The EugenicsSociety, Its Sources and Its Critics in Britain (London: Routledge, 1992), 7–57;on the role of women see Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 64–65; and Soloway,Demography and Degeneration, 110–137.

23. WLHM, EES, Eugenics Education Society. 4th Annual Report, 1911–1912;Eugenics Education Society, 5th Annual Report, 1912–1913.

24. William H. Schneider, Quality and Quantity: The Quest for BiologicalRegeneration in Twentieth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1990), 80.

25. L. Huc, “La Section ‘Eugenics and Child Study,’ ” Eugénique (1913): 119–133.26. Elmy, “The Marriage Law of England,” 59.27. Women’s Cooperative Guild, Maternity: Letters from Working Women, (London:

G. Bell and Sons, 1915), rpt., in Marie Mulvey Roberts and Tamae Mizula, eds.,The Mothers: Controversies of Motherhood (London: Routledge Thoemmes Press,1994), 27.

28. Wally Secombe, “Men’s ‘Marital Rights’ and Women’s ‘Wifely Duties’: ChangingConjugal Relations in the Fertility Decline,” in John R. Gillis, Louise A. Tilly, andDavid Levine, eds., The European Experience of Declining Fertility 1850–1970: TheQuiet Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992), 66–84 (quotation 80).Blom’s results are discussed in this article. Anna Bergmann, “Frauen, Männer,Sexualität und Geburtenkontrolle: Die Gebärstreikdebatte der SPD im Jahre 1913,”in Karin Hausen, ed., Frauen Suchen ihre Geschichte: Historische Studien zum 19.Und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1983), 81–108. Cf. also EdwardShorter, A History of Women’s Bodies (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 3–16.

29. Women’s Cooperative Guild, Maternity: Letters from Working Women, 28, 64.30. Frank Wedekind, The Awakening of Spring: A Tragedy of Childhood, trans.

Francis J. Ziegler (Philadelphia PA: Brown Brothers, 1910), Act I.31. Claudia Nelson, “Under the Guidance of a Wise Mother: British Sex Education

at the Fin de Siècle,” in Claudia Nelson and Anne Sumner Holmes, eds.,Maternal Instincts: Visions of Motherhood and Sexuality in Britain, 1875–1925(Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan and St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 98–121.

32. Nelson, “Under the Guidance of a Wise Mother,” 105.33. Ellis Ethelmer (Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy and Ben Elmy), Baby Buds

(Congleton: Buxton House, 1895), 7.34. Ethelmer, Baby Buds, 38.35. H.Q. Röling, Gevreesde vragen: Geschiedenis van de seksuele opvoeding in

Nederland (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994), 13.36. Mevrouw Baerveldt-Haver, “Eenige beschouwingen over de zedelijke opvoeding,”

in Verslagen der Congressen gehouden bej gelegenheit van de Nationale Tentoonstellingvan Vrouwenarbeid, Besprekingen over de Taak von Moeders en Opvoedsters,September 14–15, 1898 (Amsterdam: Versluys, 1899), 124–137.

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37. Nellie van Kol, “Een kiesch onderwerp,” Evolutie, May 31, 1893.38. Röling, Gevreesde Vragen, 118–119.39. Lydie Martial, “L’enseignement de la paternité à la caserne et dans les écoles de

l’État,” 1902, brochure held in BMD, dossier Éducation sexuelle.40. Ghenia Avril de Sainte-Croix, ed., Dixième congrès international des femmes:

Oeuvres et institutions féminines; droits des femmes (Paris: Giard et Brière, 1914),198–204. Cf. Jacques Donzelot, The Policing of Families, trans. Robert Hurley(New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), 168–184.

41. Avril de Sainte-Croix, ed., Dixième congrès international des femmes, 174, 175,202, 204, 490, 572.

42. E. Piecynska, L’École de la Pureté (Geneva: Ch. Eggiman, 1897), 11.43. On Piecynska’s life and work see E. Serment, “Emma Piecynska, née Reichenbach,

dans ses oeuvres,” Annuaire des femmes suisses 10 (1926): 81–143; and KarenOffen, European Feminisms 1700–1960: A Political History (Stanford, CA:Stanford University Press, 2000), 155, 246. I am grateful to Karen Offen forsharing materials gathered in the course of her research on Piecynska with me.

44. Ellen Key, Das Jahrhundert des Kindes: Studien von Ellen Key [1901], trans.Francis Maro (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1902), 10–11.

45. Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex (Philadelphia, PA: F.A. Davis Co.,1910), 78.

46. Maria Lichnewska, “Die geschlechtliche Belehrung der Kinder,” Mutterschutz(1905): 137–170.

47. Marianne Hainisch, “Sexuelle Erziehung,” Der Bund (April 1908): 3.48. Ella Anker, Women’s Suffrage in Norway (London: National Union of Women’s

Suffrage Societies, 1913).49. Frank Mort, Dangerous Sexualities, Medico-Moral Politics in England since 1830

(London and New York: Routledge, 1987), 154–156.50. Mort, Dangerous Sexualities, 160.51. Ethelmer, Baby Buds, 42; see also Nelson, “Under the Guidance of a Wise

Mother.”52. Röling, Gevreesde vragen, 122.53. Henriette Fürth, Die geschlechtliche Aufklärung in Haus und Schule (Leipzig:

n.p., 1903), 23.54. Marie Stopes, Married Love, quoted in Ruth Hall, Passionate Crusader: The Life

of Marie Stopes (New York and London: Harcourt, 1977), 129; a more skepticalview of Stopes’s testimony is given by Richard A. Soloway, “The Galton Lecture1996: Marie Stopes, Eugenics, and the Birth Control Movement,” in Robert A.Peel, ed., Marie Stopes and the English Birth Control Movement: Proceedings of aConference Organized by the Galton Institute, London 1996 (London: GaltonInstitute, 1997), 49–76, see especially 50–51.

55. Carol Dyhouse, Feminism and the Family in England, 1880–1939 (Oxford:Blackwell, 1989), 174.

56. Ellis Ethelmer (Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy), Woman Free (Congleton:Women’s Emancipation Union, 1893), 11. Two excellent and thoroughaccounts of British feminists and sexuality are given in Bland, Banishing the Beast,95–185; and Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism andSexuality 1880–1930 (London: Pandora, 1985), 6–52.

57. Cicely Hamilton, Marriage as a Trade (London: Chapman and Hall, 1909), 33–34.58. Frances Swiney, The Bar of Isis or the Law of the Mother (London: C.W. Daniel,

1909). For an extensive account of British feminism and birth control, see Richard

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Allen Soloway, Birth Control and the Population Question in England, 1877–1930(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 133–155; and Bland,Banishing the Beast, 189–221.

59. Peter Fryer, The Birth Controllers (New York: Stein and Day, 1965), 163.60. Maude Pember-Reeves, Round About a Pound a Week (London: G. Bell and

Sons, 1913), 219.61. Dyhouse, Feminism and the Family, 170.62. Fryer, The Birth Controllers, 173–192; Lesley A. Hall, “Malthus, Medicine, and

Morality: ‘Malthusianism’ after 1798,” Clio Medica 59 (2000): 141–163;Richard Soloway, Birth Control, 133–155.

63. Stella Browne, The Freewoman, April 18, 1912, quoted in Jeffreys, The Spinsterand her Enemies, 52; Jane Hume Clapperton, What do We Women Want?(London: W.H. Reynolds, 1880), 4.

64. Charles Vickery Drysdale, “Freewomen and the Birth Rate,” The Freewoman,November 30, 1911.

65. Clapperton, What do We Women Want?, 3.66. Aletta Jacobs, Memories: My Life as an International Leader in Health, Suffrage

and Peace (New York: Feminist Press, 1996), 34; Hugo Q. Röling, “L’Énigmede la contraception aux Pays- Bas,” in Francis Ronsin, Hervé Le Bras, and ÉlisabethZucker-Rouvillois, eds., Démographie et Politique (Dijon: Éditions universitairesde Dijon, 1997), 27–37.

67. Aletta B. Jacobs, Vrouwenbelangen (Amsterdam: L.J. Veen, 1899), 66.68. “Een quaestie van moraal,” Evolutie, January 22, 1902.69. Ph. van Praag, “The Development of Neo-Malthusianism in Flanders,” Population

Studies 32 (1978): 476–480.70. Röling, De Tragedie van het geschlachtsleven, 144.71. Röling, Tragedie, 148.72. Van Praag, “The Development of Neo-Malthusianism.”73. Cova, Maternité et droits des femmes, 98–100.74. Céline Renooz, La loi des sexes devant la science et morale (Paris: n.p., n.d.);

Union de pensée féminine, L’Enseignement de la paternité (Paris: n.p., n.d.), inBMD, Dossier Éducation Sexuelle.

75. Johannes Rutgers and Emma Piecynska, “La Question du Néo-Malthusisme,”Morale Sociale 3 (1901): 325–340 (quotations 331, 339). I thank Karen Offenfor providing me with a copy of this article.

76. Francis Ronsin, La grève des ventres: Propagande néo-malthusienne et baisse de lanatalité française, 19-20 siècles (Aubier: Montaigne, 1980), 157.

77. Madeleine Pelletier L’Émancipation sexuelle de la femme (Paris: Giard etBrière, 1926), 39. On Pelletier’s life and career see Felicia Gordon, The IntegralFeminist: Madeleine Pelletier, 1874–1939: Feminism, Socialism and Medicine(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1990); and Marilyn Boxer,“French Socialists, Feminism, and the Family,” Troisième République 3–4 (1977):128–167.

78. Angus McLaren, “The Sexual Politics of Reproduction in Britain,” in Gillis, Tillyand Levine, eds., The European Experience of Declining Fertility, 85–100; see alsoWillem de Blécourt, “Cultures of Abortion in The Hague in the Early TwentiethCentury,” in Franz X. Eder, Lesley A. Hall, and Gert Hekma, eds., SexualCultures in Europe: Themes in Sexuality (Manchester: Manchester UniversityPress, 2000), 195–212.

79. Pelletier, L’Émancipation sexuelle de la femme, 56–58.

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80. Pelletier, L’Émancipation sexuelle de la femme, 32.81. Nelly Roussel, “Pour les Mères,” Almanach Féministe (1907).82. Nelly Roussel, “Pour le mariage, contre l’union libre,” L’Entente (July 1906).83. Gabrielle Petit, “Ce que nous voulons,” La Femme Affranchie, September 1904.84. James Woycke, Birth Control in Germany 1871–1933 (London: Routledge,

1988), 54; Anna-E. Freier, Dem Reich der Freiheit sollst Du Kinder gebären:Der Antifeminismus der proletarischen Frauenbewegung im Spiegel der“Gleichheit,” 1891–1917 (Frankfurt: Haag und Herchen Verlag, 1981), 73–81.

85. Schreiber-Roussel, January 25, 1910; December 27, 1911; January 12, 1912, inBMD, Fonds Nelly Roussel, Lettres, Dactylographies Signées.

86. Helene Stöcker, Die Liebe und die Frauen (Minden: J.C.C. Bruns, 1906), 177.87. LAB, B-Rep 235, BDF, “Protokolle (Stenogramme) der 8. Generalversammlung

1908 in Breslau,” 426, Film nos. 2967–75.88. “8. Generalversammlung,” 384.89. Cf. Richard Evans, The Feminist Movement in Germany, 1894–1933 (London:

Sage, 1976), 145–174; Barbara Greven-Aschoff, Die bürgerliche Frauenbewegungin Deutschland, 1894–1933 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Rupprecht, 1981),112–114.

90. Else Lüders, “Eindrücke von der Generalversammlung des Bundes deutscherFrauenvereine, Breslau, 6–8 Oktober, 1908,” Die Frauenbewegung, October 15,1908, 154.

91. Ernestine Federn, “Aktuelles in der deutschen Frauenbewegung,” Der Bund,Zentralblatt des Bundes österreichischer Frauenverene (February 1909).

92. Nowacki, Der Bund für Mutterschutz, Section 4.5.93. Doris H. Linder, Crusader for Sex Education: Elise Ottesen-Jensen (1886–1973)

in Scandinavia and on the International Scene (Lanham, NY: University Pressof America, 1996), 22.

94. Ida Blom, “Voluntary motherhood 1900–1930.”95. Piecynska, L’École de la Pureté, 17; Rutgers and Piecynska, “La Question du

Néo-Malthusisme,” 340.96. Stöcker, Die Liebe und die Frauen, 35.97. Key, Das Jahrhundert des Kindes, 1; the work is also translated into English as

Ellen Key, The Century of the Child [1909] (New York: Arno Press, 1972).98. Ellen Key, Das Jahrhundert des Kindes, 13.99. Grete Meisel-Hess, Die sexuelle Krise: Eine soziologische Untersuchung (Jena:

Eugen Diederichs, 1909), 272–317; Harriet Anderson, Utopian Feminism:Women’s Movements in fin-de-siècle Vienna (New Haven, CT: Yale UniversityPress, 1992), 181–192.

100. George Bernard Shaw, Getting Married, in The Doctor’s Dilemma, GettingMarried, and the Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet (New York: Brentano, 1911), 219.

101. Key, Über Liebe und Ehe, 191–192.102. Stöcker, Die Liebe und die Frauen, 102.103. On Brieux and his cultural context, see Jean Elisabeth Pedersen, Legislating

the French Family: Feminism, Theater, and Republican Politics, 1870–1920(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 170–174.

104. Eugène Brieux, Damaged Goods, in Three Plays by Brieux, trans. Mrs. BernardShaw (New York: Brentano’s, 1913), 197.

105. Brieux, Damaged Goods, 239.106. Christabel Pankhurst, “Concerning Damaged Goods,” The Suffragette,

February 20, 1914.107. Montessori, Pedagogical Anthropology, 473.

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108. Nelly Roussel, “Ma Réponse,” L’Action, July 5, 1906.109. “O Sudario,” A Semeadora (February 15, 1916): 2, quoted in João Esteves,

As Origens do Sufragismo Português: A Primeira Organização SufragistaPortuguesa: A Associção de Propaganda Feminista (1911–1918) (Lisboa: EditorialBizâncio, 1998), 108.

110. Alix Westerkamp, “Gesetzliche Bestimmungen,” in Anna Pappritz, ed.,Einführung in das Studium der Prostitutionsfrage (Leipzig: Verlag von JohannAmbrosius Barth, 1919), 92–98.

111. Camilla Jellinek, “Die venerische Ansteckung und das Strafgesetz,” Centralblattdes Bundes deutscher Frauenvereine, November 1, 1909.

112. Westerkamp, “Gesetzliche Bestimmungen,” 86.113. William H. Schneider, Quality and Quantity, 57.114. Voeux adoptés par le congrès féministe internationale tenu a Paris en 1896 pendant

les journées 8 au 12 avril (Paris: Société anonyme d’Imprimerie des Arts etManufactures, 1896).

115. “Gesundheitsattest für Ehekandidaten,” Archiv für Rassen-undGesellschaftsbiologie 5 (1908): 859.

116. Kari Melby, Anu Pylkkänen, Bente Rosenbeck, and Christina Carlsson Wetterberg,“The Project ‘The Nordic Marriage Model in a Comparative Perspective’ and itsMain Results,” in Kari Melby, Anu Pylkkänen, Bente Rosenbeck, and ChristinaCarlsson Wetterberg, eds., The Nordic Model of Marriage and the Welfare State(Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2000), 13–26.

117. Key, Über Liebe und Ehe, 153.118. Avril de Sainte-Croix, ed., Dixième Congrès International des Femmes, 441.119. Helene Stöcker, “Unsere erste Generalversammlung,” Mutterschutz (1907):

76–80.120. Matthew Thomson, The Problem of Mental Deficiency: Eugenics, Democracy,

and Social Policy in Britain c. 1870–1959 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998),23–52; Ellen Hume Pinsent, “Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded,”The Nineteenth Century 67 (1910): 43–57; WLHM, EES Eug/B3:“Feeblemindedness.” See also Mark Jackson, “ ‘Grown-Up Children’:Understandings of Health and Mental Deficiency in Edwardian England,” inMarijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and Hilary Marland, eds., Cultures of Child Health inBritain and the Netherlands in the Twentieth Century (Amsterdam: Rodopi,2003), 149–168.

121. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, “Can the Cats Legislate for the Mice?” Votesfor Women, August 22, 1913; Dora Marsden, “The Poor and the Rich,”The Freewoman, July 25, 1912.

122. Francis, “Race Suicide”; see also the discussion in Bland, Banishing the Beast,239–242.

123. “Die achte Generalversammlung,” Centralblatt des Bundes deutscherFrauenvereine, December 15, 1908; see also the favorable reference toSchreiber’s speech in A. Ploetz, “Mutterschutz und Rassenhygiene,” Archiv fürRassen und Gesellschaftsbiologie 5 (1909): 134–135.

124. Cova, Maternité et droits des femmes, 114–115; Ronsin, La grève des ventres,157–163.

125. Nelly Roussel, “Lettre ouverte a M. le docteur Toulouse,” Regéneration(March 1903).

126. Nelly Roussel, Par la révolte: Scène symbolique (Paris: Godet, n.d.), quoted inPedersen, Legislating the French Family, 168.

127. Blom, “Voluntary motherhood.”

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128. Henriette Herzfelder, “Mehr Mutterschutz!” Der Bund, October 1910.129. Mrs. Edward Francis, “Race Suicide,” The Vote, January 21, 1911.130. Christabel Pankhurst, “What Women Think-II,” The Suffragette, January 23,

1914; Bland, Banishing the Beast, 247.131. WL, Women’s Freedom League, “Minutes of the Ninth Annual Conference of

the Women’s Freedom League, Held on March 28, 1914 at Caxton Hall,Westminster,” unpublished typescript, 62, 67.

132. Freier, Dem Reich der Freiheit, 80–81.133. Bergmann, “Frauen, Männer, Sexualität und Geburtenkontrolle,” 94–95.134. “8. Generalversammlung,” 420.135. Hamilton, Marriage as a Trade, 135.

“T V B”: M, C, S W, –

1. Ellen Key, Das Jahrhundert des Kindes: Studien von Ellen Key, trans. FrancisMaro (Berlin: Fischer, 1905) 1; original edition Ellen Key, Barnets århundrade(Stockholm: Bonnier, 1900).

2. A. Maude Royden, National Endowment of Motherhood (London: Mrs. Burns,c. 1918), 3, WL Pamphlet Collection.

3. Deborah Dwork, War is Good for Babies and Other Young Children: A Historyof the Infant and Child Welfare Movement in England, 1898–1918 (London andNew York: Tavistock Publications, 1987).

4. Hubertine Auclert, Le vote des femmes (Paris: V. Giard et E Brière, 1908), 48.5. Ellen Key, Über Liebe und Ehe: Essays von Ellen Key, trans. Francis Maro (Berlin:

S. Fischer, 1906), 407.6. Madeleine Pelletier, La femme en lutte pour ses droits (Paris: V. Giard et E. Brière,

1908), 41.7. Gisela Urban, “Das Frauendienstjahr: Ein praktischer Anfang,” Der Bund

(July 1915): 10–11 (quotation 10).8. Anna Pappritz, “Umgestaltung der Frauenbildung durch die Dienstpflicht,” in

Institut für soziale Arbeit, ed., Das weibliche Dienstpflicht (Munich: Verlag derÄrztlichen Rundschau, 1916), 79–96 (quotation 89).

9. Darrow, French Women and the First World War: War Stories from the HomeFront (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000), 39.

10. Anne Summers, Angels and Citizens: British Women as Military Nurses,1854–1914 (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), 282–287.

11. Anne Cova, Au service de l’Église, de la patrie, et de la famille: Femmescatholiques et maternité sous la III Republique (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000),91–94; Françoise Thébaud, “The Great War and the Triumph of SexualDivision,” in Georges Duby, Michelle Perrot, and Françoise Thébaud, eds.,A History of Women in the West, Vol. 5, Toward a Cultural Identity in theTwentieth Century (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1994), 21–75; Ute Daniel, TheWar from Within: German Working-Class Women in the First World War, trans.Margaret Ries (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1997), 20–21; Gertrud Bäumer,“Nationaler Frauendienst,” Die Frau 21 (1913/14): 721–724.

12. Paola Grosson Baronchelli, La donna della nuova Italia: Documenti del contrib-uto femminile alla guerra (Maggio 1915–Maggio 1917: Racolti ed ordinati)(Milano: R. Quintieri, 1917), 133; see also Victoria de Grazia, How FascismRuled Women: Italy, 1922–1944 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,

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1992), 26–28; and Allison Scardino Belzer, “Femininity under Fire: Women in Italyduring the First World War,” Ph.D. diss. Emory University 2002, 62–64.

13. Cheryl Law, Suffrage and Power: The Women’s Movement, 1918–1928 (Londonand New York: I.B. Tauris, 1997), 16–21.

14. Deborah Thom, Nice Girls and Rude Girls: Women Workers in World War I(London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1998), 32.

15 Angelika Schaser, Helene Lange und Gertrud Bäumer: Eine politischeLebensgemeinschaft (Köln: Böhlau, 2000), 156–164; Bäumer, “NationalerFrauendienst.”

16. Daniel, The War from Within, 76; Marie-Elisabeth Lüders, “Memoiren,” unpub-lished typescript, BAK, Nachlass Marie-Elisabeth Lüders, Vol. 308.

17. Anne Cova, Maternité et droits des femmes in France: XIX-XXe siècles (Paris:Anthropos, 1997), 179–228.

18. Headline, La Française, May 8, 1915.19. Henriette Herzfelder, “Unsere Berufsfrauen und der Krieg,” Der Bund (January

1915): 1–8 (quotation 1).20. Martin Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain, 1914–1959

(Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), 20.21. Cova, Maternité et droits des femmes in France, 185.22. Annamaria Galoppini, Il lungo viaggio verso la parità: I Diritti civili e politici

delle donne dall’unità ad oggi (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1980), 61; Belzer,“Femininity under Fire,” 69–89.

23. Daniel, The War from Within, 37–126.24. Jane Misme, “Les hommes ne sont pas raisonnables,” La Française, December 16,

1916.25. Thom, Nice Girls and Rude Girls, 167–168.26. Françoise Thébaud, Les Femmes au temps de la guerre de 1914 (Paris:

Stock/L. Pernod, 1986), 258–264.27. Reinhard J. Sieder, “Behind the Lines: Working-Class Family Life in Wartime

Vienna,” in Richard Wall and Jay Winter, eds., The Upheaval of War: Family,Work, and Welfare in Europe, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University.Press, 1988), 109–138; Daniel, The War from Within, 127–230; Belinda J.Davis, Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War IBerlin (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000).

28. Mary Gabrielle Collins, “Women at Munition Making,” in Catherine W. Reilly,ed., Scars upon my Heart: Women’s Poetry and Verse of the First World War(London: Virago Press, 1981), 24; see also Belzer, “Femininity under Fire,” 74.

29. Paul Weindling, “Social Hygiene and the Birth Rate in Wartime Germany,” inWall and Winter, eds., The Upheaval of War, 417–437; Cornelie Usborne,“ ‘Pregnancy is the Woman’s Active Service’: Pronatalism in Germany during theFirst World War,” in Wall and Winter, eds., The Upheaval of War, 389–416.

30. Marie-Monique Huss, “Pronatalism and the Popular Ideology of the Child inWartime France: The Evidence of the Picture Postcard,” in Wall and Winter,eds., The Upheaval of War, 32–367, illustrations, 342, 346.

31. Cova, Maternité et droits des femmes, 179; Daniel, The War from Within, 136;32. Daniel, The War from Within, 189–207.33. Daniel, The War from Within, 138–147; Thom, Nice Girls and Rude Girls,

167–168; Christine Bard, Les Filles de Marianne: Histoire des féminismes1914–1940 (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 67–71; Usborne, “Pregnancy is the Woman’sActive Service.”

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34. Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’sMovement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 26–33.

35. Susan R. Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics inBritain and France during the First World War (Chapel Hill, NC: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1999), 1–11.

36. Henriette Fürth, “Die Frauen und die Bevölkerungs-und Schutzmittlefrage,”Archiv für soziale Hygiene und Demographie 9 (1915): 10–33 (quotation 33);Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement, 7–12; Cova, Au service de l’Église,90–96; Thébaud, La Femme au temps de la guerre, 108–109; Bernd Nowacki,Der Bund für Mutterschutz 1905–1933 (Husum: Matthiessen, 1983), 83–95.

37. Baronchelli, La donna della nuova Italia, 151–165.38. Margaret Llewelyn Davies, “The Claims of Mothers and Children,” in Marion

Phillips, ed., Women and the Labour Party (London: Headley Bros., 1918), 3.39. 39. Cova, Maternité et droits des femmes, 98; “Les Féministes et la Tutelle des

Femmes,” La Française, October 30, 1915; BMD, Dossier Tutelle.40. “Geheimes Zivilkabinett Seiner Majestät des deutschen Kaisers und Königs von

Preussen, Grosses Hauptquartier, Oct. 14, 1916,” in BAL, R/18, 9348,“Massregeln Gegen den Geburtenrückgang, 1916–1917.”

41. Nowacki, Der Bund für Mutterschutz, 83–95.42. Helene Stöcker, “Bevölkerungspolitik,” Die Neue Generation, 1915, 363.43. Edward Ross Dickinson, The Politics of German Child Welfare, from the Empire

to the Federal Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 122–123.44. Grayzel, Women’s Identities, 86–87.45. Baronchelli, La donna della nuova Italia, 173–177; Belzer, “Femininity under

Fire,” 62–64.46. Grayzel, Women’s Identities, 99; see also Susan R. Grayzel, “The Mothers of our

Soldiers’ Children: Motherhood, Immorality, and the War Baby Scandal,1914–18,” in Claudia Nelson and Anne Sumner Holmes, eds., MaternalInstincts: Visions of Motherhood and Sexuality in Britain, 1875–1925(Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), 122–140.

47. Quoted in Grayzel, Women’s Identities, 94.48. Marie Carmichael Stopes, The Race, in “Gold in the Wood” and “The Race:” Two

New Plays of Life (London: A.C. Fifield, 1918), Act II. I am grateful to Lesley A.Hall of the Wellcome Institute, London, for sending me a copy of this play.

49. Emmeline Pankhurst, quoted in Grayzel, Women’s Identities, 96; SylviaPankhurst quoted in David Mitchell, Monstrous Regiment: The Story of theWomen of the First World War (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 282–283.

50. Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years1900–1925 [1933] (New York: Penguin, 1989), 141.

51. Maude Royden, “Morals and Militarism,” Common Cause, April 30, 1915.52. Ivy Pinchbeck and Margaret Hewlett, Children in English Society, Vol. 2, From

the Eighteenth Century to the Children Act, 1945 (London: Routledge, 1973),582–611; National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child,Legitimisation of Illegitimate Children by the Subsequent Marriage of TheirParents (London: Carnegie House, 1924). See also the archive of this organizationin WL.

53. Margarete Minor quoted in Ernestine Federn, “Die Abendversammlungen,”Der Bund (June 1916): 11–12 (quotation 11).

54. Thébaud, Les Femmes au temps de la guerre, 272–274; Cova, Maternité et droitsdes femmes, 179–228.

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55. “Beschlüsse der Kriegstagung und der Gesamtvorstandssitzungen des BDF inWeimar am 25–30 Juni 1916,” Die Frauenfrage: Zentralblatt des BDF, July 16,1916.

56. Günter Erning and Jürgen Reyer, Entstehung und Entwicklung der öffentlichenKleinkinderziehung in Deutschland von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Freiburgim Breisgau: Lambertus, 1987), 64–65; Lili Droescher, Die Erziehungsaufgabender Volkskindergärten im Krieg (Leipzig and Berlin: B.G. Teubner, 1917).

57. Marie-Elisabeth Lüders, “An den nationalien Ausschuss für Frauenarbeit imKrieg,” May 3, 1917, BAK, Nachlass Marie-Elisabeth Lüders, Vol. 205; Marie-Elisabeth Lüders, “Richtlinien für Kinderfürsorge,” Die Frau 24 (1917): 612–618.

58. Ute Daniel, Arbeiterfrauen in der Kriegsgesellschaft: Beruf, Familie und Politikim ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen: Vandenhoek und Rupprecht, 1989), 104.

59. Marie-Elisabeth Lüders, Fürchte dich nicht: Persönliches und politisches aus mehrals 80 Jahren, 1878–1962 (Köln: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1963), 71–120; see alsoDaniel, The War from Within, 74–76.

60. Daniel, Arbeiterfrauen, 84.61. Margaret McMillan, The Nursery School (London and Toronto: J.M. Dent, 1919),

21–22.62. McMillan, The Nursery School, 26.63. Thom, Nice Girls and Rude Girls, 176.64. Kevin J. Brehony, “The Kindergarten in England, 1851–1918,” in Roberta

Wollons, ed., Kindergartens and Cultures: The Global Diffusion of an Idea(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 59–86; Thom, Nice Girls,164–186.

65. Daniel, The War from Within, 158–159.66. “Zur Frage der Bevölkerungspolitik,” Die Gleichheit, October 13, 1916.67. Davies, “The Claims of Mothers and Children”; Anna Davin, “Imperialism and

Motherhood,” History Workshop 5 (1978): 43–45; Dwork, War is Good forBabies, 208–220; for the text of the Act see the appendix to Janet E. LaneClayson, The Child Welfare Movement (London: G. Bell, 1920), 242–261.

68. Susan Pedersen, “Gender, Welfare and Citizenship in Britain during the GreatWar,” American Historical Review 95 (October 1990): 983–1006.

69. Katherine D’Olier, Courtney, Eleanor F. Rathbone, C. Maude Royden, MaryStocks, Elinor Burns, and Emily Burns, Equal Pay and the Family: A Proposal forthe National Endowment of Motherhood (London: Herald Book Society, 1918), 13.For an excellent and thorough discussion of the wartime debate on the “endow-ment of motherhood,” see Susan Pedersen, Family, Dependence, and the Originsof the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914–1945 (Cambridge and New York:Cambridge University Press, 1993), 79–135.

70. Women’s Cooperative Guild (WCG), comp., Maternity: Letters from WorkingWomen (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1915), 2–3.

71. WCG, comp., Maternity, 2.72. WCG, comp., Maternity, 3.73. WCG, comp., Maternity, 6.74. WCG, comp., Maternity, 53.75. WCG, comp., Maternity, 78.76. WCG, comp., Maternity, 16. See the interpretation of Grayzel, Women’s

Identities at War, 113.77. WCG, comp., Maternity, 15.78. WCG, comp., Maternity, 100.

N 275


79. J.M. Winter, “The Impact of the First World War on Civilian Health in Britain,”The Economic History Review 30 (August 1977): 487–507 (quotation 498).

80. Fürth, “Die Frauen und die Bevölkerungs- und Schutzmittelfrage,” 32.81. Hugo Sellheim, Was tut die Frau fürs Vaterland? Nach Kriegsvorträgen an der

Universität Tübingen und im Deutschen Frauenverein vom Roten Kreuz für dieKolonien in Stuttgart (Stuttgart: Verlag von Ferdinand Enke,1915), 14.

82. Jacques Amédée Doléris and Jean Bouscatel, Néomalthusianisme, maternité, etféminisme: éducation sexuelle (Paris: Masson et Cie., 1918), 22; see alsoThébaud, Les Femmes au temps de la guerre, 282.

83. Françoise Thébaud, Les femmes au temps de la guerre, 266–267; Daniel, TheWar From Within, 155–156.

84. Davis, Home Fires Burning, 41.85. WCG, comp., Maternity, 14.86. Frances Evelyn Maynard Greville Warwick (The Countess of Warwick),

A Woman and the War (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1916), 146.87. Notification of Births Extension Act, 1915, reprinted in The Mothers:

Controversies of Motherhood, ed. Roberts, 200–208; Grayzel, Women’s Identitiesat War, 102.

88. National Council of Public Morals and National Birth-Rate Commission, TheDeclining Birth-Rate: Being the Report of and the Chief Evidence taken before theNational Birth Rate Commission (London: Chapman and Hall, 1916), 270–271.

89. Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics, and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800(2nd ed.) (London and New York: Longman, 1989), 187–189.

90. WCG, comp., Maternity, 48, 91.91. WCG, comp., Maternity, 46.92. Helena Swanwick, The War in Its Effect upon Women and Women and War

[1915] (New York: Garland Publishing, 1971), 24.93. Thébaud, Les femmes au temps de la guerre, 278; Cova, Maternité et droits des

Femmes, 202–207.94. Cova, Maternité et droits des femmes, 202–213; Karen M. Offen, “Exploring the

Sexual Politics of Republican Nationalism,” in Robert Tombs, ed., Nationhoodand Nationalism in France: From Boulangism to the Great War, 1889–1918(New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 195–210.

95. Marguerite de Witt-Schlumberger, “Le devoir particulier des femmes,” LaFrançaise, May 12, 1916.

96. Marguerite de Witt-Schlumberger, “De l’interêt du vote des femmes au pointde vue de la famille,” Pour la Vie, February 1919.

97. Offen, “Exploring the Sexual Politics of Republican Nationalism,” 205, 206;see also Paul Smith, Feminism and the Third Republic: Women’s Political andCivil Rights in France, 1918–1945 (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press,1996), 217–222; and Cova, Maternité et droits des femmes, 202–213.

98. For example, in Schaser, Helene Lange und Gertrud Bäumer, 156–164.99. Gertrud Bäumer, “Der seelische Hintergrund der Bevölkerungsfrage,” Die

Frau 23 (1916/17): 129–133 (quotations 131, 132).100. Helene Lange, “Zur Wiederaufnahume der Bevölkerungspolitik,” Die Frau 23

(1916/17): 100–102 (quotation 100).101. Usborne, “Pregnancy is the woman’s active service.”102. Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, Schriften des Bundes über sozialpoli-

tische, sozialfürsorgerische, und Bevölkerungsfragen, “Richtlinien zurBevölkerungspolitik,” LAB, B-Rep. 235, BDF, Fiche 3400–03.

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103. “Gegen die bevölkerungspolitischen Ausnahmegesetze!” Die Gleichheit,September 27, 1918.

104. Gertrud Bäumer, “Gewaltsame Bevölkerungspolitik,” Die Frauenfrage,October 1, 1918.

105. For a general account of German wartime policies see Cornelie Usborne,The Politics of the Body in Weimar Germany: Women’s Reproductive Rights andDuties (Houndmills and London: Macmillan, 1992), 16–30.

106. J.M. Winter, “Britain’s ‘Lost Generation’ of the First World War,” PopulationStudies 31 (November 1977): 449–466.

107. The Declining Birth-Rate, 475; Richard A. Soloway, “Eugenics and pronatalismin wartime Britain,” in Wall and Winter, eds., The Upheaval of War, 369–388.

108. Stopes, The Race, Act II.109. Helene Granitsch, “Die Erhaltung und Mehrung der Volkskraft,” Der Bund

(January 1916).110. Frank Mort, Dangerous Sexualities: Medico-Moral Politics in England since

1830 (London: Routledge, 1987), 199–200; Lesley A. Hall, Sex, Gender andSocial Change in Britain since 1880 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000),82–98.

111. Christine Bard, Les Filles de Marianne, 67; Ghenia Avril de Sainte-Croix,L’Éducation sexuelle (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1918).

112. Paul Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between NationalUnification and Nazism, 1870–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1997), 293–295; see also BAL R/86, 3272, “Gesundheitszeugnisse fürEhebewerber,” and Ann Taylor Allen, “Feminism and Eugenics in Germanyand Britain, 1900–1940: A Comparative Perspective,” German Studies Review23 (October 2000): 477–506.

113. Quoted in Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, l’enfant de l’ennemi, 1914–1918: Viol,avortement, infanticide pendant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Aubier, 1995),99–100. This is the most authoritative work on this controversy. See also excellentdiscussion in Grayzel, Women’s Identies, 50–86.

114. Maurice Barrès, L’Echo de Paris, February 10, 1915.115. “Que fera-t-on des petits indésirés?” La Française, February 6,1915.116. Vérone quoted by Audion-Rouzeau, L’Enfant de l’ennemi, 140; Camille

Béllillon, letter to La Croix de l’Aveyron, March 3, 1915. This letter and othermaterials on this issue are in the BHP, Collection Bouglé, Fonds Arria Ly, Boîte 7,Dossier 7, “L’Enfant du barbare.”

117. “Que fera-t-on des petits indésirés?” editorial, La Française, February 20,1915.

118. Jane Misme, “L’intégrité féminine,” La Française, April 17, 1915.119. Jane Misme, “Pour les indesirés,” La Française, April 10, 1915.120. Marcelle Capy, “L’opinion de nos lecteurs,” La Bataille Syndicaliste, February 20,

1915.121. Mme. Jean Nabert, “L’Intrus,” La Paix par le Droit 25 (1915): 580–586, in

Fonds Arria Ly, Dossier 7.122. Madeleine Vernet, L’enfant ennemi (Épone: Édition de l’Avenir Social, 1915), 7;

for other materials on or by Vernet see BMD, Dossier Madeleine Vernet.123. Audoin-Rouzeau, L’Enfant de l’ennemi, 195.124. Maude Royden, “Modern Love,” in Victor Gollancz, ed., The Making of

Women: Oxford Essays in Feminism (London: Allen and Unwin, 1917), 36–63(quotation 53).

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125. Aletta Jacobs, Memories: My Life as an International Leader in Health, Suffrage,and Peace, ed. Harriet Feinberg, trans. Annie Wright (New York: Feminist Press,1996), 82.

126. Catherine Foster, Women for All Seasons: The Story of the Women’s InternationalLeague for Peace and Freedom (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1989),1–16.

127. Helena Swanwick, Women and War (London: Union of Democratic Control,1915), 2.

128. Rupp, Worlds of Women, 13–44; on Stöcker see Christl Wickert, Helene Stöcker1869–1943: Frauenrechtlerin, Sexualreformerin, und Pazifistin: Eine Biographie(Bonn: Dietz, 1991), 95–104. On the Hague Congress see also Susan GroagBell and Karen M. Offen, eds., Women, the Family, and Freedom: The Debate inDocuments, Vol. 2 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983), 265–273.

129. “L’Affaire Hélène Brion au Conseil de Guerre,” Revue des Causes Célèbres, May 2,1918, 152–154, excerpted and trans. in Bell and Offen, eds., Women, the Family,and Freedom, Vol. 2, 273–275 (quotation 274); see also Grayzel, Women’sIdentities, 182.

130. Madeleine Vernet, “Aux Femmes! Aux Mères!,” La Mère Éducatrice, RevueMensuelle d’Éducation (October 1917).

131. Action des Femmes, Statuts, in BMD, Dossier Action des Femmes; Bard, Fillesde Marianne, 116–120; Cova, Maternité et droits des femmes, 189–193.

132. Anne Léal, Le triomphe du panmasculinisme: conférence fait à l’Action desFemmes (Paris: Imprimerie Pigalle, 1917).

133. Flyer, L’Action des Femmes, 1917, in BMD, Dossier Action des Femmes.134. Bard, Filles de Marianne, 119–120.135. Conseil National des Femmes Françaises, “Manifeste adressé au congrès

féminin à La Haye,” La Française, April 24, 1915.136. Harriet Anderson, Utopian Feminism: Women’s Movements in fin-de-siecle

Vienna (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 124–126.137. Gertrud Bäumer, “German Women and the Hague Congress,” Jus Suffragii,

June 1, 1915.138. Dr. Hanna Hellermann, “Die innere Stellungnahme der Frauen zum Krieg,”

Die Frau 24 (1917/18): 577–582 (quotations 579, 580).139. Rupp, Worlds of Women, 89.140. Ellen Key, War, Peace, and the Future: A Consideration of Nationalism and

Internationalism and the Relation of Women to War, trans. Hildegard Norberg(New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916), 99–100.

141. Rebecca West, “Woman Worship,” in The Young Rebecca: Writings of RebeccaWest, ed. Jane Marcus (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982),338–340 (quotation 340).

142. “Mother’s Day, 1918,” in BMD, dossier Fête des Mères.143. Thébaud, Les Femmes au temps de la guerre, 279–280.144. Belzer, “Femininity under Fire,” 42.145. Henri Barbusse, Under Fire: The Story of a Squad, trans. Fitzwater Wray

(New York: E.P. Dutton, 1917), 313; see also Sandra M. Gilbert, “Soldier’sHeart: Literary Men, Literary Women, and the Great War,” in MargaretRandolph Higgonet, Jane Jenson, Sonya Michel, and Margaret CollinsWeitz, eds., Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1987), 197–226.

146. Barbusse, Under Fire, 284.

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147. Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front [1928], trans. A.W. Wheen(New York: Fawcett, 1975), 161.

148. Siegfried Sassoon, “Glory of Women,” in Siegfried Sassoon, Collected Poems ofSiegfried Sassoon, copyright 1918, 1920 by E.P. Dutton; Copyright 1936, 1946,1947 by Siegfried Sassoon. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a divisionof Penguin Group (USA), Inc.

149. Warwick, A Woman and the War, 133.150. Siegfried Sassoon, “The Hero,” in Siegfried Sassoon, Collected Poems of

Siegfried Sassoon, copyright 1918, 1920 by E.P. Dutton; Copyright 1936,1946, 1947, 1948 by Siegfried Sassoon. Used by permission of Viking Penguin,a division of the Penguin Group USA, Inc.

151. Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York and Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1975), 193.

152. Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, Vol. 1, trans. Stephen Conway (Minneapolis,MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 103.

153. J.M. Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in EuropeanCultural History (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,1995), 15–29.

154. Brittain, Testament of Youth, 252.155. Winter, Sites of Memory, 54–77.156. Käthe Kollwitz, The Diary and Letters of Käthe Kollwitz (Chicago, IL:

Northwestern University Press, 1988), 156–157; excerpted in Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee and Frans Coetzee, eds., World War I and European Society:A Sourcebook (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1995), 331.

157. Daniel, The War from Within, 148–149.158. Gaston Variot, Comment sauvegarder les bébés: Enseignement de l’hygiène infantile

donné a l’institut de puériculture à la Goutte de Lait de Belleville (Paris: LibrarieOctave Doin, 1922), 16

159. Variot, Comment sauvegarder les bébés, 19; for statistics on killed and woundedsee Jeremy D. Popkin, A History of Modern France (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice Hall, 1994), 240.

160. Soloway, “Eugenics and Pronatalism in Wartime Britain”; see also JoannaBourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain, and the Great War(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 153–170.

161. Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier [1918], in Rebecca West, a Celebration,ed. Samuel Hynes (London: Macmillan, 1977), 3–68.

162. Ernst Toller, Hinkemann: Eine Tragödie [1922] (Potsdam: G. Kiepenhauer, 1925).163. D.H. Lawrence, The Fox [1923] in Charles Neider, ed., Short Novels of the

Masters (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001), 580–643.164. Sieder, “Behind the Lines.”165. Jane Misme, “Les Français seront-ils polygames?” La Française, January 23, 1916.166. Marie-Elisabeth Lüders, “Demobilmachung,” Die Frau 25 (1918/19):

185–189 (quotation 186).167. Swanwick, The War in Its Effect Upon Women [1916] (New York: Garland

Publishing, 1971), 8.168. Jane Misme, “La Puériculture pour toutes,” La Française, October 12, 1918.169. Baronchelli, La donna della nuova Italia, 201–202.170. De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women, 26–40.171. Guillaume Apollinaire, Les Mamelles de Tirésias [1916] (Paris: Éditions du Bélier,

1946), Act I, Scene 8 (translation ATA). See also Gilbert, “Soldier’s Heart.”

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T D B

1. Catherine Gasquoine Hartley, Woman’s Wild Oats: Essays on the Re-Fixing ofMoral Standards (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1920), 17, 12, 18.

2. Dora Russell, The Right to be Happy (New York and London: Harper, 1927),166, 169.

3. Susan Kingsley Kent, Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in InterwarBritain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 141; Claudia Koonz,Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York: St.Martin’s Press, 1987), 14.

4. Victoria de Grazia, “How Mussolini Ruled Italian Women,” in Georges Duby,Michelle Perrot, and Françoise Thébaud, eds., History of Women in the West,Vol. 5, Toward a Cultural Identity in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA:Belknap, 1994), 120–148; Christine Bard, Les Filles de Marianne: histoire desféminismes 1914–1940 (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 235–248.

5. Victor Gollancz, “Introductory,” in Victor Gollancz, ed., The Making of Women:Oxford Essays in Feminism (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1917), 11–35 (quota-tion 33).

6. Martin Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain 1914–1959(Houndmills: Macmillan, 1992), 90–100; Mariolina Graziosi, “Gender Struggleand the Social Manipulation and Ideological Use of Gender Identity in the Inter-War Years,” in Robin Pickering-Iazzi, ed., Mothers of Invention: Women, ItalianFascism, and Culture (Minneapolis, MI: University of Minnesota Press, 1995),26–51.

7. Henry Bordeaux, Le Mariage, hier et aujourd’hui (Paris: Flammarion, 1922), 55.8. Grete Meisel-Hess, “Ehekrisen und ihre Folgen,” Die neue Generation (1920):

88–89.9. Peter Jelavich, “Introduction,” in brochure accompanying Ute Lemper, Berlin

Cabaret Songs (London: Fürstner Musikverlag, 1996), 5; Marcellus Schiffer,“Ich bin ein Vamp,” Lemper, Berlin Cabaret Songs, 20–22 (translation ATA).

10. Bard, Les Filles de Marianne, 186–205; Mary Louise Roberts, Civilization with-out Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917–1927 (Chicago, IL:University of Chicago Press, 1994), 46–52.

11. Victor Margueritte, The Bachelor Girl, trans. Hugh Burnaby (New York: Knopf,1923), 143.

12. Roberts, Civilization without Sexes, 59.13. “Die deutsche Reichsverfassung vom 11 August 1919,” in Herbert Michaelis

and Ernst Schraipler, eds., Ursachen und Folgen vom deutschen Zusammenbruch,1918 und 1945, bis zur staatlichen Neuordnung Deutschlands in der Gegenwart:Eine Urkunden- und Dokumentensammlung, Vol. 3, Article 119 (Berlin:Dokumenten-Verlag, 1979), 464–492, #119.

14. Georges Clémenceau, speech to Senate, October 12, 1919, quoted in Marie-Monique Huss, “Pronatalism in the Inter-War Period in France,” Journal ofContemporary History 25 (January 1990): 39–68 (quotation 41); see also AnneCova, Maternité et droits des femmes en France, XIXe-XXe siècles (Paris:Anthropos, 1995), 233.

15. Sweden, Minister of Social Affairs, “Mandate to the Population Commission,”quoted in Alva Myrdal, Nation and Family: The Swedish Experiment in DemocraticFamily and Population Policy (New York and London: Harper, 1941), 161.

16. Birgit Sack, “Katholische Frauenbewegung, katholische Jugendbewegung, undPolitik in der Weimarer Republik: Standorte, Handlungsspielraeume, und

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Grenzen im Kontext des Generationenkonflikts,” in Frauen unter dem Patriarchatder Kirchen: Katholikinnen und Protestantinnen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,Mit Beiträgen von Irmtraud Götz von Olenhusen, Thomas Mergel, SylviaPaletschek, Relinde Meiwes, Ursula Baumann, Birgit Sack, Martin König, AntoniaLeugers, Jochen-Christoph Kaiser (Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln: W. Kohlhammer,1995), 120–138; Doris Kaufmann, Frauen zwischen Aufbruch und Reaktion:Protestantische Frauenbewegung in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Zürichand Munich: Piper, 1988).

17. Anne Cova, Au service de l’Église, de la patrie, et de la famille: Femmes catholiqueset maternité sous la III. Republique (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000), 120–153; Bard,Les Filles de Marianne, 235. On the UFCS see also Naomi Black, SocialFeminism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 161–240.

18. Marjan Schwegman and Jolande Withuis, “Moederschap: van Springplank totobstakel: Vrouwen, natie en burgerschap in twintigste—eeuws Nederland,” inGeorges Duby and Michelle Perrot, eds., Geschiedenis van de Vrouw, Vol. 5(Amsterdam: Agon, 1991), 5, 557–583.

19. Pius XI, “Casti Connubii,” December 31, 1930, quoted in Susan Groag Bell andKaren Offen, eds., Women, the Family and Freedom: The Debate in Documents,Vol. 2 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983), 306–314 (quotation 314);see also Cova, Au service de l’Église, 169–181.

20. Wilhelm Soldes, “Sozialisierung der Frau oder sozialistische Ehe,” Die Gleichheit,October 9, 1920.

21. Jay Winter, “War, Family, and Fertility in Twentieth Century Europe,” in John R.Gillis, Louise A. Tilly, and David Levine, eds., The European Experience ofDeclining Fertility, 1850–1970: The Quiet Revolution (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989),291–329; see also Karen Hagemann, Frauenalltag und Männerpolitik: Alltagslebenund gesellschaftliches Handeln von Arbeiterfrauen in der Weimarer Republik(Bonn: J.W. Dietz, 1990), 159–175.

22. Winter, “War, Family, and Fertility,” in Gillis, Tilly, and Levine, eds., The QuietRevolution, 301.

23. Silke Neunsinger, Die Arbeit der Frauen—Die Krise der Männer: DieErwerbstätigkeit verheirateter Frauen in Deutschland und Schweden, 1919–1939(Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2001), 114–115.

24. Winter, “War, Family, and Fertility.” 304.25. Kraemer-Bach quoted in Christine Bard, Les Filles de Marianne, 228.26. Bard, Les Filles de Marianne, 228–229.27. Else Ulich-Beil, Ich ging meinen Weg: Lebenserinnerungen (Berlin: F.A. Herbig,

1961), 98.28. See e.g., Elizabeth Roberts, A Woman’s Place: An Oral History of Working-Class

Women, 1890–1940 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 125–168; Anne-Marie Sohn,“Between the Wars in France and England,” in Duby, Perrot, and Thébaud, eds.,History of Women in the West, Vol. 5, 92–119.

29. On the German housewives organizations, see Renate Bridenthal, “ ‘Professional’Housewives: Stepsisters of the Women’s Movement,” in Renate Bridenthal,Atina Grossmann, and Marion Kaplan, eds., When Biology became Destiny:Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984),153–171; Nancy R. Reagin, A German Women’s Movement: Class and Gender inHannover, 1880–1933 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press,1995), 221–248, and Birgitte Søland, Becoming Modern: Young Women and theReconstruction of Womanhood in the 1920s (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 2000), 90–100.

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30. Anne-Marie Sohn, “Between the Wars.”31. Neunsinger, Die Arbeit der Frauen, 119; Janneke Plantenga, “Double Lives:

Labour Market Participation, Citizenship and Gender,” in Jet Bussemaker andMarie Christine Bernadette Voet, eds., Gender, Participation and Citizenship inthe Netherlands (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 51–64.

32. Bard, Les Filles de Marianne, 186–205.33. Bard, Les Filles de Marianne, 129–132.34. Madeleine Vernet, “Mère et Citoyenne,” La Mere Éducatrice, July, 1918.35. Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, “Programm des Bundes deutscher Frauenvereine,”

1920, rpt., in Barbara Greven-Aschoff, Die bürgerliche Frauenbewegung inDeutschland, 1894–1933 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Rupprecht, 1983),296–298.

36. M. Pollak, “Politik, die die Frauen verstehen; Politik, die die Frauen machen,”Arbeiter- Zeitung, August 14, 1927, quoted in Birgitta Baader-Zar, “Women inAustrian Politics: Goals and Visions,” in David F. Good, Margarete Grandner,and Mary Jo Maynes, eds., Austrian Women in the Nineteenth and TwentiethCenturies: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives (Providence and Oxford: BerghahnBooks, 1996), 59–90 (quotation 74).

37. Cf. Kent, Making Peace; Roberts, Civilization without Sexes.38. Cova, Au Service de l’Église, 65.39. David Bradley, Family Law and Political Culture: Scandinavian Laws in

Comparative Perspective (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1996), 1–29.40. Neunsinger, Die Arbeit der Frauen, 82–98 and passim.41. Kari Melby, Anu Pylkkänen, Bente Rosenbeck, Christina Carlsson Wetterberg,

“The Project ‘The Nordic Marriage Model in a Comparative Perspective’ and itsMain Results,” in Kari Melby, Anu Pylkkänen, Bente Rosenbeck, ChristinaCarlsson Wetterberg, eds., The Nordic Model of Marriage and the Welfare State(Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2001), 13–34.

42. Søland, Becoming Modern, 111–144.43. Melby et al., “The Nordic Model of Marriage,” 16.44. WL, National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship, Status of Wives and

Mothers Sub-Committee, “Guardianship of Infants Bill” and “MaintenanceOrders”; see also Harold L. Smith, “British Feminism in the 1920s,” in Harold L.Smith, ed., British Feminism in the Twentieth Century (Amherst, MA: Universityof Massachusetts Press, 1990), 47–65.

45. Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain, 108–109; Bradley, FamilyLaw and Political Culture, 37–66.

46. Greven-Aschoff, Die bürgerliche Frauenbewegung, 160.47. “Die deutsche Reichsverfassung von 1919,” Article 119, 120.48. Camilla Jellinek, ed., Frauen unter deutschem Recht (Mannheim, Berlin, and

Leipzig: J. Bensheimer, 1928), 39–46.49. Yvonne Netter, Code pratique de la femme et de l’enfant (Paris: Hachette, 1930),

37, 66; Paul Smith, Feminism and the Third Republic: Women’s Politicaland Civil Rights in France, 1918–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996),171–181.

50. Conseil national des femmes françaises, “Que démandent les féministes?” LaFrançaise, November 15, 1919; Marcelle Kraemer-Bach, “La puissance paternelle,”La Française, March 19, 1927; see also Bard, Les Filles de Marianne, 364–365.

51. Madeleine Vernet, “Le mensonge social et la maternité,” La Mère Éducatrice,September 1919.

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52. Union féminine civique et sociale, La Mère au foyer: Ouvrière de progrès humain.documents d’études, extraits du Congrès International de juin 1937 (Paris: UFCS,1937), 15.

53. Fernand Boverat, La Crise des naissances: Ses Conséquences tragiques et ses remèdes(Paris: Éditions de l’Alliance Nationale, 1932), 32; Smith, Feminism and the ThirdRepublic, 179.On the work of this organization see Cheryl A. Koos, “Gender,Anti-Individualism, and Nationalism: The Alliance Nationale and the PronatalistBacklash against the Femme Moderne, 1933–1940,” French Historical Studies 19(Spring 1996): 699–723. Cf. also Jacques Donzelot, The Policing of Families, trans.Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), 177–179.

54. Smith, Feminism and the Third Republic; “Le congrès du Conseil Internationaldes Femmes,” La Française, May 18, 1929; Cova, Maternité, 329–345.

55. Editorial, “Tâche familiale, fonction sociale et profession,” La femme dans la viesociale, April, 1938.

56. Bard, Les Filles de Marianne, 364–365; Cova, Maternité, 360–362.57. For example, Huss, “Pronatalism in the Inter-War Period in France,” and Koos,

“Gender, Anti-Individualism, and Nationalism” do not mention the unmarriedmother.

58. See above, pp. 59–60.59. Yvonne Hirdman, Women—From Possibility to Problem: Gender Conflict in the

Welfare State: The Swedish Model, trans. Steven Hartman and Sara RieglerHartman (Stockholm: Arbetslivcentrum, 1994), 14.

60. Simon Szreter, “Falling Fertilities and Changing Sexualities in Europe since c. 1850:A Comparative Survey of National Demographic Patterns,” in Franz X. Eder,Lesley A. Hall, and Gert Hekma, eds., Sexual Cultures in Europe: Themes in Sexuality(Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999), 159–194.

61. Bradley, Family Law and Political Culture, 40–41.62. Verhandlungen der verfassungsgebenden deutschen Nationalversammlung 328

(July 16, 1919): 1600, 1606; see also the summary of this debate in Greven-Aschoff, Die bürgerliche Frauenbewegung, 170.

63. Verhandlungen 328 (July 16, 1919): 1601.64. Verhandlungen 328 (July 30, 1919): 2129.65. Verhandlungen 328 (July 30, 1919): 2131–2132.66. See the statements of Anna von Gierke, Verhandlungen 328 (July 16, 1919):

1602 and of Agnes Neuhaus, 1601.67. “Die deutsche Reichsverfassung von 1919,” Article 121.68. Jellinek, ed., Frauen unter deutschem Recht, 46–50.69. See Christl Wickert, Helene Stöcker, 1869–1934: Frauenrechtlerin, Sexualreformerin,

und Pazifistin: Eine Biographie (Bonn: Dietz, 1991), 105–116; Dr. Rosenthal“Die Reform der Rechtstellung des unehelichen Kindes,” Die neue Generation(1919): 127–133; C.J. Klumker, “Der neue Gesetzentwurf über dieRechtsstellung der unehelichen Kinder,” Die Neue Generation (1929): 1–6.

70. Lisa Pine, Nazi Family Policy, 1933–1945 (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1997),39–43.

71. Gisela Bock, “Nazi Gender Policies and Women’s History,” in Duby, Perrot, andThébaud, eds., A History of Women in the West, Vol. 5, 14–176; see also Pine,Nazi Family Policy, 38–43.

72. Laura Gellott and Michael Phayer, “Dissenting Voices: Catholic Women inOpposition to Fascism,” Journal of Contemporary History 22 (January 1987):91–114.

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73. National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child, Sixth AnnualReport (London: Carnegie House, 1924).

74. WL, NUSEC, Status of Wives and Mothers Sub-Committee.75. Ivy Pinchbeck and Margaret Hewitt, Children in English Society, Vol. 2, From the

Eighteenth Century to the Children Act 1948 (London: Routledge, 1973),602–610.

76. Maria Vérone, La Situation juridique des enfants naturels: Rapport présenté auComité Executif du Conseil International des Femmes au nom de la section delégislation du Conseil national des femmes françaises, Copenhague Mai1924 (Paris:Éditions de la Ligue française pour le droit des femmes, 1924); Kraemer-Bach,“La puissance paternelle.”

77. Vernet, “Le mensonge social et la maternité.”78. Madeleine Vernet, “L’amour libre,” La Mère Éducatrice, September 1920.79. For example, Union féminine civique et sociale, La femme au service du pays

(Paris: UFCS, n.d.); see also Cova, Au service de l’Église.80. Anne Cova, “L’Assurance maternité dans la loi de 1928–1930,” Actes du 114e

Congrès National des Sociétés Savantes, Association pour l’étude de l’histoire de lasécurité sociale (Paris, n.p., 1990), 65–71.

81. Louis Lespine, La Femme en Espagne: Étude juridique, économique et de législa-tion comparée (Toulouse: Clémence-Isaure, 1919), 55–80.

82. Geraldine M. Scanlon, La polemica feminista en la España contemporanea(1868–1974), trans. Rafael Mazarrasa (Madrid: Ediciones Akal, 1986), 138–139.

83. Danièle Bussy-Genevois, “The Women of Spain from the Republic to Franco,”in Duby, Perrot, and Thébaud, eds., History of Women in the West, Vol. 5, 177–193(quotation 178); see also Karen Offen, European Feminisms 1700–1950: A PoliticalHistory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 320–329.

84. Aurora G. Morcillo, True Catholic Womanhood: Gender Ideology in Franco’sSpain (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000), 20–26.

85. Bussy-Genevois, “The Women of Spain,” 187.86. Mary Nash, “Pronatalism and Motherhood in Franco’s Spain,” in Gisela Bock

and Pat Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies: Women and the Rise ofEuropean Welfare States, 1880s–1950s (London and New York: Routledge,1991), 160–177; Morcillo, True Catholic Womanhood, 27–45.

87. Union féminine civique et sociale, “La femme au service du pays,” 30.88. Wilma Meikle, Towards a Sane Feminism (New York: Robert M. McBride and

Co., 1917), 127.89. Camilla Jellinek “Vom Kochtopf und von der geistigen Arbeit,” Neue badische

Zeitung, May 25, 1921, BAK, Nachlass Camilla Jellinek, Vol. 14.90. “Du foyer au pièdestal,” La Française, June 9, 1923.91. Editorial, “The Right to Marry,” The Woman’s Leader, August 7, 1925; see also

Susan Pedersen, Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britainand France, 1914–1945 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,1993), 138–174.

92. Eleanor Rathbone, The Disinherited Family: A Plea for the Endowment of theFamily (London: E. Arnold, 1924), 65.

93. Rathbone, The Disinherited Family, 209.94. Richard Soloway, Demography and Degeneration: Eugenics and the Declining

Birthrate in Twentieth-Century Britain (Chapel Hill, NC: University of NorthCarolina Press, 1990), 294–298; Pamela Graves, “An Experiment in Woman-Centered Socialism: Labour Women in Britain,” in Pamela Graves and HelmutGruber, eds., Women and Socialism, Socialism and Women: Europe between the

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Two World Wars (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1998), 180–214;Pedersen, Family, Dependence, 138–223.

95. Rathbone, The Disinherited Family, 239–240.96. Rathbone, The Disinherited Family, 305.97. Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain, 238–239; see also Offen,

European Feminisms, 280–283.98. Elizabeth Abbott, “What is Equality?,” The Woman’s Leader, February 11,

1927.99. The Open Door International for the Economic Emancipation of the Woman

Worker, Manifesto and Charter, Berlin, June 16, 1929. See also the discussionof these issues in Pedersen, Family, Dependence, 138–223, and Offen, EuropeanFeminisms, 353.

100. On working-class households see Roberts, A Woman’s Place, 148–163; onworking-class women’s responses to family endowment see Pedersen, Family,Dependence, 213–219.

101. Pedersen, Family, Dependence, 179–223.102. For an excellent summary of the French debates, see Karen Offen, “Body

Politics: Women, Work and the Politics of Motherhood in France, 1920–1950,”in Bock and Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies, 138–159.

103. Conseil national des femmes françaises, “Que demandent les féministes?”104. Vernet, “Le mensonge social et la maternité”; Offen, “Body politics.”105. “Allocations familiales et travail féminin,” La Française, October 12, 1938;

for a much fuller discussion of these issues, see Pedersen, Family, Dependence,392–411; and Cova, Maternité, 325–392.

106. Koos, “Gender, Anti-Individualism, and Nationalism.”107. M. Bunel, “Liberté, liberté chérie . . . dans le féminisme,” La Femme dans la vie

sociale, November 1936; Union Féminine Civique et Sociale, La Femme auservice du pays, 35; Bard, Les Filles de Marianne, 313–329; Cova, Maternité, 331;Cova, Au Service de l’Église, 165–181.

108. Bard, Les Filles de Marianne, 314.109. “Une injustice,” La Française, January 14, 1939.110. Chambre des Députés, Journal officiel de la République Fançiase: lois et décrets,

July 30, 1939; Cova, Maternité, 372–380.111. Reagin, A German Women’s Movement, 221–247; Marie Baum, “Referat Art. 110

der Verfassung des deutschen Reichs,” LAB, B-Rep. 235–0, Archiv des BDF,“Protokolle der 13. Generalversammlung des BDF,” Fiche 3050. Statement ofFräulein Fisch, “Protokolle der 13. Generalversammlung des BDF.”

112. Statements of Else Lüders, Marianne Weber, Camilla Jellinek, “Protokolle der13. Generalversammlung des BDF.”

113. Henriette Fürth, “Zur Sozialisierung der öffentlichen Wohlfahrtspflege: TeilIII,” Die Gleichheit (1919): 154–155; see also Michael Schwartz, SozialistischeEugenik: Eugenische Sozialtechnologien in Debatten und Politik der deutschenSozialdemokratie (Bonn: Dietz Verlag, 1995), 182.

114. LAB, B-Rep. 235–0, “Protokolle der 16. Generalversammlung des BDF” Fiche3061.

115. Gertrud Bäumer, Familienpolitik: Probleme, Ziele und Wege (Berlin: Verlag fürStandesamtswesen, 1933), 50.

116. “Die deutsche Reichsverfassung vom 11 August 1919,” Article 128.117. Bund deutscher Frauenvereine, “Frauenarbeit und Wirtschaftskrisis: Erklärung des

BDF April 1931,” in LAB, B-Rep. 235-0, BDF, Petionen zu Wirtschaftsfragen,April 1931, Fiche 2848.

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118. On the postal and telegraph workers, see Ursula Nienhaus, Vater Staat undseine Gehilfinnen: Die Politik mit der Frauenarbeit bei der deutschen Post(1864–1945) (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1995), 127–174.

119. Johanna Gehmacher, Völkische Frauenbewegung: Deutschnationale und national-sozialistische Geschlechterpolitik in Österreich (Wien: Döcker Verlag, 1998), 79–84.

120. “Berufsarbeit der verheirateten Frau,” Die Frau (Wien) 40 (June 1931): 1.121. “Das Doppelverdienergesetz,” Die Österreicherin, December 1933.122. Gellott and Phayer, “Dissenting Voices.”123. C.P. Gunning and W. Wijnaendts Francken-Dyserinck, Het Gezinsloon

(s’Gravenhage: Centrale van Vereeniginen van Personeel, 1921), 18. See alsoIIAV, Archief van het Comité van Actie tegen het Gezinsloon, NederlandscheUnie voor Vrouwenbelangen, “Gezinsloon.”

124. Tjitske Akkerman, “Political Participation and Social Rights: The Triumph ofthe Breadwinner in the Netherlands,” in Bussemaker and Voet, eds., Gender,Participation, 38–50.

125. IIAV, Nederlandsche Unie voor Vrouwenbelangen, “Actiecomité inzake hetOntslag van de Gehuwde Ambtenaressen”; see also Janneke Plantenga, “DoubleLives: Labour Market Participation, Citizenship and Gender,” in Bussemakerand Voet, eds., Gender, Participation and Citizenship, 51–64; and Francisca deHaan, Gender and the Politics of Office Work: The Netherlands, 1890–1940(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1998), 58–70.

126. Denise de Weerdt, En de Vrouwen? Vrouw, vrouwenbeweging en feminisme enBelgie 1830–1960 (Gent: Masreelfonds, 1980), 158–160.

127. Lars Trägårdh, “Crisis and the Politics of National Community: Germany andSweden, 1933/1994,” in Nina Witoszek and Lars Trägårdh, eds., Culture andCrisis: The Case of Germany and Sweden (New York and Oxford: BerghahnBooks, 2002), 75–109; Neunsinger, Die Arbeit der Frauen.

128. Neunsinger, Die Arbeit der Frauen, 59–66.129. Neunsinger, Die Arbeit der Frauen, 67–139. A sensitive and insightful account

of Myrdal’s life and work is Sondra R. Herman, “Dialogue: Children,Feminism, and Power: Alva Myrdal and Swedish Reform, 1929–1956,”Journal of Women’s History 4 (Fall 1992): 82–112; and Herman, “Feminists,Socialists, and the Genesis of the Swedish Welfare State,” in Frances RichardsonKeller, ed., Views of Women’s Lives in Western Tradition: Frontiers of the Pastand the Future (Lewiston, ME: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 472–510.

130. Myrdal, Nation and Family, 145.131. Myrdal, Nation and Family, 121; see also Neunsinger, Die Arbeit der Frauen,

59–66; Ann-Sofie Ohlander, “The Invisible Child? The Struggle for a SocialDemocratic Family Policy in Sweden, 1900–1960s,” in Gisela Bock and PatThane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies, 60–72; Yvonne Hirdman, Women—From Possibility to Problem: Gender Conflict in the Welfare State: The SwedishModel, trans. Steven Hartman and Sara Riegler Hartman (Stockholm:Arbetslivcentrum, 1994), 17–19; and Ann-Sofie Kälvemark, More Children ofBetter Quality? Aspects of Swedish Population Policy in the 1930s (Uppsala:Almqvist and Wiksell International, 1990).

132. Neunsinger, Die Arbeit der Frauen, 219–221.133. Ohlander, “The Invisible Child?,” in Bock and Thane, eds., Maternity and

Gender Policies, 69; see also Myrdal, Family and State.134. Chiara Saraceno, “Redefining Maternity and Paternity: Gender, Pronatalism

and Social Policies in Fascist Italy,” in Bock and Thane, eds., Maternity and GenderPolicies, 196–212.

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135. Bock, “Nazi Gender Policies,” 160–170; Bock, Frauen in der europäischenGeschichte, 281–295.

136. Mary E. Daly, “Oh Kathleen ni Houlihan, Your Way’s a Thorny Way: TheCondition of Women in 20th Century Ireland,” in Anthony Bradley andMaryann Gialanella Valiulis, eds., Gender and Sexuality in Modern Ireland(Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997), 102–126.

137. Bunreact na hÉireann, # 41(2), quoted in Pauline Conroy Jackson, “Managingthe Mothers: the Case of Ireland,” in Jane Lewis, ed., Women and Social Policiesin Europe: Work, Family and the State (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1993), 72–91(quotation 75); see also Yvonne Scannell, “The Constitution and the Role ofWomen,” in Brian Farrell, ed., De Valera’s Constitution and Ours (Goldenbridge,Dublin: Gillard Macmillan, 1988), 123–136.

138. Schwegman and Withuis, “Moederschap: van springplank tot obstakel”; seealso Jet Bussemaker, “Gender and the Separation of Spheres in TwentiethCentury Dutch Society: Pillarisation, Welfare State Formation, andIndividualisation,” in Bussemaker and Voet, eds., Gender, Participation, 25–50;and Ulla Jansz, “Gender and Democratic Socialism in the Netherlands,” inGruber and Graves, eds., Women and Socialism, Socialism and Women, 215–237.

139. Vera Brittain, Lady into Woman: A History of Women from Victoria to Elizabeth II(New York: Macmillan, 1953), 173.

140. Yvonne Netter, Le Travail de la femme mariée: Son activité professionelle (Paris:Les Presses Universitaires de France, 1923), 27.

141. Adele Schreiber, “Weibliche Beamtinnen und Sozialdemokratie,” MünchenerPost, July 21, 1925.

142. Myrdal, Nation and Family, 424. For an excellent international and comparativediscussion of the issues surrounding motherhood and family allowances inthe interwar era see Gisela Bock, Frauen in der europäischen Geschichte vomMittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2000), 248–259.

“C M”: B C,E, P H

I E

1. The description of and quotation from Vautel’s novel (which was not availableto me in the original) is taken from Mary Louise Roberts, Civilization WithoutSexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917–1927 (Chicago, IL:University of Chicago Press, 1994), 131.

2. Vera Brittain, Honourable Estate: A Novel of Transition (New York: Macmillan,1936), 516–517.

3. Atina Grossmann, Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control andAbortion Reform, 1920–1950 (New York: Oxford, 1995), 15.

4. Enid Charles, The Twilight of Parenthood (New York: W.W. Norton, 1934), 89;D.V. Glass, “Family Planning Programmes and Action in Western Europe,”Population Studies 19 (March 1966): 221–238.

5. John T. Noonan, Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the CatholicTheologians and Canonists (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1965), 409.

6. Cf. Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 17.7. Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 37–51.8. Cornelie Usborne, The Politics of the Body in Weimar Germany: Women’s

Reproductive Rights and Duties (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1992), 142–144.9. Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 14–45.

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10. Karl Kautsky, “Eheberatung,” Die Frau (Wien) (October 1): 1921, 9–12; HelmutGruber, “The ‘New Woman’: Realities and Illusions of Gender Equality in RedVienna,” in Helmut Gruber, ed., Women and Socialism, Socialism and Women:Europe between the Two World Wars (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books,1998), 56–94.

11. Grossmann, Reforming Sex, 35.12. Susanna Woodtli, Gleichberechtigung: Der Kampf um die politischen Rechte der

Frau in der Schweiz (Frauenfeld: Huber, 1975), 138–148.13. Usborne, The Politics of the Body, 156–201.14. Atina Grossmann, “Abortion and Economic Crisis: The 1931 Campaign Against

Paragraph 218,” in Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann, and Marion Kaplan,eds., When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984), 66–86; “Gegen den 144,” Die Frau(Wien) (February 1933): 2–3.

15. Marie Carmichael Stopes, Radiant Motherhood: A Book for Those Who areCreating the Future [1920] in Marie Mulvey Roberts and Tamae Mizuta, eds.,The Mothers: Controversies of Motherhood (London: Routledge Thoemmes,1994), 169; see also Lesley A. Hall, “Malthusian Mutations: The ChangingPolitics and Moral Meanings of Birth Control in Britain,” in Brian Dolan, ed.,Malthus, Medicine, and Morality: “Malthusianism” after 1798 (Amsterdam:Rodopi, 2000), 141–163.

16. Richard A. Soloway, “The Galton Lecture 1996: Marie Stopes, Eugenics, and theBirth Control Movement,” in Robert A. Peel, ed., Marie Stopes and the EnglishBirth Control Movement: Proceedings of a Conference organized by the GaltonInstitute, London, 1996 (London: Galton Institute, 1997), 49–76; AngusMcLaren, A History of Contraception from Antiquity to the Present Day (Oxfordand Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990), 215–252.

17. Greta Jones, “Marie Stopes in Ireland: The Mother’s Clinic in Belfast,1936–47,” Social History of Medicine 5/2 (April 1992): 255–277, partiallyreprinted in Alan Hayes and Diane Urquart, eds., The Irish Women’s HistoryReader (London: Routledge, 2001), 111–115.

18. Sheila Rowbotham, A New World for Women: Stella Browne, Socialist Feminist(London: Pluto Press, 1977), 43–59; Johanna Alberti, Beyond Suffrage:Feminists in War and Peace, 1914–28 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989),121–125; Hall, “Malthusian Mutations.”

19. Rowbotham, A New World, 22–42; Hall, “Malthusian Mutations.”20. Doris H. Linder, Crusader for Sex Education: Elise Ottesen-Jensen (1886–1973)

in Scandinavia and on the International Scene (Lanham, NY: University Press ofAmerica, 1996), 87–145.

21. Sondra R. Herman, “Feminists, Socialists, and the Genesis of the SwedishWelfare State,” in Frances Richardson Keller, ed., Views of Women’s Lives inWestern Tradition: Frontiers of the Past and the Future (Lewiston, ME: EdwinMellen Press, 1990), 472–510.

22. Ida Blom, “Voluntary motherhood 1900–1930: Theories and Politics of aNorwegian Feminist in an International Perspective,” in Gisela Bock and PatThane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies: Women and the Rise of the EuropeanWelfare States, 1880s–1950s (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 21–39.

23. Glass, “Family Planning Programmes.”24. Hugo Q. Röling, “L’Énigme de la contraception aux Pays-Bas,” in Francis

Ronsin, Hervé Le Bras and Élisabeth Zucker-Rouvillois, eds., Démographie etPolitique (Dijon: Éditions universitaires de Dijon, 1997), 27–37.

N 288


25. Roberts, Civilization Without Sexes, 93–119. Part of the text of this law isreprinted in translation in Susan Groag Bell and Karen Offen, eds., Women, theFamily, and Freedom: The Debate in Documents, Vol. 2 (Stanford, CA: StanfordUniversity Press, 1983), 309–310.

26. Pius XI, Casti Connubii, 1930, quoted in Bell and Offen, eds., Women, theFamily, and Freedom, Vol. 2, 310–312 (quotation 210).

27. BMD, Dossier Henriette Alquier; Anne Cova, Maternité et droits des femmes enFrance, XIX–XX siècles (Paris: Anthropos, 1997), 285–294.

28. Francis Ronsin, La Grève des ventres: propagande néo-malthusien et baisse de lanatalité française, XIXe-XXe siècles (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1980), 197–200.

29. A.M. Carr-Saunders, World Population: Past Growth and Present Trends (Oxford:Clarendon, 1936), 241–242; Jones, “Marie Stopes in Ireland.”

30. Mary Nash, “Pronatalism and Motherhood in Franco’s Spain,” in Bock andThane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies, 160–195; Mary Nash, Defying MaleCivilization: Women in the Spanish Civil War (Denver, CO: Arden Press, 1995),165–176.

31. Yvonne Knibiehler and Catherine Fouquet, La Femme et les médecins: Analysehistorique (Paris: Hachette, 1983), 273.

32. Yvonne Knibiehler, L’Histoire des mères du moyen-âge à nos jours (Paris:Montalba, 1980), 321–322.

33. Karen Hagemann, Frauenalltag und Männerpolitik: Alltagsleben undgesellschaftliches Handeln von Arbeiterfrauen in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn:J.W. Dietz, 1990), 268.

34. Naomi Mitchison, “Some Comment on the Use of Contraceptives by IntelligentPersons,” in Norman Haire and World League for Sexual Reform, eds., SexualReform Congress, London, 8–14 ix, 1929: Proceedings of the Third Congress (London:Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co, 1930), 182–188 (quotation 188).

35. C. Brunschvicg, “Féminisme et natalité,” La Française, October 1, 1931.36. Adele Schreiber, introduction to Margaret Sanger, Die neue Mutterschaft:

Geburtenregelung als Kulturproblem (Dresden: Sibyllen-Verlag, 1927), 29.37. Naomi Mitchison, “Some Comment,” in World League for Sexual Reform, 184.38. Cheryl A. Koos, “Gender, Anti-Individualism, and Nationalism: the Alliance

Nationale and the Pronatalist Backlash against the Femme Moderne, 1933–1940,”French Historical Studies 19 (Spring 1996): 699–723; Marie-Monique Huss,“Pronatalism in the Inter-War Period in France,” Journal of ContemporaryHistory 25 (January 1990): 39–68.

39. Auguste Isaac, “La natalité française,” Le Musée Social, May 5, 1923; see alsoRobert Talmy, Histoire du mouvement familial en France, 1896–1939 (Aubenas:Union nationale des Caisses d’Allocations Familiales, 1962), 186–237.

40. Nelly Roussel, editorial in La République Intégrale (December 1919). This andother articles may be found in BMD, Fonds Nelly Roussel, clippings file.

41. “The Real Meaning of the Words ‘Birth Control,’ ” Time and Tide (June 6, 1924).42. Nationale Vrouwenraad, Het Bevolkingsvraagstuk, Rapport van de commissie

tot bestudeering van het bevolkingsvraagstuk (Leiden: S.C. van Doesburgh,1927).

43. “Declaration of the Rights of the Child,” quoted in Edward Fuller, The Right ofthe Child: A Chapter in Social History (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1951), 72;“La Charte de l’Enfant,” La Voix des Femmes, January 15, 1925.

44. “La Charte de l’Enfant.”45. Marie Carmichael Stopes, Radiant Motherhood: A Book for Those who are Creating

the Future (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1921), 191.

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46. “Henriette Alquier et Marie Guillot devant le tribunal correctionnel de Saumur,”L’Humanité, December 10, 1927. This and other articles may be found inBMD, Dossier Marie Guillot. Cf. also Jacgues Donzelot, The Policing of Families,trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), 171–188.

47. “Report of the Work of the Labour Party in Women’s Interests at Home andAbroad, May to April, 1924,” The Labour Woman, July 1, 1925.

48. Elise Ottesen-Jensen, “Birth Control Work among the Poor in Sweden,” inHaire and World League for Sex Reform, eds., Sexual Reform Congress, 173–177(quotation 174).

49. Schreiber, introduction to Sanger, Die neue Mutterschaft, 26.50. Dora Russell, The Tamarisk Tree: My Quest for Liberty and Love, Vol. 1

(New York: G.W. Putnam, 1975), 170.51. Alice Rühle-Gerstel, Das Frauenproblem der Gegenwart: Eine Psychologische

Bilanz (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1932), 345.52. Editorial, “Natalité,” La Française, April 17, 1937. This and other clippings may

be found BMD, Dossier Natalité.53. Maude Royden, “Modern Love,” in Victor Gollancz, ed., The Making of Women:

Oxford Essays in Feminism (London: Allen and Unwin, 1917), 36–63.54. Dora Russell, Hypatia: Women and Knowledge (New York: Dutton, 1925), 42.55. Russell, The Tamarisk Tree, 224.56. Gertrud Bäumer, “Rede zum sozialen Teil des Regierungsprogramms,” Die

Frau 26 (April 7, 1919): 201–202.57. Gertrud Bäumer, Familienpolitik: Probleme, Ziele und Wege (Berlin: Verlag für

Standesamtswesen, 1933), 50.58. Grossmann, “Abortion and Economic Crisis.”59. Bertolt Brecht, “Herr Doktor,” in Brecht, Bertolt Brecht: Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 8

(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967), 382.60. Henriette Herzfelder, “Zum Muttertag,” Die Österreicherin (May 1928): 1–2.61. Roberts, Civilization without Sexes, 102.62. Editorial, La Française, November 12, 1938; see BMD, Dossier fête des mères.63. Cicely Hamilton, Modern Italy, as Seen by an Englishwoman (London: J.M. Dent,

1935), 76.64. Winfred Holtby, Women and a Changing Civilization [1935] (Chicago, IL:

Cassandra Editions, 1978), 167, 168.65. Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas [1938] (London and New York: Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich, 1966), 102.66. Kerstin Hesselgren, quoted in Sondra R. Herman, “Feminists, Socialists, and

the Genesis of the Swedish Welfare State,” in Frances Richardson Keller,ed., Views of Women’s Lives in Western Tradition: Frontiers of the Past andthe Future (Lewiston, ME: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 472–510 (quota-tion 489).

67. “Was in Nazimutterschulen gelehrt wird,” Die Frau (1934): 9.68. Laura Gellott and Michael Phayer, “Dissenting Voices: Catholic Women in

Opposition to Fascism,” Journal of Contemporary History 22 (January 1987):91–114.

69. Silke Neunsinger, Die Arbeit der Frauen, Die Krise der Männer: DieErwerbstätigkeit verheirateter Frauen in Deutschland und Schweden, 1919–1939(Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2001), 59–66.

70. Alva Myrdal, Nation and Family: The Swedish Experiment in Democratic Familyand Population Policy (New York and London: Harper, 1941), 110.

71. Myrdal, Nation and Family, 117.

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72. Sondra R. Herman, “Dialogue: Children, Feminism, and Power: Alva Myrdal andSwedish Reform, 1929–1956,” Journal of Women’s History 4 (Fall 1992): 82–112.

73. Ann-Sofie Ohlander, “The Invisible Child? The Struggle for a Social DemocraticFamily Policy in Sweden, 1900–1960s,” in Bock and Thane, eds., Maternity andGender Policies, 60–72 (quotation 70); see also Anne-Lise Seip and Hilde Ibsen,“Family Welfare, Which Policy? Norway’s Road to Child Allowances,” in Bockand Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies, 40–59.

74. Stella Browne, “Women and Birth Control,” in Eden Paul, ed., Population andBirth Control, a Symposium (New York: Critic and Guide Co., 1917), rpt. byLesley Hall, www.lesleyahall.net.

75. Stella Browne, “The Right to Abortion,” in Rowbotham, ed., A New World forWomen, 113, 114.

76. Felicia Gordon, The Integral Feminist: Madeleine Pelletier, 1874–1939:Feminism, Socialism and Medicine (Minneapolis, MN: University of MinnesotaPress, 1990), 213–235.

77. Madeleine Pelletier, “De l’avortement,” Haire and World League for SexualReform, Sexual Reform Congress, 233–235 (quotation 235).

78. Stopes, Radiant Motherhood, 237; on Stopes see also Soloway, “The GaltonLecture 1996.”

79. Juste Sicard de Plauzoles, “Prophylaxie de la dégénerescence par l’éducationsexuelle,” Cours Libre d’Hygiène Sociale (Paris: Sorbonne, 1930), 53.

80. “L’oeuvre accomplie par le Comité d’Éducation Féminine (1925–1935):Rapport présenté à l’assemblée générale du 14 mars 1935 de la Société Françaisede Prophylaxie Sanitaire et Morale par Mme. le Docteur Montreuil-Straus,”brochure in BMD, Dossier Germane Montreuil-Straus.

81. “L’oeuvre accomplie”; a postcard version of this poster is in BMD, DossierGermaine Montreuil-Straus.

82. “L’oeuvre accomplie.”83. “L’oeuvre accomplie.” On Montreuil-Straus see also Christine Bard, Les Filles de

Marianne: Histoire des féminismes 1914–1940 (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 223–226;and Roberts, Civilization without Sexes, 184–187.

84. Margarita Nelken, La Condición Social de la Mujer in España: Su Estado Actual,Su Posible Desarollo (Barcelona: Editorial Minerva, 1922), 122–123. OnNelken’s life and work see Josebe Martínez-Gutiérrez, “Margarita Nelken:Feminist and Political Praxis during the Spanish Civil War,” trans. H. PatsyBoyer, in Lisa Vollendorf, ed., Recovering Spain’s Feminist Tradition (New York:The Modern Language Association of America, 2001), 278–292.

85. Felix Marti Ibañez quoted in Nash, Defying Male Civilization, 173; see alsoTemma Kaplan, “Other Scenarios: Women and Spanish Anarchism,” in RenateBridenthal and Claudia Koonz, eds., Becoming Visible: Women in EuropeanHistory (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 400–421.

86. Martha A. Ackelsberg, Free Women of Spain, Anarchism and the Struggle for theEmancipation of Women (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991),115–142.

87. Kari Melby, Anu Pylkkänen, Bente Rosenbeck, Christina Carlsson Wetterberg,“The Project ‘The Nordic Marriage Model in Comparative Perspective and ItsMain Results’ ” in Kari Melby, Anu Pylkkänen, Bente Rosenbeck, and ChristinaCarlsson Wetterberg, eds., The Nordic Model of Marriage and the Welfare State(Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2000), 13–26; and Marjatta Hietala,“Eugenics and the Reform of Marriage Law in Finland,” in Melby et al., eds.,The Nordic Model, 159–182.

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88. Jan Noordman, Om de Kwaliteit van het nageslacht: Eugenetica in Nederland,1900–1950 (Nijmegen: Sun, 1989), 98–99; see also B. Bakker-Nort,Beroepsarbeid der gehuwde vrouw (Utrecht: A. W. Bruna, 1921).

89. Herwerden, “Erfelijkheitsverschijnseln bij de mens,” quoted in C.A.B vanHerwerden, Marianne van Herwerden, 16 Februari 1874–26 Januari 1934(Rotterdam: W.L.&L. Brusse, 1948), 147.

90. Noordman, Om de Kwaliteit, 164.91. William H. Schneider, Quality and Quantity: The Quest for Biological

Regeneration in Twentieth-century France (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1990), 146–169.

92. Laure Biardeau, Le Certificat prénuptial: Étude de droit comparé et de législation(Paris: Le mouvement sanitaire: Librairie du Receuil Sirey, 1931), 22; see alsoBMD, Dossier Certificat Prénuptial.

93. Louise Hervieu, Le Crime (Paris: Éditions Denoël, 1937), 56; see also LouiseHervieu, Sangs: un roman (Paris: Denoël et Steele, 1936).

94. Brochure Association Louise Hervieu pour l’établissement du Carnet de Santé,déclarée le 31 janvier, 1938, in BMD, Dossier Louise Hervieu.

95. Hervieu, Le Crime, 60.96. Schneider, Quality and Quantity, 172.97. On the history of sterilization debates, see Gisela Bock, Zwangssterilisation im

Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur Rassenpolitk und Frauenpolitik (Opladen:Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986), 21–78; William H. Schneider, Quality andQuantity, 171–191; Gunnar Broberg and Nils Roll-Hansen, eds., Eugenics and theWelfare State: Sterilization Policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland(East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1996).

98. For a more thorough comparison see Ann Taylor Allen, “Feminism andEugenics in Germany and Britain, 1900–1940: A Comparative Perspective,”German Studies Review 23 (October 2000): 477–506.

99. Angelika Ebbinghaus, “Helene Wessel und die Verwahrung,” in AngelikaEbbinghaus, ed., Opfer und Täterinnen: Frauenbiographien des Nationalsozialismus(Nördlingen: Franz Greno, 1987), 152–173; Edward Ross Dickinson, “Welfare,Democracy and Fascism: The Political Crisis in German Child Welfare,1922–1933,” German Studies Review 22 (February 1999): 43–66. MichaelSchwartz, Sozialistische Eugenik: Eugenische Sozialtechnologien in Debatten undPolitik der deutschen Sozialdemokratie, 1890–1933 (Bonn: Dietz, 1995), 23–35.

100. Schwartz, Sozialistische Eugenik, 264–327; see also Allen, “Feminism andEugenics in Germany and Britain.”

101. LAB, B-Rep. 235, Archiv des BDF, Veranstaltungen des Bundes,Generalversammlung 1925: Maschinenschriftliche Stenogramme der 14.Generalversammlung von 4 bis 7 Okt. in Dresden, 164–178, Ficheno. 3032–3035. See the statement of Frau Dr. Schörp-Merkel, p. 118: “Essollen nur wohlgeborene Kinder gezeugt werden. Ich finde immer, daß mandem sehr begeistert zustimmt. Wir müssen uns hier aber bescheiden undbekennen, daß die Wissenschaft noch nicht so weit ist, mit Sicherheit festzustellen,ob ein Kind wohlgeboren ist oder nicht. Gerade bei der Erblichkeit, z.B. beiGeisteskrankheiten ist das nicht möglich.”

102. Bäumer, Familienpolitik, 33; for other examples see Allen, “Feminism andEugenics in Germany and Britain.”

103. Luise Scheffen-Doering, “Die Familie im Volksaufbau,” Die Frau 40 (1933):530–535; quotations 530, 533.

104. Bock, Zwangssterilisation, 79–140.

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105. For background of British politics and natalism, see Pamela Graves, “AnExperiment in Woman-Centered Socialism: Labour Women in Britain,”in Gruber and Graves, eds., Women and Socialism, 180–214; and SusanPedersen, Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain andFrance, 1914–1945 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,1993), 138–223.

106. John Macnicol, “Eugenics and the Campaign for Voluntary Sterilizationbetween the Wars,” The Society for the Social History of Medicine (1989): 147–169;C.P. Blacker, “Voluntary Sterilization: The Last Sixty Years,” Eugenics Review 54(1962): 9–23.

107. On the NUSEC endorsement, see WLHM, SA/Eug./D147: General:National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship. The endorsements ofNUSEC and of the Women’s Cooperative Guild are also quoted in Committeefor Legalizing Eugenic Sterilization, Better Unborn (London: B. Standing,1932), 16. See Lesley A. Hall, “Women, Feminism and Eugenics,” in Robert A.Peel, ed., Essays in the History of Eugenics: Proceedings of a Conference Organizedby the Galton Institute, London 1997 (London: Galton Institute, 1997), 36–51;Diana Hopkinson, Family Inheritance: A Life of Eva Hubback (London andNew York: Staples Press, 1954) does not discuss this aspect of Hubback’s activities.

108. Soloway, “The Galton Lecture 1996”; Stopes, Radiant Motherhood, 233–252.109. John Macnicol, “The Voluntary Sterilization Campaign in Britain,” in John C.

Fout, ed., Forbidden History: The State, Society and the Regulation of Sexualityin Modern Europe (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 317–334.

110. Report of the Seventeenth National Conference of Labour Women, May 19, 20,and 21, 1936 (London: Labour Party, 1926), 92; see also Macnicol, “Eugenicsand the Campaign for Voluntary Sterilization,” 164.

111. “Sterilisation: Report of Departmental Committee,” The Shield (March 1934).112. Bent Sigurd Hansen, “Something Rotten in the State of Denmark: Eugenics

and the Ascent of the Welfare State,” in Broberg and Roll-Hansen, eds., Eugenicsand the Welfare State, 30–42.

113. Myrdal, Nation and Family, 213.114. Marjatta Hietala, “From Race Hygiene to Sterilization: The Eugenics

Movement in Finland,” in Roll-Hansen, ed., Eugenics and the Welfare State,195–258; “Sterilization Act Enacted in Helsinki 13 June, 1935,” rpt.,in Markku Mattila, Kansamme Parhaaksi:Rotuhygienia Suomessa vuoden 1935sterliointilakiin asti (In Our Nation’s Best Interest: Eugenics in Finland until thePromulgation of the Sterilization Law of 1935) (Helsinki: Suomen HistoriallinenenSeura, 1999), 432 (see also the English-language summary of this work,401–431).

115. Stella Browne, “Working Women who Think,” The New Generation,September 1922, displayed on www.lesleyahall.net

116. Dora Russell, “Marriage and Freedom,” Haire and World League for SexualReform, eds., Sexual Reform Congress, 25–36 (quotation 28).

117. Nationale Vrouwenrad, Het Bevolkingsvraagstuk.118. Tilla Vulhopp, “Que penser du birth control?” La Femme Belge

(September 1929): 406–413 (quotation 409).119. Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 117–118.120. Herwerden, Marianne van Herwerden, 49; F. Schrijver, Dr. Maria Anna van

Herwerden, s.i., 1934.121. “La réforme sexuelle en Allemagne,” Problème Sexuel, no. 3 (July 1934):

36–37.

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122. Gertrud Bäumer, “Frauenbewegung und Mutterschaft,” Die Frau 41(1933/34): 171–181 (quotation 177).

123. Kara Lenz-von Börries, “Zum Sterilisationsgesetz,” Die Frau 41 (1933/34):354–357; see also Claudia Koonz, “Ethical Dilemmas and Nazi Eugenics:Single-Issue Dissent in Religious Contexts,” in Michael Geyer and Charles W.Boyer, eds., Resistance against the Third Reich (Chicago, IL and London:University of Chicago Press, 1994), 15–38.

124. An influential popularization of these discoveries was J.B.S. Haldane, Adventuresof a Biologist (New York and London: Harper, 1940), especially 143–166; seealso Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of HumanHeredity (New York: Knopf, 1985), 193–211; and Elazar Barkan, The Retreat ofScientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United Statesbetween the World Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

125. Richard A. Soloway, “From Mainline to Reform Eugenics—Leonard Darwinand C.P. Blacker,” in Peel, ed., Essays in the History of Eugenics, 52–80. For acommentary on this trend, see Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The ModernDenial of Human Nature (New York: Viking, 2002), 1–102 and passim.

126. Stopes, Radiant Motherhood, 191.127. Alice Salomon, “Ausgangspunkt und Ziel der Familienforschung der deutschen

Frauenakademie,” Zeitschrift für Wohlfahrtspflege (August 1930): 283–290(quotation 290).

128. Myrdal, Nation and Family, 6.129. Myrdal, Nation and Family, 380.130. Stopes, Radiant Motherhood, 1.131. Marie Carmichael Stopes, Married Love: A New Contribution to the Solution of

Sex Difficulties [1918] (London: G. Putnam’s Sons, 1919), 132.132. Stopes, Radiant Motherhood, 198, 194.133. Judge Ben B. Lindsay, “Wisdom for Parents,” in V.F. Calverton and

S.D. Schmalhausen, eds., Sex in Civilization (New York: Garden CityPublishing, 1929), 180–199.

134. Russell, Hypatia, 59.135. W. Wijnaendts Francken-Dyserinck, Kameradschaftsehe (Baarn: Hollandia-

Druckerij, 1930), 41.136. Gertrud Bäumer, “Zur Frage der ‘Jugendehe,’ ” in Gertrud Bäumer, Die Frau

im neuen Lebensraum (Berlin: Herbig, 1931), 168–177.137. Wijnaendts Francken-Dyserinck, Kameradschaftsehe, 13–14; see also her

papers, in IIAV, Wilmoet Wijnaendts Francken-Dyserinck.138. Marianne Pollak, “Der Bankerott der Ehe: Ein Buch über die sexuelle

Revolution,” Die Frau (Wien), May 5, 1930.139. Dora Russell, In Defence of Children (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1932), 9;

Russell, Hypatia, 47.140. Stopes, Radiant Motherhood, 4.141. Margaret Sanger, Happiness in Marriage [1926] (Old Saybrook, CT:

Applewood, 1993), 199.142. Dora Russell, The Right to be Happy (New York: Harper Brothers, 1927), 200.143. Charles, The Twilight of Parenthood, 197.144. Charles, The Twilight of Parenthood, 77–107.145. J.B.S. Haldane, Daedalus, or Science and the Future (New York: E.P. Dutton,

1924), 63–65; Charles, The Twilight of Parenthood, 192.146. George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch [1921]

(Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1949), Part I, Act I, 79.

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147. Shaw, Back to Methuselah, Part I, Act I, 86.148. Shaw, Back to Methuselah, Part V, 259–272.149. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World [1932] (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 26.150. Stella Browne, “The Sexual Variety and Variability among Women [1915], rpt.,

Rowbotham, A New World, 90–105 (quotation 104).151. Holtby, Women and a Changing Civilization, 131, 132.152. Helene Stöcker, “Die Ehe als psychologisches Problem,” in Haire and

World League for Sexual Reform, eds., Sexual Reform Congress, 95–104(quotation 102).

153. Russell, Hypatia, 47.

“T R H”: F C-R

I Y

1. Ellen Key, “Mütterlichkeit,” in Adele Schreiber, ed., Mutterschaft: EinSammelwerk für die Probleme des Weibes als Mutter (Munich: Albert LangenVerlag, 1912), 587–601 (quotation 592).

2. Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years1900–1925 [1933] (New York and London: Penguin Group, 1994), 59;see also Jean E. Kennard, Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby: A WorkingPartnership (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England,1989), 1–23; Virginia Woolf, “Professions for Women” [1931], in VirginiaWoolf, Women and Writing, ed. Michèle Barrett (San Diego, New York,London: Harcourt Brace, 1979), 57–63 (quotation 59).

3. Dora Russell, The Right to be Happy (New York: Harper Brothers, 1927), 201.4. Yvonne Knibiehler, L’Histoire des mères du moyen-âge à nos jours (Paris: Éditions

Montalba, 1980), 283; Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann, and MarionKaplan, eds., When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and NaziGermany (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984).

5. Dr. G. Variot, Comment sauvegarder les bébés: enseignement de l’hygiène infantiledonné a l’institut de puèriculture à la Goutte de Lait de Belleville (Paris: LibrarieOctave Dion, 1922), 279.

6. The most famous of these texts was Adolphe Pinard, La Puériculture (Paris:Librairie Armand Colin, 1904), which was re-issued in multiple editionsthroughout the interwar period.

7. Knibiehler, Histoire des Mères, 311–318; Sigrid Stöckel, Säuglingsfürsorge zwis-chen sozialer Hygiene und Eugenik: Das Beispiel Berlin im Kaiserreich und in derWeimarer Republil (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1996), 327–338; Jane Lewis, ThePolitics of Motherhood: Child and Maternal Welfare in England, 1900–1939(London and Montreal: Croom Helm, 1980), 89–133.

8. Linda Clark, Schooling the Daughters of Marianne: Textbooks and theSocialization of Girls in Modern French Primary Schools (Albany, NY: StateUniversity New York Press, 1984), 81–99; Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood,92; Karen Hagemann, Frauenalltag und Männerpolitik: Alltagsleben undgesellschaftliches Handeln von Arbeiterfrauen in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn:J.W. Dietz, 1990), 118–132.

9. Françoise Thébaud, Quand nos grand-mères donnaient la vie: La Maternité enFrance entre les deux guerres (Lyons: Presses universitaires de Lyons, 1986),182; John Knodel, The Decline of Fertility in Germany, 1871–1939 (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), 288.

N 295


10. Steve Humphries and Pamela Gordon, A Labour of Love: The Experience ofParenthood in Britain, 1900–1950 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1993), 49–56;Knibiehler, L’Histoire des mères, 319–328; Stöckel, Säuglingsfürsorge, 293–365;Hagemann, Frauenalltag, 332–349.

11. T.H. Van de Velde, Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique, trans. StellaBrowne (New York: Random House, 1930), 86.

12. Sigmund Freud, “Femininity,” in Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures onPsychoanalysis [1933], trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1965),112–135 (quotation 133).

13. Karen Horney, “The Flight from Womanhood,” in Karen Horney, FemininePsychology, ed. Harold Kelmam (New York: Norton, 1967), 54–83 (quotation 60).

14. Winifred Holtby, Women and a Changing Civilization [1935] (Chicago, IL:Cassandra Editions, 1978), 125; see also Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and herEnemies: Feminism and Sexuality, 1880–1930 (London: Pandora Press, 1985),165–185.

15. General accounts of child-rearing in this era are: John Somerville, The Rise andFall of Childhood (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1982), 209–217;Christina Hardyment, Dream Babies: Child Care from Locke to Spock (London:Jonathan Cape, 1983), 89–155.

16. Ann Hulbert, Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice aboutChildren (New York: Knopf, 2003), 154–187.

17. John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner Watson, Psychological Care of Infant andChild (New York: Norton, 1928), 15; see also Somerville, The Rise and Fall ofChildhood, 209–217.

18. F. Truby King, Feeding and Care of Baby (London and Auckland: OxfordUniversity Press, 1937), 181, 222.

19. See e.g., Erich Stern, “Die Störungen des Seelenlebens,” in Adele Schreiber,ed., Das Reich des Kindes (Berlin: Deutsche Buchgemeinschaft, 1930), 272–315.

20. Hildegard Hetzer, Seelische Hygiene–Lebenstüchtige Kinder: Richtlinien für dieErziehung im Kleinkindalter (Lindau: Verlag Kleine Kinder, 1940), 42.

21. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. Jean Riviere (New York:J. Cape and H. Smith, 1930). On the impact of psychoanalysis in France, seeJacques Donzelot, The Policing of Families, trans. Robert Hurley (New York:Pantheon Books, 1979), 169–198.

22. Deborah Thom, “Wishes and Anxieties, Play, and Gestures: Child Guidance inInter-war England,” in Roger Cooter, ed., In the Name of the Child: Health andWelfare, 1880–1940 (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 200–219;Denise Riley, War in the Nursery: Theories of the Child and Mother (London:Virago, 1983), 42–79.

23. Alfred Adler, The Education of Children (New York: Greenburg Publisher,1930), 239–250; Nelleke Bakker, “Health and the Medicalisation of Advice toParents in the Netherlands, 1890–1950,” in Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and HilaryMarland, eds., Cultures of Child Health in Britain and the Netherlands in theTwentieth Century (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2003), 127–148; CathyUrwin and Elaine Sharland, “From Bodies to Minds in Childcare Literature:Advice to Parents in inter-war Britain,” in Cooter, ed., In the Name of the Child,174–199; Thom, “Wishes and Anxieties.”

24. Adele Schreiber, “Wie ich wurde,” Fürs Haus, January 1927; more autobio-graphical statements are contained in BAK, Nachlass Adele Schreiber, Vol. 1.

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25. “Vernet, Madeleine,” in Jean Maitron, ed., Dictionnaire biographique du mouvementouvrier français, Vol. 15 (Paris: Editions Ouvrières, 1977); Madeleine Vernet,“Mère et Citoyenne,” La Mère Éducatrice, August, 1918.

26. Dora Russell, The Tamarisk Tree: My Quest for Liberty and Love, Vol. 1 (New York:Putnam, 1975), 13.

27. Madeleine Vernet, L’Avenir social (Paris: l’Émancipatrice, 1906).28. Schreiber, “Wie ich wurde” and other autobiographical materials in BAK,

Nachlass Adele Schreiber, Vol. 1.29. Russell, The Tamarisk Tree, Vol. 1, 200.30. Russell, The Tamarisk Tree, Vol. 1, 147–161.31. Schreiber, “Wie ich wurde.”32. Jeffreys, The Spinster and Her Enemies, 147–193.33. Interview with Dora Russell, in Dale Spender, There’s Always Been a Women’s

Movement this Century (London and Boston: Pandora, 1983), 94, 102.34. Héra Mirtel, De la patrie a la matrie, ou du bagne à l’Éden (Paris: Édition de la

Matrie, 1920), 45, 39.35. Mathilde and Mathias Vaerting, The Dominant Sex: A Study in the Sociology of

Sex Differentiation, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York: George H. Doran,1923), xiii, 268. Original edition: Mathilde and Matthias Vaerting, Die weiblicheEigenart im Männerstaat und die männliche Eigenart im Frauenstaat(Karlsruhe: G. Braunsche Hofbuchdruckerei, 1921).

36. Theresa Wobbe, “Mathilde Vaerting (1884–1977),” in Barbara Hahn, ed.,Frauen in den Kulturwissenschaften: von Lou-Andreas Salomé bis Hannah Arendt(Munich: Beck, 1994), 125–135 (quotation 128).

37. Robert Briffault, The Mothers [1927], abridged and with an introduction by GordonRattray Taylor (New York: Atheneum, 1977), 42; see also Huntington Cairns,“Robert Briffault and the Rehabilitation of the Matriarchal Theory,” in Harry ElmerBarnes, ed., An Introduction to the History of Sociology (Chicago, IL: University ofChicago Press, 1948), 668–676. I thank Karen Offen for directing me to this article.

38. Bronislaw Malinowski, The Father in Primitive Psychology (New York: Norton,1927), 57–85. See also Ann Taylor Allen, “Patriarchy and its Discontents: TheDebate on the Origins of the Family in the German-Speaking World, 1860–1930,”in David Lindenfeld and Suzanne Marchand, eds., German Culture at the Fin-de-Siècle (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana University Press, 2004), 81–101.

39. Malinowski, The Father in Primitive Psychology, 16.40. Robert Briffault and Bronislaw Malinowski, Marriage, Past and Present:

A Debate between Robert Briffault and Bronislaw Malinowski, ed. M.F. AshleyMontagu (Boston, MA: Porter Sargent, 1956), 51.

41. Dora Russell, The Tamarisk Tree, Vol. 1, 248.42. Donald Meyer, Sex and Power, The Rise of Women in America, Russia, Sweden

and Italy (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), 194–197; Sondra R.Herman, “Feminists, Socialists, and the Genesis of the Swedish Welfare State,” inFrances Richardson Keller, ed., Views of Women’s Lives in Western Tradition:Frontiers of the Past and the Future (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990),472–510; Helena Forsås-Scott, “The Revolution That Never Was: The Exampleof Elin Wägner,” The European Legacy 1 (1996): 914–919; Elin Wägner,Väckarklocka, Stockholm (Bonniers), 1941. I am obliged to Sondra Herman forproviding a translation of this book.

43. Holtby, Women and a Changing Civilization, 117.

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44. Wilma Meikle, Towards a Sane Feminism (New York: Robert M. McBride andCo, 1917), 139.

45. Vera Brittain, Honourable Estate (New York: Macmillan, 1936), 45; Kennard,Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby, 181–182.

46. Katherine Mansfield, “At the Bay” [1922], in Katherine Mansfield, The GardenParty and Other Stories, ed. Lorna Sage (New York and London: Penguin Books,1997), 5–37 (quotation 19).

47. Ghenia Avril de Sainte-Croix, L’Éducation sexuelle, préface de M. le ProfesseurPinard (Paris: Librairie Felix Alcan, 1918), 31.

48. Adele Schreiber, “Elternhaus und Erziehung,” in Schreiber, ed., Das Reich desKindes, 103–132 (quotation 113).

49. Rebecca West, The Judge (New York: Doran Company, 1922), 324–325;excerpted in Susan Groag Bell and Karen M. Offen, eds., Women the Family, andFreedom: The Debate in Documents, Vol. 2 (Stanford, CA: Stanford UniversityPress, 1983), 343–355.

50. Horney, “The Flight from Womanhood,” 70; see also Edith Kurzweil,The Freudians: A Comparative Perspective (New Haven, CT: Yale UniversityPress, 1989), 152–172.

51. Madeleine Pelletier, “Haines familiales,” La Voix des Femmes, December 23, 1926.52. Russell, The Right to be Happy, 212.53. Schreiber, “Elternhaus und Erziehung,” 111.54. Alva Myrdal, “Barnet i kollektivhuset” [1932], quoted in Sondra R. Herman,

“Dialogue: Children, Feminism, and Power: Alva Myrdal and Swedish Reform,1929–1956,” Journal of Women’s History 4 (Fall 1992): 82–112 (quotation 86).

55. Sissela Bok, Alva Myrdal: A Daughter’s Memoir (Reading, MA: Addison-WesleyPublishing Company, 1991), 177.

56. Laure Lallemand, “La Suggestion des enfants,” La Mère Éducatrice (July 1921).57. Dora Russell, In Defence of Children (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1932), 138.58. Stern, “Die Störungen des Seelenlebens,” 299.59. “Aux Mères,” La Mère Éducatrice, October 25, 1925.60. Schreiber, Jahreskalender, July 9, 1933.61. Germaine Montreuil-Straus, Maman, dis-moi, Images d’Andrée Karpeles, Édité

par le Comité d’éducation féminine de la société française de prophylaxiesanitaire et morale, Paris, n.d. A copy is in BMD, dossier Germaine Montreuil-Straus.

62. Elise Ottesen-Jensen, Människor i nöd [1932], quoted in Doris H. Linder,Crusader for Sex Education: Elise Ottesen-Jensen (1886–1973) in Scandinaviaand on the International Scene (Lanham, MD: University Press of America,1996), 96.

63. Linder, Crusader for Sex Education, 151–154.64. Marie Stopes, Mother, How was I Born? (London: Putnam, 1922), 16, 22.65. Schreiber, “Elternhaus und Erziehung,” 127.66. Jan Myrdal, Childhood, trans. Christine Swanson (Chicago, IL: Lake View Press,

1991), 57.67. Sissela Bok, Alva Myrdal: A Daughter’s Memoir (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley

Publishing Company, 1991), 173–189; see also the discussion of these memoirsin Herman, “Dialogue: Children, Feminism, and Power”; and Ann-Sofie Ohlander,“Comment: Alva Myrdal: A Life of Duty,” Journal of Women’s History 4 (Fall 1992):120–124.

68. “Le Travail de la mère et ses conséquences au point de vue familial,” La femmedans la vie sociale, March 1, 1937.

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69. Anne Cova, Au service de l’Église, de la patrie, et de la famille: Femmes catholiqueset maternité sous la III. République (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000), 143.

70. Herman, “Dialogue: Children, Feminism, and Power.”71. Russell, The Tamarisk Tree, Vol. 1, 95.72. Madeleine Vernet, “L’évolution de la famille,” La Mère Éducatrice (May–June

1928).73. Russell, The Right to be Happy, 1927, 205.74. Gertrud Bäumer, “Perseus,” Die Frau (May 28, 1921): 225–235 (quotation 234).75. Maude Royden, “Modern Love,” in Victor Gollancz, ed., The Making of

Women: Oxford Essays in Feminism (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1918), 36–63(quotation 52).

76. Marguerite Martin, “Maman, infirmière, ou institutrice?” La Voix des Femmes,March 1, 1922.

77. Schreiber, “Elternhaus und Erziehung,” 115.78. Rita Kramer, Maria Montessori: A Biography [1976] (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley,

1988), 267–340.79. Maria Montessori, The Secret of Childhood [1936], trans. M. Joseph Costelloe

(New York: Ballantine Books, 1966), 16, 193.80. Herman, “Dialogue: Children, Feminism, and Power”; Bok, Alva Myrdal,

121–122.81. Anna Freud, “Foreword,” in Kramer, Maria Montessori, 7.82. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 285–293.83. “Personalities and Powers: Dr Maria Montessori,” Time and Tide, September 4,

1925.84. Ann Taylor Allen, “Children between Public and Private Worlds: The Kindergarten

and Public Policy in Germany, 1840–present,” in Roberta Wollons, ed.,Kindergartens and Cultures: The Global Diffusion of an Idea (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2000), 16–41.

85. Kevin J. Brehony, “The Kindergarten in England, 1851–1918,” in Wollons,Kindergartens and Cultures, 59–86 (quotation 80).

86. “L’École maternelle,” La Française, January 17, 1920; July 24, 1920.87. Herman, “Dialogue: Children, Feminism, and Power”; Ann-Katrin Hatje,

“Political and Gender Perspectives on Alva Myrdal’s Social Engineering: TheExample of Pedagogic Childcare in the 1930s and 1940s,” paper presented atthe international conference, “Alva Myrdal’s Questions to our Time,” Uppsala,March 6–8, 2002.

88. Madeleine Vernet, “La Femme d’aujourd’hui peut-elle rester gardienne dufoyer?” La Mère Éducatrice (January–February 1928).

89. Madeleine Vernet, ed., “La mère et le foyer,” La Mère Éducatrice, February 1926.90. Claude Noel, in “La mère et le foyer,” La Mère Éducatrice, February 1926.91. Schreiber, “Elternhaus und Erziehung,” 104.92. Blanche Doupeux, in “La mère et le foyer,” La Mère Éducatrice, February 1926.93. Doctoresse Houdré Boursin, Ma doctoresse: Guide pratique d’hygiène et de

médecine de la femme moderne (Strasbourg: Éditorial Argentor, 1928), 95.94. Dora Russell, Hypatia, or Women and Knowledge (New York: E.P. Dutton,

1925), 68–69.95. Holtby, Women and a Changing Civilization, 145.96. Vera Brittain, Testament of Experience: An Autobiographical Story of the Years

1926–1930 (New York: Macmillan, 1957), 37, 63, 87; see also Kennard, VeraBrittain and Winifred Holtby; Carol Dyhouse, Feminism and the Family inEngland, 1880–1939 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 50–51.

N 299


97. Russell, The Tamarisk Tree, Vol. 1, 234.98. Bok, “Alva Myrdal,” 125.99. Clara Zetkin, quoted in Hagemann, Frauenalltag, 311.

100. Schreiber, “Elternhaus und Erziehung,” 118.101. Russell, In Defence of Children, 153.102. Hagemann, Frauenalltag und Männerpolitik, 314.103. Margaret Isabel Cole, Marriage, Past and Present (London: J.M. Dent,

1938), 179.104. Claude Noel, in Vernet, ed., “La mère et le foyer.”105. Russell, In Defence of Children, 159.106. Humphries and Gordon, A Labour of Love, 83–90; Knibiehler, Les Pères aussi ont

une histoire (Paris: Hachette, 1987), 206; Hagemann, Frauenalltag, 332–349.107. Schreiber, Kalender Mutter und Kind, January 1, 1933, in BAK, Nachlass

Adele Schreiber, Vol. 81.108. Schreiber, “Elternhaus und Erziehung,” 108.109. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt

Brace Jovanovich, 1927), 11.110. Cole, Marriage, Past and Present, 180.111. Herman, “Dialogue: Children, Feminism, and Power.”112. Alva Myrdal, Nation and Family: The Swedish Experiment in Democratic

Family and Population Policy (New York and London: Harper Brothers,1941), 122.

113. Bok, “Alva Myrdal,” 183.114. Vernet, “L’Évolution de la famille.”.115. Doupeux, in Vernet, ed., “La mère et le foyer.”116. Noel, in Vernet, ed., “La mère et le foyer.”117. Russell, The Right to be Happy, 200.118. Schreiber, “Elternhaus und Erziehung,” 121; Hagemann, Frauenalltag, 314.119. Vera Brittain, “The Failure of Monogamy,” in Haire and World League for

Sexual Reform, ed., Sexual Reform Congress, 40–44 (quotation 42).120. Chrystal Eastman, “Boys and Girls,” Time and Tide, January 4, 1924.

F M S R:T P E, –

1. Karen Offen, European Feminisms: A Political History (Stanford, CA: StanfordUniversity Press, 2000), 359–377; Christine Bard, Les filles de Marianne:Histoire des féminismes 1914–1940 (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 383–433.

2. Bard, Les filles de Marianne, 439–448; Martin Pugh, Women and theWomen’s Movement in Britain, 1914–1959 (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1992),264–285.

3. Victoria de Grazia, “How Mussolini Ruled Italian Women,” in Georges Duby,Michelle Perrot, and Françoise Thébaud, eds., A History of Women in the West,Vol. 5; Françoise Thébaud, ed., Toward a Cultural Identity in the TwentiethCentury (Cambridge: Belknap, 1994), 120–148.

4. Gisela Bock, “Nazi Gender Policies and Women’s History,” in Duby, Perrot,and Thébaud, eds., History of Women in the West, Vol. 5, 149–177; Gisela Bock,“Antinatalism, Maternity, and Paternity in National Socialist Racism,” in GiselaBock and Pat Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies: Women and the Rise ofthe European Welfare States, 1880–1950s (London and New York: Routledge,1991), 233–255.

N 300


5. Irmgard Weyrather, Muttertag und Mutterkreuz: Der Kult um die “deutscheMutter” im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1993).

6. Leila Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda,1939–1944 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 115–136.

7. Original version of the speech: Heinrich Himmler, “Der Sieg der Frauen,” DasSchwarze Korps, January 4, 1940.

8. BAK, Briefe von Frauenfürerinnen und Dichterinnen an Dorothee van Velsen,1911–1953: Velsen-Bäumer, March 31, 1940; Bäumer-van Velsen, April 4, 1940;Angelika Schaser, Helene Lange und Gertrud Bäumer: Eine politischeLebensgemeinschaft (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2000), 314–336.

9. See e.g., Elizabeth D. Heineman, What Difference Does a Husband Make? Womenand Marital Status in Nazi and Postwar Germany (Berkeley, CA: University ofCalifornia Press, 1999), 75–107; Robert G. Moeller, Protecting Motherhood:Women and the Family in the Politics of Postwar West Germany (Berkeley, CA:University of California Press, 1993), 8–37; Claire Duchen, Women’s Rights andWomen’s Lives in France, 1944–68 (London and New York: Routledge, 1994),64–67; Miriam Mafai, L’apprendistato della politica: Le donne italiane neldopoguerra (Rome: Editori riunite, 1979), 118–142.

10. Susan Pedersen, Family, Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britainand France, 1914–1945 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,1993), 413–426; Wiebke Kolbe, Elternschaft im Wohlfahrtsstaat: Schweden unddie Bundesrepublik im Vergleich, 1945–2000 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag,2002), 29–64.

11. Duchen, Women’s Rights and Women’s Lives, 96–127.12. D.V. Glass, “Fertility Trends in Europe since the Second World War,” Population

Studies 22 (March 1968): 103–146; Yvonne Knibiehler, La Révolution maternelle:Femmes, maternité, citoyenneté depuis 1945 (Paris: Perrin, 1997), 21–57.

13. Moeller, Protecting Motherhood, 65.14. Helmut Schelsky, Wandlungen der deutschen Familie in der Gegenwart:

Darstellung und Deutung einer empirisch-soziologischen Tatbestandsaufnahme(Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1967), 18–19; see also Moeller, The Protection ofMotherhood, 109–141; and Kolbe, Elternschaft im Wohlfahrtsstaat, 65–85.

15. Denise Riley, War in the Nursery: Theories of the Child and Mother (London:Virago, 1983), 159; C. Alison McIntosh, “Low Fertility and Liberal Democracy inWestern Europe,” Population and Development Review 7 (June 1981): 181–207.

16. Elazar Barkan, The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race inBritain and the United States between the World Wars (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1992), 341–346; Richard A. Soloway, Demography andDegeneration: Eugenics and the Declining Birth-Rate in Twentieth-CenturyBritain (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 343–363.

17. Christina Hardyment, Perfect Parents: Baby-Care Advice Past and Present(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 214–220.

18. T.W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford,The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper Brothers, 1950), 337–389;see also Riley, War in the Nursery, 42–79.

19. Janet Sayers, Mothers of Psychoanalysis: Helene Deutsch, Karen Horney, AnnaFreud, Melanie Klein (New York: Norton, 1991), 168–174.

20. John Bowlby, Maternal Care and Mental Health: A Report Prepared on Behalf ofthe World Health Organization to the United Nations Programme for the Welfareof Homeless Children (Geneva: WHO, 1952), 158, 11–12; on postwar child-rearingsee also Hardyment, Perfect Parents, 223–293.

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21. Elizabeth Wilson, Only Halfway to Paradise: Women in Post-War Britain,1945–1968 (London and New York: Tavistock Publications, 1980), 187.

22. Benjamin Spock, The Common-Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (New York:Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1945), 19. Some early European editions were: Baby-enkinderverzorging (Amsterdam: Contact, 1950); Comment soigner et éduquer sonenfant (Verviers: Éditions Gérard, 1952); Il bambino: come si cura et come si all-eva (Milano: Longanesi, 1954); Säuglings-und Kinderpflege (Frankfurt: Ullstein,1957); Tu hijo (Madrid: Daimon, 1968). On the influence of Spock in France seeKnibiehler, La Révolution maternelle, 73.

23. Bowlby, Maternal Care and Mental Health, 28; Spock, The Common Sense Bookof Baby and Child Care, 312–313.

24. Angus McLaren, A History of Contraception from Antiquity to the Present Day(Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 228–239; Glass, “Fertility Trends in Europe.”

25. See data on various countries in Évelyne Sullerot, Women, Society and Change,trans. Margaret Scotford Archer (New York: McGraw Hill, 1971), 48–49; FrancaBimbi, “Gender, ‘Gift Relationship,’ and Welfare-state Cultures in Italy,” in JaneLewis, ed., Women and Social Policies in Europe: Work, Family and the State(Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1993), 138–169.

26. Eric D. Weitz, “The Heroic Man and the Ever-Changing Woman: Gender andPolitics in European Communism, 1917–1950,” in Laura L. Frader and Sonya O.Rose, eds., Gender and Class in Modern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UniversityPress, 1996), 311–352; see also the discussion of communism and feminism inOffen, European Feminisms, 380–393.

27. Mafai, L’apprendistato, 118–142; Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Liberazione delladonna: Feminism in Italy (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1986),57–59; Offen, European Feminisms, 382–383.

28. Wilson, Only Halfway to Paradise, 165–169.29. Offen, European Feminisms, 393.30. Mattei Dogan and Jacques Narbonne, Les Françaises face à la politique:

Comportement politique et condition sociale (Paris: Armand Colin, 1955), 48.31. Moeller, Protecting Motherhood, 38–108.32. Moeller, Protecting Motherhood, 67.33. Denkschrift des deutsche Frauenrings zum Kabinetttsentwurf eines Gesetzes

über die Gleichberechtigung von Mann und Frau auf dem Gebiete des bürgerlichenRechts und über die Wiederherstellung der Rechtseinheit auf dem Gebiete desFamilienrechts (Berlin: Deutscher Frauenring, 1952), 16, 1.

34. Heineman, What Difference?, 141–159.35. Heineman, What Difference?, 108–136.36. Moeller, Protecting Motherhood, 204–207.37. Sylvie Chaperon, Les Années Beauvoir, 1945–1970 (Paris: Fayard, 2000), 364–365;

Denise de Weerdt, En de Vrouwen? Vrouw, vrouwenbeweging en feminisme in Belgie,1830–1960 (Gent: Masreelfonds, 1980), 169–179; Birnbaum, Liberazione delladonna, 81.

38. Leontine Young, Out of Wedlock: A Study of the Problems of the UnmarriedMother and her Child (New York: McGraw Hill, 1954), 21–130, 169–242. OnYoung’s influence in Britain, see Martine Spensky, “Producers of Legitimacy:Homes for Unmarried Mothers in the 1950s,” in Carole Smart, ed., RegulatingWomanhood: Historical Essays on Marriage, Motherhood, and Sexuality (Londonand New York: Routledge, 1992), 100–118.

39. Bowlby, Maternal Care and Mental Health, 100.

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40. Martine Spensky, “Producers of Legitimacy.”41. Heineman, What Difference?, 140–152.42. Heineman, What Difference?, 155.43. Kolbe, Elternschaft im Wohlfahrtsstaat, 29–85.44. Andrée Michel and Geneviève Texier, La Condition de la française d’aujourd’hui,

Vol. 1 (Paris: Éditions Gonthier, 1964), 42; Duchen, Women’s Rights andWomen’s Lives, 96–127.

45. Rochefort, Les Petits enfants du siècle (Paris: Grasset, 1962), 110–111; Micheland Texier, La Condition de la française, Vol. 1, 52–70.

46. Duchen, Women’s Rights and Women’s Lives, 117–127; Chaperon, Les AnnéesBeauvoir, 269–299.

47. Chaperon, Les Années Beauvoir, 197–198.48. Doris H. Linder, Crusader for Sex Education: Elise Ottesen-Jensen (1886–1973)

in Scandinavia and on the International Scene (Lanham, MD: University Press ofAmerica, 1996), 186–187.

49. Jan de Bruijn, Geschiednis van de abortus in Nederland: Een Analyse van opvattingenen discussies 1600–1979 (Amsterdam: van Gennep, 1979), 149–184; D.V. Glass,“Family Planning Programmes and Action in Western Europe,” PopulationStudies 19 (March 1966): 221–238.

50. Knibiehler, La Révolution maternelle, 21–57.51. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex [1949], trans. H.M. Parshley (New York:

Vintage, 1989), 491.52. Deirdre Bair, Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography (New York: Summit Books,

1990), 382–386.53. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 484, 485, 490, 492; see also Toril Moi, What is a

Woman? And Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 121–252.54. Cf. Weitz, “The Heroic Man and the Ever-Changing Woman.”55. Chaperon, Les Années Beauvoir, 237–268; Kniebiehler, La Révolution maternelle,

141–151; Duchen, Women’s Rights and Women’s Lives, 117–146; CatherineValabrègue, Contrôle des naissances et planning familial (Paris: Éditions de laTable Ronde, 1960). See also Jacques Danzelot, The Policing of Families, trans.Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), 194–198.

56. Évelyne Sullerot, La Vie des femmes (Paris: Éditions Gonthier, 1965), 68.57. Marie Andrée Lagroua Weill-Hallé, Pour la pillule et le planning familial (Nancy:

Berger-Levrault, 1967), 9.58. Vermeersch quoted in Michel and Texier, La Condition de la française,

Vol. 2, 108.59. Chaperon, Les Années Beauvoir, 237–268.60. Valabrègue, Contrôle des naissances, 16361. Sullerot, La Vie des femmes, 72.62. Chaperon, Les Années Beauvoir, 227.63. Texier and Michel, La Condition de la française, Vol. 1, 44–45.64. Duchen, Women’s Rights and Women’s Lives, 183–184.65. Knibiehler, La Révolution maternelle, 165–171.66. Birnbaum, Liberazione della donna, 89; Prue Chamberlayne, “Women and the

State: Changes in Roles and Rights in France, West Germany, Italy, and Britain,1970–1990,” in Lewis, ed., Women and Social Policies, 170–193; Franca Bimbi,“Tre generazioni di donne: Le trasformazioni dei modelli de identità femminilein Italia,” in A. Galoppini, F. Cambi, F. Bimbi, A. Bertondini, F. Pristinger,S. Ulivieri, A Porcheddu, G. Campani, and C. Covato, Educazione e ruolo

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67. Chamberlayne, “Women and the State,” 182.68. DeWeerdt, En de Vrouwen?, 169–179.69. Caitriona Clear, Women of the House: Women’s Household Work in Ireland,

1926–1961: Discourses, Experiences, and Memories (Dublin: Irish Academic Press,2000), 100, 122–123; Pauline Conroy Jackson, “Managing the Mothers: theCase of Ireland,” in Lewis, Women and Social Policies, 72–91.

70. Daniel Callahan, Abortion: Law, Choice and Morality (London: Macmillan,1979), 184–217, 142–148.

71. Chamberlayne, “Women and the State,” 183–184.72. Philippe Ariès, “Two Successive Motivations for the Declining Birth-Rate in the

West,” Population and Development Review 6 (December 1980): 645–650.73. Évelyne Sullerot, Demain les femmes (Paris: Robert Lafont, 1965), 48.74. Lagroua-Weill-Hallé, Pour la pillule, 61.75. Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein, Women’s Two Roles: Home and Work (London:

Routledge, 1956).76. Cf. Schelsky, Wandlungen der deutschen Familie, 335–350; Eva M. Hubback,

The Population of Britain (West Drayton, Middlesex and New York: Penguin,1947), 213.

77. Sullerot, Women, Society, and Change, 94.78. Viola Klein, Britain’s Married Women Workers [1965] (London: Routledge,

1998), 26–83.79. Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement, 264–285; Heineman, What

Difference?, 158–159.80. IIAV, Dossier “ ‘Arbeid van de vrouw met gezinsverpflichtingen,’ houdende

stukken betreffend arbeid van de vrouw buiten het eigen gezin en arbeid van degehuwde vrouw buitenhuis,” in Hettie Pott-Buter and Kea Tijdens, eds., Vrouwen,leven en werk in die twintigste eeuw (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press,1998), 169.

81. Pearl Jephcott, Married Women Working (London: George Allen and Unwin,1962), 19.

82. Sullerot, La Vie des femmes, 152.83. Sissela Bok, Alva Myrdal: A Daughter’s Memoir (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley,

1991), 201.84. Bok, Alva Myrdal, 194–207; E Stina Lyon, “Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein’s

Women’s Two Roles: Women Writing about Women’s Dilemmas,” Paper pre-sented at “Alva Myrdal’s Questions to Our Time,” Uppsala, March 7–8, 2002.

85. Schellekens-Ligthart, quoted in Marjolein Morée, “Mijn kinderen hebben er nietsvan gemerkt:” Buitenhuis werkende moeders tussen 1950 en nu (Utrecht: Jan vanArkel, 1992), 73–74.

86. Elisabeth Joris, “Die fünfzigerjahre–Das Werk–Die Autorin,” in Iris von Roten,Frauen im Laufgitter: Offene Worte zur Stellung der Frau [1958] (Zürich: eFeF-Verlag, 1991), 580–588; Gisela Kaplan, Contemporary Western Feminism (NewYork: New York University Press, 1992), 16.

87. Jephcott, Married Women Working, 116–121.88. See Elisabeth Pfeil, Die Berufstätigkeit von Müttern: Eine empirisch-soziologische

Erhebung an 900 Müttern aus vollständigen Familien (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr,1961); Moeller, Protecting Motherhood, 174.

89. Jephcott, Married Women Working, 109, 111.

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90. See Évelyne Sullerot, Histoire et sociologie du travail féminin (Paris: EditionsGonthier, 1968), 340–353; Pfeil, Berufstätigkeit, 83, 149; Klein, Britain’sMarried Women Workers, 26–83; Jephcott, Married Women Working, 100.

91. Judith Hubback, Wives who Went to College (London: Heinemann, 1957), 53, 64.92. Sondra R. Herman, “Dialogue: Children, Feminism, and Power: Alva Myrdal

and Swedish Reform, 1929–1956,” Journal of Women’s History 4 (Fall 1992):82–112. Viola Klein, The Feminine Character: History of an Ideology [1946](Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1972).

93. Myrdal and Klein, Women’s Two Roles, xi.94. Myrdal and Klein, Women’s Two Roles, 128; cf. Herman, “Dialogue: Children,

Feminism, and Power.”95. Myrdal and Klein, Women’s Two Roles, 128, 39.96. Myrdal and Klein, Women’s Two Roles, 189–192.97. Myrdal and Klein, Women’s Two Roles, 189–192, xiii.98. Ute Frevert, Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to

Sexual Liberation, trans. Stuart MacKinnon Evans (Oxford: Berg, 1988),253–304; Merith Niehuss, Familie, Frau und Gesellschaft: Studien zurStrukturgeschichte der Familie in Westdeutschland, 1945–1960 (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2001), 214–288.

99. For example: Edith Hinze, “Arbeit und Beruf in der Sicht erwerbstätiger Mütter,”Zentralblatt für Arbeitswissenschaft 16 (August/September 1962): 132–135.

100. Schellekens-Ligthart, quoted in Morée, Mijn kinderen hebben er niets vangemerkt, 71.

101. Herman, “Dialogue: Children, Feminism, and Power.”102. Eva Moberg, “Kvinnans villkorliga frigivning,” quoted by Kolbe, Elternschaft

im Wohlfahrtsstaat, 87.103. Alva Myrdal, “Foreword,” in Edmund Dahlström, ed., The Changing Roles of

Men and Women, trans. Gunilla and Steven Anderman (Boston, MA: BeaconPress, 1962), 9–15 (quotation 9).

104. Edmund Dahlström, “Analysis of the Debate on Sex Roles,” in Dahlström, ed.,The Changing Roles, 170–205.

105. I am much indebted to Wiebke Kolbe, Elternschaft im Wohlfahrtsstaat, for herthorough discussion of this history, 86–146.

106. Pfeil, Die Berufstätigkeit, 50–55.107. Sullerot, Histoire et sociologie, 357.108. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 680.109. Pfeil, Die Berufstätigkeit, 25.110. Hubback, Wives who Went to College, 87.111. Bowlby, Maternal Care and Mental Health, 67.112. Spock, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, 19.113. Donald Winnicott, The Child, the Family, and the Outside World

(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), 26–27, quoted by Yvonne Schütze, DieGute Mutter: Zur Geschichte des normativen Musters “Mutterliebe” (Bielefeld:Kleine Verlag, 1986), 91; on postwar child-rearing theory see Schütze, DieGute Mutter, 86–103.

114. Nancy Pottishman Weiss, “Mother, the Invention of Necessity: Dr. BenjaminSpock’s Baby and Child Care,” American Quarterly 29 (Winter 1977): 519–546.

115. Helene Deutsch, The Psychology of Women: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation, Vol. 2(New York: Grune and Stratton, 1945), 282; see also Sayers, Mothers ofPsychoanalysis, 67–75.

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The Making of an Intellectual Woman (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 148–178.120. Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter [1959], trans. James

Kirkup (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 140–141.121. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 521, 524.122. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 513.123. Beauvoir, The Second Sex; cf. Alison S. Fell, Liberty, Equality, Maternity in

Beauvoir, Leduc, and Ernaux (Oxford: Legenda, 2003), 78–115; YolandaAstarita Patterson, “Simone de Beauvoir and the Demystification ofMotherhood,” Yale French Studies 72 (1986): 87–105.

124. Chaperon, Les Années Beauvoir, 169–201.125. See e.g., Elizabeth Fallaize, ed., Simone de Beauvoir: A Critical Reader (London

and New York: Routledge, 1998); and Moi, What is a Woman?, 59–84.126. Von Roten, Frauen im Laufgitter, 5.127. Von Roten, Frauen im Laufgitter, 365.128. Von Roten, Frauen im Laufgitter, 399.129. Joris, “Die Fünfzigerjahre.”130. Interview with Ann Oakley, in Penny Forster and Imogen Sutton, eds., Daughters

of de Beauvoir (London: The Women’s Press, 1989), 67–76 (quotation 69).131. Interview with Joyce Goodfellow, in Forster and Sutton, eds., Daughters of de

Beauvoir, 103–109 (quotation 109).132. Oakley, in Foster and Sutton, eds., Daughters of de Beauvoir, 68.133. Sullerot, La Vie des femmes, 99.134. Interview with Val Charlton, in Michelene Wandor, Once a Feminist: Stories of

a Generation (London: Virago, 1990), 161–162.135. Anneke Ribberink, “Leading Ladies and Cause Minders: The Silent Generation

and the Second Feminist Movement,” paper presented at “Alva Myrdal’sQuestions to Our Time,” Uppsala, March 7–8, 2002; Joke Smit-Lezingen,“Dit onbehagen bij de vrouw” [1967], in Joke Smit-Lezingen, Wat is ermet de vrouwenbeweging gebeurd? (Amsterdam: Nigh & van Ditmar, 1989),11–37.

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137. Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964), 123.138. Jephcott, Married Women Working, 136–163; Pfeil, Die Berufstätigkeit von

Müttern, 135.139. See e.g., A.J. Schellekens-Ligthart, Nadere verkenningen t.a.v. de problematiek

van de buitenhuis werkende gehuwde vrouw (S’Gravenhage: Ned. Huishoudrad,1961), 68–87.

140. Von Roten, Frauen im Laufgitter, 403.141. Åse Grude Skard, “Maternal Deprivation: The Research and Its Implications,”

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146. Kolbe, Elternschaft im Wohlfahrtsstaat, 91.147. Catherine Valabrègue, La Condition masculine (Paris: Bibliothèque Payot,

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Women’s International Network News, October 31, 1990.14. Economic and Social Committee, “Opinion on Equal Opportunities for women

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Papers of Theresa Billington-GreigRecords of the Women’s Freedom LeagueNational Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child

The Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine, London

Records of the Eugenics Society

Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand, Paris

Fonds Jeanne HumbertFonds Nelly RousselFonds Yvonne NetterDossiers

Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris

Collection Marie-Louise Bouglé

Fonds Blanche Fournet-KaindlerFonds Hubertine AuclertFonds Camille BélillonFonds Céline RenoozFonds Marthe BrayFonds Arria LyFonds Marguerite Guépet

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Internationaal Archief en Informatiecentrum voor deVrouwenbeweging, Amsterdam

Vereiniging Onderlinge VrouwenbeschermingNederlandsche Unie voor Vrouwenbelangen

Comité van Actie tegen GezinsloonComité tegen de Achteruitzetting der Vrouw

Wijnaendts Francken-Dyserinck, Esther Wilmoet, 1876–1956Dossiers

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B-Rep 235 Archiv des BDF

Bundesarchiv Koblenz

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Bundesarchiv Lichterfelde

R 86 ReichsgesundheitsamtR 101: Reichstag

Swarthmore College Peace Collection,Swarthmore, Pennsylvania

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Britain

The AdultCommon CauseThe Englishwoman’s ReviewEugenics ReviewThe FreewomanJus SuffragiiThe MalthusianThe ShieldThe SuffragetteTime and TideThe VoteVotes for Women

Germany

Archiv für Rassen-und GesellschaftsbiologieCentralblatt des Bundes deutscher FrauenvereineDie FrauDie FrauenbewegungDie Frauenfrage: Zentralblatt des BDFDie GleichheitDie Neue GenerationNeue GesellschaftSozialistische Monatshefte

Netherlands

Evolutie

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Abbott, Elizabeth, 151Abolitionist Federation, 179Abortion Law Reform Association, 165abortion, 88, 92, 93, 100, 101, 102,

115, 123, 124, 125, 127, 139, 156,163, 164, 165–6, 170, 172, 177–8,195, 211, 212, 217, 218, 220, 235, 237

Abraham, Karl, 190Action des Femmes, see Women’s ActionAddams, Jane, 129Adenauer, Konrad, 215Adler, Alfred, 191, 198adoption, 147, 215, 216Adorno, Theodor, 212Adult, The, 53Agrupación de Mujeres Antifascistas, see

Anti-Fascist Women’s AssociationAlbrecht, Berthie, 166alcoholism, 43, 86, 90, 105, 106, 115,

173, 205Allen, Grant, 41, 52–3Alliance nationale contre la

dépopulation, see National AllianceAgainst Depopulation

Alliance nationale des sociétes féminines,see League of Swiss Women’sAssociations

Alliance nationale pour l’accroissementde la population française, seeNational Alliance to Increase theFrench Population

allowances, children, 153, 210, 211,216, 219, 237; families, 153, 154,155, 210, 211, 217; fathers, 210,211; mothers, 210, 211, 216; wages,211, 216

Alquier, Henriette, 166, 168–9Amazons, 21, 22, 23, 26, 30,

34, 112anarchists, 52, 101, 148, 166, 174

Anglican Church, 162Anker-Møller, Katti, 165Ann Veronica (H. G. Wells), 30, 64anthropology, 23–4, 28, 29, 37–8, 188,

194, 231Anti-Fascist Women’s Association

(Spain), 148anti-Semitism, 35–6, 180, 212Apollinaire, Guillaume, 135Ariane (periodical), 219Ariès, Philippe, 10, 220Asociación Nacional de Mujeres

Españolas, see National Association ofSpanish Women

Association for Family Planning(France), 218

Association for Moral and SocialHygiene (Britain), 179

Association for the Protection of Women and Children(Switzerland), 52

Association for the Rights of Mothersand Children (Germany), 192

Association for Woman Suffrage(Netherlands), 128–9

Atkinson, Mabel, 12, 63, 82, 84Auclert, Hubertine, 3, 5–6, 9, 11, 13,

27, 49, 81, 112Augspurg, Anita, 82, 129Austria, 34, 46, 50, 51, 52, 58–9, 71,

73, 74, 79, 80, 91, 103, 107, 114,118–19, 129, 130, 134, 138, 139,142, 146–7, 154, 155, 163, 164,171–2, 183, 190, 191, 202, 209–10, 217

Austrian League for the Protection ofMothers, see League for theProtection of Mothers

Aveling, Edward, 28Aveling, Eleanor Marx, 28Avril de Sainte-Croix, Ghenia, 197

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Babies’ Welcome and School forMothers (Britain), 80

baby boom, 209, 216, 221, 232, 240Bachofen, Johann Jakob, 21–3, 25, 26,

27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 38,194, 195

Badinter, Elisabeth, 8, 9, 10Bakker-Nort, Betsy, 175Barbusse, Henri, 131–2Baronchelli, Donna Paola, 134Barrès, Maurice, 127Barthélemy, Joséphine, 128Basic Law (Germany), 215, 216Bataille Syndicaliste, La (periodical),

127–8Baum, Marie, 145–6Bäumer, Gertrud, 79, 102, 113, 124–5,

130, 146, 153, 154, 170, 177, 178,181, 182–3, 211

Beauvoir, Simone de, 197, 217–18,226, 227–8, 229, 232, 235

Bebel, August, 24, 30, 31, 68Beck-Gernsheim, Elisabeth, 237, 240Belgian League for the Rights of

Women, 45, 47, 55Belgian Society for Sexual

Enlightenment, 220Belgische Vereniging voor sexuele

Voorlichting, see Belgian Society forSexual Enlightenment

Belgium, 8, 9, 31–2, 44, 45, 47, 53, 55,71, 73, 99–100, 116, 127, 128, 155,166, 180, 210, 215, 216, 220, 237,238, 239

Béllilon, Camille, 83, 127Benetti-Brunelli, Valeria, 47Bertillon, Jacques, 48, 81Besant, Annie, 29, 98, 99Besant, Walter, 30Beschwitz, Olga von, 47, 57Biardeau, Laure, 175birth control, 10, 13, 16birth-control movement, 218–19, 220,

222, 231birthrates, decline in, 7, 9, 10–11, 15,

42, 48, 65, 79, 88, 90, 99–101, 103,107, 115, 123, 125, 126, 139, 144,156, 157, 162, 166, 170, 172, 176,188–9, 232–3, 238–9, 240; increasein, 9, 10, 15, 42, 50, 88, 99, 153–4,169, 204, 211, 212–13

birth-strike, 88, 107, 108, 123Black, Dora, see Russell, DoraBlacker, Carlos, 180Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna, 29Böhlau, Helene, 64Bok, Sissela, 200, 207, 222Bolsheviks, 140, 195, 201; see also

communistsBonness, Elisabeth, see Bré, RuthBordeaux, Henry, 138–9Bowlby, John, 212–13, 215–16, 226,

230, 231Bradlaugh, William, 98, 99Braun, Lily, 33–4, 43, 67, 68, 69, 70,

71, 73, 75, 76, 77Bré, Ruth, 32, 33, 58breast feeding, 14, 29, 74, 80, 82, 120,

188, 199, 207Brecht, Bertolt, 170–1Bridel, Louis, 100Brieux, Eugène, 104Briffault, Robert, 194, 195Brion, Hélène, 129Britain, see Great BritainBritish Family Planning

Association, 217Brittain, Vera, 118, 132–3, 158–9, 161,

187, 197, 204, 207Browne, Stella, 98, 165, 173, 180, 184Brunschvicg, Cécile, 124, 167Budin, Pierre, 70Bund der Kinderreichen, see League of

Large FamiliesBund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF),

see League of German Women’sAssociations

Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), seeLeague of German Girls

Bund für Mutterschutz (BfM), seeLeague for the Protection of Mothers

Bund Österreichischer Frauenvereine(BÖFV), see League of AustrianWomen’s Associations

Bund Schweizerischer Frauenvereine, see League of Swiss Women’sAssociations

Bund, Der (periodical), 75, 113Burlingame, Dorothy, 212Burns, Elinor, 150Butillard, Andrée, 144Byrne, James, 46

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Caird, Mona, 24–5, 28–9, 49, 68, 75–6, 87

Calcar, Elise van, 93Canada, 7, 59, 128Capy, Marcelle, 127Carnet de Santé, see “Health Booklet”Casa de Maternidad, see House of

Mothers (Spain)Casa dei Bambini, see Children’s House

(Italy)Castberg Law, 59Casti Connubii, 140, 166, 176Castro Osorio, Ana de, 48–9Catholic Center Party (Germany),

145, 153Catholic German Women’s League

(Austria), 147, 155Catholic Women’s League

(Germany), 140Catholic Women’s Organization

(Austria), 147, 155Catlin, George, 204CDU, see Christian Democratic Union

(Germany)Cederschiöld, Maria, 47Center for Youth Welfare, 43Chamber of Deputies (France), 117Chambres syndicalistes des industries de

l’aiguille, 71Charles, Enid, 162, 183Charlton, Val, 229Chéliga, Marya, 105Chew, Ada Nield, 76Child Allowance Act (Netherlands), 155child allowances, 149, 151, 152, 153,

154, 155, 157Child Guidance Movement, 191childbearing, 8, 14, 70, 71, 72, 74, 81,

83–4, 88, 89, 92, 103, 106, 107,114–15, 122–3, 124, 125, 128, 162, 169–70, 223, 236; allowancesfor, 149, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155,157; avoidance of, 182; choice, 233,239; cultural influences, 227; diseasesand, 182; economy, 239; education,172; encouragement of, 237;feminists and, 153; increase in,166–7; industrial process, 239;involuntary, 197; morality and, 170;motherhood, 233; mothers and, 121,172; parents and, 181, 182; planning,

167; psychological forces, 239; refusalof, 239; religion and, 166; scientifictheories and, 183–4; self-affirmation,239; society and, 182, 239; state and,154, 155, 172, 216; war and, 122–3;welfare state, 219; working mothers,199, 207, 224

child-care centers, 116, 119, 133, 149,151, 154, 201, 213, 224, 237, 238;fathers and, 148, 207; men and, 190,238; mothers and, 148, 168, 188,207; parents, 225; politics and, 201;restructuring of, 194; socialized, 201;standards of, 168; women and, 207,208, 225

child-rearing, 1, 2, 10, 11, 15, 16, 31,42, 46, 47, 49, 64, 67, 74, 76, 78,82–3, 93, 101, 113, 115, 121, 122,191, 226–7, 230, 236; democracy,198; discipline, 212; economy, 185;extinction of, 184; families and, 156,177, 193; fathers and, 195, 200, 205,208; feminists and, 137–8, 191, 199,200, 201, 203; full time, 224; genderrelations and, 143,188; households,202, 204; independence, 198;marriage, 207; maternal instinct and,189; men and, 236, 237; mentalhealth, 189; mothers and, 137–8,183, 188, 195, 200, 203–4, 205,236, 238–9; parents and, 205, 207,211, 240; responsibility, 231; scienceof, 200, 236; society and, 199; stateand, 156, 236; subsidies for, 152;values, 198; women and, 108, 141,152, 183, 189, 204

Children’s House, 202–3Christen-Vrouwen-Bond, see Christian

Women’s LeagueChristian Democratic Union

(Germany), 212, 215Christian Women’s League, 140Christian Women’s Social Movement of

Belgium, 180Christlich-demokratische Union

(CDU), see Christian DemocraticUnion (Germany)

Civil Law Code (Germany, 1900), 43,46, 47

Claeys, Emilie, 99Clapperton, Jane Hume, 98–9

I 339


Clemenceau, Georges, 139Cole, Margaret, 206Collins, Mary Gabrielle, 114Comitato nationale per l’assistenza

legale alle famiglie dei richiamati, see National Committee for LegalAssistance to the Families of ServicePersonne (Italy)

Comitato nazionale femminile, seeNational Women’s Committee (Italy)

Comité d’Action Suffragiste, see Committee for Suffragist Action(France)

Comité d’éducation féminine, see Committee on Women’sEducation(France)

Comité ter Bevordering van hetGeneeskundig Onderzoek voor hetHuwelijk, see Committee for a MedicalCertificate for Marriage (Netherlands)

Comité tot Verbetering van denMaatschappelijken en denRechtstoestand der Vrouw inNederland, see Committee for theImprovement of the Social and LegalStatus of Women in the Netherlands

Comité van Actie tegen Gezinsloon, seeCommittee of Action against theFamily Wage (Netherlands)

Committee for a Medical Certificate forMarriage (Netherlands), 175

Committee for Suffragist Action(France), 130

Committee for the Defense of theFreedom to Work for Women(Netherlands), 155

Committee for the Improvement of theSocial and Legal Status of Women inthe Netherlands, 45

Committee of Action against the FamilyWage (Netherlands), 155

Committee on Marriage Counseling(Germany), 178

Committee on Population Policy(Germany), 178

Committee on the Dismissal of MarriedWomen in the Civil Service(Netherlands), 155

Committee on Women’s Education(France), 174

Common Cause (periodical), 89, 118Common-Sense Guild to Baby and Child

Care (Benjamin Spock), 213communists, 148, 152, 163, 166,

170, 176–7, 178, 213, 214, 217,219–20, 230

Conseil national des femmes françaises,see National Council of French Women

Consiglio nazionale delle donne italiane,see National Council of Italian Women

contraceptives, see birth controlCosmic Circle, 36Courtney, Kate, 150

Dahlström, Edmund, 225, 231Daladier, Edouard, 153Dalsace, Jean, 166Danish Housewives’ Federation, 141Danish Women’s National Council, 179Darwin, Charles, 19, 21, 24, 26, 37,

38, 90, 189Davies, Margaret Llewelyn, 116,

121–2, 123Dawson, Oswald, 52day care centers, 154, 172, 201, 210,

212, 224, 230, 236Declaration of the Rights of the Child,

12, 168Denmark, 48–9, 51, 77, 105, 141, 143,

145, 165, 175, 179, 180, 220, 238Deraismes, Maria, 47Deutsch, Helene, 227, 228Deutscher Frauenring, see German

Women’s CircleDeutscher Staatsbürgerinnenverband,

see German Women CitizensAssociation

Deutsches Frauenwerk, see GermanWomen’s Bureau

Deutsch-Evangelischer Frauenbund, seeGerman Evangelical Women’s League

divorce, 34, 44–5, 48, 75, 97, 115, 141,143, 144, 148, 196, 215

Dogan, Mattei, 214Dohm, Hedwig, 85Doll’s House, A (Henrik Ibsen), 1Dollfuss, Engelbert, 146–7Doppelverdienergesetz, see Double

Earner LawDouble Earner Law, 154–5

I 340


Drucker, Wilhelmine, 31, 39, 56, 58,70, 75, 99, 194

Drysdale, Alice Vickery, 99Drysdale, Charles, 98–9Duensing, Frieda, 43Dumas, Alexandre, 51Durand, Marguerite, 27, 71Durand-Wever, Anne-Marie, 178Dutch National Council of Women,

168, 180Dutch Reformed Church, 217Dutch Society for Sexual

Reform, 217

Eastman, Crystal, 207Eaubonne, Françoise d’, 232, 233École de la Pureté (Emma Piecynska-

Reichenbach), see School of Purity, TheÉcole des Mères, see School for Mothers

(France)Écoles Maternelles, 203education, 10, 25, 42, 47, 66, 119–20,

126, 202–3, 206, 209, 236, 237,238, 240; childbearing, 172; children,82, 101, 129, 152, 153, 168, 176,183, 189, 192, 198, 199, 200;families and, 172; feminists, 199, 205,207; households and, 94, 96;marriage and, 172; men, 239;Montessori method, 202–3; moral,93–4, 129; motherhood and, 79–80,95, 144, 178, 188, 189; parents and,96, 156, 207; patriarchal, 203;religion and, 94; reproduction and,95, 96, 199; sexual, 88, 92, 93, 94–5,103, 164, 165, 174, 200, 217;society, 201; utopian, 202; womenand, 83–4, 97, 100, 130, 138, 155,158, 174–5, 192, 196, 197, 204, 223, 225

Edwards-Pilliet, Blanche, 70, 126Éffort féminin français, see French

Women’s AllianceEisler, Hanns, 170–1Ellis, Havelock, 95Elmy, Ben, 93Elmy, Elizabeth Wolstenholme, 12, 19,

42, 46, 48, 89, 92, 93, 94, 96, 98emancipation, 14, 32, 33, 35–6, 41, 61,

66, 67, 68, 69, 78, 79, 84, 101, 135,

137, 139, 147, 161, 167, 176, 188,206–7, 217, 226, 233

employment, 64, 65, 66, 67–8, 69, 73,113–14, 119, 134, 148, 149, 151,152, 153, 154, 156, 157–8, 159,200–1, 203–4, 205, 209, 210,212–13, 216, 220–1, 223, 232, 233, 237, 238

endowment of motherhood, 63–4, 83Engels, Friedrich, 23, 25, 28, 34, 36, 68England, see Great BritainEnglishwoman’s Review (periodical), 68Entente, l’, (periodical), 39Estates General of Feminism (France),

144, 152Eugenics Education Society, see Eugenics

SocietyEugenics Society (Britain), 91, 105,

106, 133, 178, 179, 180eugenics, 88, 90–2, 96, 97, 103, 105–7,

126, 133, 153, 157, 161–2, 164,173, 176, 177, 178, 180, 181, 184,210, 212, 219, 240

European Commission, 237European Union, 7, 237, 238European Women’s Lobby, 237Evolutie (periodical), 31, 56, 75, 89,

99, 94

Fabian Society, 75, 81, 82, 98, 150–1Fabian Women’s Group, 28, 68,

69–70, 78Falange Española, see Spanish Falangefamilies, 3, 5–6, 8, 16–17, 19–20, 24,

25, 171, 237; allowances for, 153,154, 155, 157–8, 210, 211, 217;baby boom, 209; benefits to, 81, 178, 216; changes in, 189, 213; child-rearing and, 156, 177, 193;children and, 33, 49, 74, 84, 123. 140, 150–1, 156, 216; conflicts in,138–9; crisis of, 138, 149, 181; decline of, 181, 184, 195; defense of, 201; domestic servants, 205;economy and, 10, 98, 122, 125, 151, 181, 192, 219; education, 172;egalitarian, 44; endowment, 150, 151; evolution of, 30–1; father-headed, 153, 155, 206, 214, 215;fatherless, 206, 214, 223; fathers

I 341


families—continuedand, 20, 35, 42, 44; female-headed and, 12, 22, 23, 25, 28, 33, 148;feminists and, 35, 39, 42, 43, 47,53–4, 56, 64, 65, 66, 78–9, 83, 84,100, 121, 133, 141–2, 143, 162,177, 202, 214, 235; feminists, 202;full-time mothers, 201; health careand, 65–6, 108, heredity of, 176–7;history of, 20, 28–9, 193; householdsand, 147, 189, 197; industrializationand, 45; insurance and, 148, 150;legal system and, 42, 105–6, 149,153, 175, 213; legitimate children of,33, 34; life of, 7, 32, 45, 140, 142,155, 188, 198, 231; limitation of,162, 166; male-headed, 216, 219;marriage and, 33, 34, 144;maternalism and, 208; matriarchal,30–1, 44; matrilineal clans and, 195;matrilineal, 33. 34, 128; men and,122, 144, 149, 150, 195, 225, 239;military and, 121, 139;modernization of, 148, 182; moralityand, 38, 64, 65, 140, 197; mother-headed, 13, 36–7, 43, 58, 130, 133,193, 195, 215, 216; mothers and,133, 138, 141–2, 167, 223, 225,230; natalism and, 144, 166–7;nuclear, 16, 38, 147, 231;organizations and, 116, 140, 217;origins of, 39, 194–5; paternalauthority and, 44–5, 48, 53–4, 90,181, 205; patriarchal, 29, 33, 35,36–7, 74, 84, 88, 133, 174–5, 195;planning by, 11, 102, 167, 172, 217,240; politics and, 117, 124, 142, 155,178, 181; poverty and, 12, 43, 81,98, 168, 169, 217; primitive, 38, 39;privacy and, 83, 170, 210, 211–12,219; proletarian, 168–9;reconstruction of, 139, 212–13;reforms and, 116, 143; religion and,38, 140; responsibilities of, 205, 235;restructuring of, 44, 194; sexualityand, 22, 33, 140; single earnerbenefit, 216, 217; size of, 9, 13–14,16, 78–9, 88, 89, 152, 157, 166,167, 168, 172, 209, 216, 217, 235;social services and, 115, 116; society

and, 142, 159; stability of, 139, 181,215; standard of living, 223; stateand, 12, 65–6, 83, 84, 143, 151, 155,178, 211–12, 214, 217; sterilizationand, 177, 178; structure of, 3, 15, 25,49, 153, 189; two-parent, 49, 51,53–4, 58, 148, 188, 195, 296, 205,215; utopianism and, 33, 35; wagesof, 64, 65, 150, 155, 189; war and,138, 139; welfare, 209, 219; will of the father, 46–7; women and, 138, 159, 174–5, 187, 222,223–4; working-class households, 12, 150, 189, 203, 204, 206, 207, 238

Family Endowment Society (Britain), 150

fatherhood, civilization and, 194–5;culture and, 193; importance of, 195;nurturing, 195; recognition of, 193;replacement of, 231; responsibilitiesof, 195–6

fatherless families, 115, 214, 223, 231, 238

fathers, allowances and, 155, 158, 210;authoritarian, 195, 215; bereavementof, 132–3; child care, 207; childsupport and, 117; child-rearing and,195, 200, 205, 208; children and, 19,34, 42, 55–8, 96, 101, 104, 117,118, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 152,190, 191, 195, 199–200, 206;culture and, 195–6; economy and,10, 144; employment and, 64, 65,205; equality of, 143, 144; familiesand, 20, 28–9, 35, 42, 44, 206;feminists and, 205, 206; guardiansand, 143, 144; marriage and, 83–4;military and, 117; parental power of,44–5, 48, 83, 144, 148; reproductionand, 195–6, 199; responsibilities of,55, 73, 94, 152; role of, 9, 13, 44,188, 195, 199–200; sexual educationand, 94–5; will of, 46–7

Fawcett, Millicent Garrett, 53Feminism, New (Britain), 141, 142,

192–3, 208Femme Affranchie, La (periodical), 101Femme Belge, La (periodical), 180Ferenczi, Sandor, 190

I 342


Fickert, Auguste, 59Finland, 48–9, 143, 145, 175, 180, 220Fischer, Edmund, 77Fogelstad School (Sweden), 196Fourteen Points, 129Française, La (periodical), 113, 114,

124, 127, 134, 142, 150, 152, 170,171, 203

France, 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 18,19, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29–30, 42, 43,44, 45, 48, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56–7,60, 65, 68, 70–1, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82,83, 87, 88, 89, 94, 95, 100, 101,104, 105–6, 111, 112, 113, 114–15,116, 117, 119, 122–3, 124, 125,126, 127, 128, 129–30, 131, 133,134, 138–9, 140, 141, 144–5, 147,148, 151–2, 153, 159, 161, 165–6,168–9, 170, 171, 173–4, 176,180–1, 188–9, 191, 193, 194, 197,198, 199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 210,211, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 219,220, 221, 222, 228, 230, 231,232–3, 238, 239

Franco, Francisco, 149Frank, Louis, 31–2, 44, 47, 55, 73Frau, Die (periodical), 79, 124–5, 130,

153, 154, 178, 211Frauenreferat, see Women’s BureauFredrika Bremer Association (Sweden),

45, 157Fredrika-Bremer-Förbundet, see Fredrika

Bremer Associationfree love, 52–3, 55–6, 58, 140,

147, 192Free Women (Spain), 148, 174Free Women’s Association

(Netherlands), 45, 56, 75Freewoman, The (periodical), 83, 84,

98, 106French Eugenics Society, 91French Group for Feminist Studies, 49,

53–4, 55French League for the Rights of

Women, 45French League for Woman Suffrage, 119French Union for Woman Suffrage, 124French Women’s Alliance, 113French Women’s Catholic Action, 140Freud, Anna, 202–3, 212

Freud, Sigmund, 36, 37–8, 39, 182,189, 190, 191, 197–8, 202–3, 206,212, 227

Fronde, La (periodical), 19, 27, 71Fürth, Henriette, 97, 116, 122,

153–4, 177

Galton, Francis, 90Gaulle, Charles de, 211Geddes, Patrick, 26George, Stefan, 36Gerhard, Adele, 84–5German Committee for Birth

Control, 163German Democratic Party (DDP),

145–6, 170German Evangelical Women’s League

(DEF), 140German National Assembly, 145German National People’s Party

(DNVP), 145German Women Citizens

Association, 211German Women’s Bureau, 211German Women’s Circle, 213, 215Germany, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 23–4,

32, 33, 34, 39, 40, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47,48, 50, 51, 53, 55, 56–7, 59, 61–2,65, 66, 67, 68, 71, 73, 75, 77, 79–80,82, 83–5, 88, 89, 91, 92, 95, 96, 101,105, 108, 111, 113–14, 115, 116–17,120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127,128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 134, 136,137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143,146, 147, 150, 153, 155, 156, 157–8,159, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167,169, 170, 171, 174, 175, 176, 177,178, 179, 180, 181, 188–9, 190–1,192, 194, 198, 201, 203, 205,209–10, 211, 212, 214–15, 216, 221,223, 224, 225, 226, 232, 237, 239

Gerritsen, Aletta, see Jacobs, AlettaGesell, Arnold, 189, 196Gesellschaft für Bevölkerungspolitik∏

see Society for Population Policy(Germany)

Gesellschaft für Rassehygiene, see RacialHygiene Society (Germany)

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 26, 29–30,68–9, 70, 75, 77, 98, 239

I 343


Gleichheit, Die (periodical), 125, 140Godet, Henri, 18Godet, Mireille, 18Gollancz, Victor, 138Great Britain, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14,

19, 20, 24–5, 26, 28–9, 30, 38, 40,42, 43, 45, 46, 49, 50, 52–3, 67, 68,69, 74, 75, 76, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83,84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 93, 95, 96,98, 100, 104, 106, 107, 108, 110,111, 112, 113, 114, 116, 117, 118,119–20, 121, 123, 125–6, 128, 129,131, 132, 133, 134, 137, 138,140–1, 143, 147, 149, 150, 151,152, 153, 158–9, 162, 164, 165,166, 167, 168, 170, 171, 173, 176,178, 179, 180, 183, 188–90, 191,194, 196, 197, 200, 201, 203, 206,207, 210, 212, 213–15, 216, 217,220, 221, 223, 226, 227, 229, 230,232–3, 239

Grève des ventres, see birth-strikeGross, Otto, 36–7Groupe français d’études féministes, see

French Group for Feminist StudiesGrundgesetz, see Basic Law (Germany)guardianship, 39, 42, 44–5, 46, 52, 56,

57, 59–60, 116, 143–4, 145, 146,147, 149, 195, 216

Guardianship of Infants Act (1925:Britain), 143

Hainisch, Marianne, 34, 80, 90, 96, 130

Haldane, J. B. S., 183Hamilton, Cicely, 25, 98, 108, 171Happy Motherhood (France), 218Harnack, Agnes von, 113Hartley, Catherine Gasquoine, 38, 137Haus der Kinder, see Children’s House“Health Booklet (France),” 176health certificates for marriage, 105–6,

126, 175Hellé, J., 28Hellmann, Hanna, 130Henderson, Arthur, 113Herwerden, Maria Anna van, 175, 180Herzfelder, Henriette, 107, 171Hesselgren, Kerstin, 156–7, 165,

171, 196

Hetzer, Hildegard, 190Himmler, Heinrich, 146, 211Hippel, Theodor Gottlieb von, 20Hirschfeld, Magnus, 163, 165Hitler, Adolf, 178, 212Hobbes, Thomas, 10, 20, 22Holland, see NetherlandsHoltby, Winifred, 184, 189, 196, 204Horney, Karen, 189, 197–8House of Mothers, 166, 174Hubback, Eva, 179Hubback, Judith, 223, 226Humanae Vitae (papal encyclical), 220Hungary, 68, 71Huxley, Aldous, 184

Ibsen, Henrik, 1, 13, 19illegitimacy, 42, 50, 54, 55, 56, 59, 115,

116–17, 118, 146, 151, 155Imperial School Conference (Germany,

1920), 203Independent Labour Party

(Britain), 120Institut de puèriculture, see Institute of

Child-NurtureInstitute for Sexual Science

(Germany), 163Institute of Child-Nurture (France),

133, 188International Abolitionist

Federation, 95International Committee of Women for

Permanent Peace, 115, 129International Congress of Women

(1910), 59International Congress of Women

(1915), 115International Council of Women, 94International Federation of Business

Women, 223International Feminist Conference

(1896), 81, 105International League for the Protection

of Mothers and Social Reform, 91, 96International Neo-Malthusian

Congress, 102International Planned Parenthood

Federation, 217International Women’s Conference

(1896), 76

I 344


International Women’s Congress(1904), 68–9

International Women’s Congress(1913), 106

Internationale Vereinigung fürMutterschutz und Sexualreform, seeInternational League for theProtection of Mothers and SocialReform

Ireland, 6, 7, 8, 50, 138, 141, 158, 171,211, 220

Irish Free State, 138, 158, 166Isaac, Auguste, 168Italy, 6, 21, 44, 46, 50, 51, 53, 56, 71,

72, 73, 76, 77, 83–4, 89, 113, 116,128, 134, 146, 157–8, 162, 171,202–3, 209–11, 213, 215, 219–20,233, 237, 239

Jacobs, Aletta, 67, 68, 75, 99, 128–9, 165

Jebb, Eglantyne, 168Jellinek, Camilla, 60, 102, 105,

146, 150Jephcott, Pearl, 221–3Jeunes Femmes, see Young WomenJournal des Femmes (periodical), 87Jung, Carl Gustav, 37, 39, 190

Katholische Frauenorganisation, see Catholic Women’sOrganization(Austria)

Katholischer Deutscher Frauenbund, seeCatholic German Women’s League(Austria)

Katholischer Frauenbund, see CatholicWomen’s League (Germany)

Kempin, Emilie, 45, 46Kergomard, Pauline, 79, 94–5, 203Kerr, R. B., 53Key, Ellen, 2, 15, 32, 33, 34, 49, 59,

66, 78–9, 82, 84, 90, 95, 103, 104,106, 111, 112, 131, 141, 158, 173,187, 196, 235, 239, 240

King, Frederick Truby, 190Klages, Ludwig, 36Klein, Melanie, 190–1, 199, 230Klein, Viola, 220–1, 223–5, 231Kol, Nellie van, 31, 55, 94, 96Kollwitz, Käthe, 133

Kool-Smit, Joke, 229–30, 231Kraemer-Bach, Marcelle, 141, 147Kvinnolistan, see Women’s List (Sweden)

Labour Party, 82, 113, 140, 164, 169,179, 213–14

Lafargue, Paul, 24Lagroua Weill-Hallé, Marie-Andrée,

218–19, 220Laguerre, Odette, 19, 42–3Lambeth Conference (1930), 162Lanchester, Edith, 52Lange, Helene, 58, 79–80, 125Lawrence, D. H., 134League for Human Regeneration,

100–1League for Life (France), 124League for the Defense of Women’s

Interests (Italy), 71League for the Mother at Home

(France), 152League for the Promotion of Women’s

Interests (Italy), 56League for the Protection of Mothers

(BfM), 32, 52, 55, 58, 59, 72, 91,95–6, 101–2, 106, 116, 117, 126,146, 157–8, 163, 192, 213

League for the Protection of Mothersand Family Hygiene (Germany), 163

League of Austrian Women’sAssociations (BÖFV), 34–5, 58–9, 90, 96, 102, 112, 113, 130,154–5, 171

League of French Women, 131League of German Girls (BDM), 211League of German Women’s

Associations (BDF), 34, 45, 46, 49,57–8, 73–4, 79, 87, 101–2, 105,106, 113, 119, 124, 125, 142,143–4, 146, 153, 154, 157–8, 163,176–8, 211, 213

League of Large Families (Germany), 153

League of Nations, 12, 168, 171League of Progressive Women’s

Organizations (Germany), 33League of Swiss Women’s Associations,

74, 95, 213, 222, 229League to Combat Infant Mortality

(France), 116

I 345


Léal, Anne, 130Lega per la promozione degli interessi

femminili, see League for thePromotion of Women’s Interests (Italy)

Lega per la tutela degli interessi feminili,see League for the Defense ofWomen’s Interests (Italy)

Legal Committee of the SwedishNational Council of Women, 47

Legitimacy Act (Britain, 1926), 147, 192Legitimation League (Britain), 52Legouvé, Ernest, 19LeGrand Falco, Marcelle, 126Lenin, Vladimir, 219Lichnewska, Maria, 66, 96Liga für Mutterschutz und

Familienhygiene, see League for theProtection of Mothers and FamilyHygiene (Germany)

Liga Republicana das MulheresPortuguesas, see Republican League ofPortuguese Women

Ligue belge du droit des femmes, seeBelgian League for the Rights ofWomen

Ligue contre la mortalité infantile, seeLeague to Combat Infant Mortality(France)

Ligue de la mère au foyer, see League forthe Mother at Home (France)

Ligue des femmes françaises, see Leagueof French Women

Ligue féminine d’action catholiquefrançaise, see French Women’sCatholic Action

Ligue française du droit des femmes, seeFrench League for the Rights ofWomen

Ligue pour la vie, see League for Life(France)

Liljeström, Rita, 225Lindsay, Ben, 182Louise Hervieu Association, 176Lüders, Marie-Elisabeth, 113, 119, 134

Maine, Sir Henry, 20–1Malinowski, Bronislaw, 194–6Mansfield, Katherine, 197Man-Vrouw Maatschaappij, see Men’s

and Women’s Society (Netherlands)

Margueritte, Victor, 139Markelius, Sven, 202Marriage Bars, 158, 221Marriage Code (France), 144marriage, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13–14, 15–16,

20–1, 24, 31–2, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39,42, 44, 55, 58, 59, 60–1, 67, 68,83–4, 95, 97, 118, 123–4, 126, 153,157, 158–9, 164, 195, 204, 209,210; attitudes towards, 141; babyfactory, 183; bourgeois, 24; child-rearing, 207; children and, 182;companionate, 16; comradely, 182;conflicts in, 138–9, 218; counseling,163, 178; culture and, 139; economyand, 115, 210; education and, 172;egalitarian form of, 34, 68, 205;employment and, 137–8;encouragement of, 139; equality and,143, 203; families and, 138–9, 144;feminists and, 55, 60, 97, 108, 134,139, 141, 162, 175, 205, 235; freelove and, 140, 147; gender equalityin, 31–2; gender roles and, 141;health certificates and, 105–6, 126,175; laws, 48, 105–6, 127, 143, 149;men and, 88–9, 106, 138–9, 140–1,147–8; morality and, 92, 103, 140;motherhood and, 15, 41, 49–50,55–6, 60–1, 72, 73, 74, 83–4, 137–8,142, 143, 148, 159, 192–3;patriarchal, 116, 149; politics and,142, 181; postponement of, 115;,professions and, 192–3; prohibitionof, 175; reform of, 49, 149; religionand, 147–8, 166; reproduction and,106, 162, 183; restructuring of, 194;rights of, 92, 137–8; science and,103; secular, 148; separation and,115; servitude, 147; sexuality and,174; stability of, 144, 181; welfarestate and, 219; women and, 41, 65,68, 69, 88–9, 92–3, 104, 106, 108,133, 134, 138–9, 140–1, 144, 151,152, 153, 154, 157, 174, 184, 193,200–1, 215, 221

Married Women (Maintenance) Act(Britain, 1922), 143

Marsden, Dora, 106Marti Ibañez, Felix, 174

I 346


Martial, Lydie, 94, 100Martin, Marguerite, 202Martin, Marie, 87Marx, Karl, 23–4, 25, 230Mason, Otis Tufton, 24Maternal Aid Society (France), 71maternal behavior, 9, 197, 198–9;

biology, 218; care, 209, 213; clinics,164; deprivation, 212, 215–16, 230;maternal dilemma, 1, 2, 17, 39, 41,60, 64, 138, 141–2, 156, 159, 167,184, 208, 209, 223–4, 227, 228,231–2, 233, 235, 236–7, 238, 239,241; employment, 64, 69–70, 216;function, 77; maternal indulgence,189; instinct, 9, 188, 189;investment, 198; maternal love, 197,206; nature, 14; nurture, 38, 206;obligations, 70, 225; responsibilities,88, 188, 235; roles, 3, 15, 61–2, 72,169, 200–1, 208, 210, 212, 213,226, 227; salary, 82, 121; service, 81;maternal wisdom, 190; work, 238

maternalism, 2, 5, 8, 9, 13, 16, 92, 94,96–7, 100, 102, 103, 111, 126–7,141–2, 161, 239; decline, 208; families,208; feminists, 208; society, 208

Maternité Heureuse, see HappyMotherhood (France)

Maternity and Child Welfare Act(Britain), 120–1

maternity, 2, 4, 8, 42, 47, 53, 65–6, 73,74, 79, 81, 127, 128, 151, 167, 228,231; benefits, 120; budget, 81, 83;care, 173; commitments to, 66–7;coverage, 120; envy of, 189; femininefunction, 228; feminists and, 74, 184;identity, 232; insurance and, 71–4,119, 146, 165, 178; leave, 70–1, 72,73, 74–5, 119, 154, 237; marriageand, 103; mothers and, 147;obligation of, 134; patriotism and,81; pension, 82; rebellion against,209; redefinition of, 84; socialfunction, 100, 130; state coverage,148; subsidy of, 72, 82–3;transcultural, 235; women and, 134,137, 156, 174, 184, 204, 218, 220

matriarchy, 22, 23, 24, 28, 29–31, 33,35–40, 44, 55, 56, 60, 194, 196; age,

194; communities, 205; paradise,193, rule, 130; theories, 129–30, 196

Mayreder, Rosa, 34–5, 129McLennan, John Ferguson, 23McMillan, Margaret, 119–20Mead, Margaret, 231, 232Medal of the French Family, 171Meikle, Wilma, 150, 197Meisel-Hess, Grete, 34, 103, 139Melvyn, Alice, 75Men’s and Women’s Club (Britain),

28–9Men’s and Women’s Society

(Netherlands), 229–30Mensing, Marie, 55Mental Deficiency Act (Britain),

106, 177Mère Éducatrice, La (periodical), 129,

192, 199, 207Meyer-Huber, Iris, see von Roten, IrisMill, John Stuart, 19, 30, 65Minor, Margarete, 118Mirtel, Héra, 193Misme, Jane, 114, 127, 134Mitchell, Juliet, 230, 231Mitchison, Naomi, 167–8Moberg, Eva, 225Moll-Weiss, Augusta, 80Montessori, Maria, 76–7, 89, 104,

202–3Montreuil-Straus, Germaine, 174, 199Morale Sociale (periodical), 100,103Morgan, Lewis Henry, 23–4mortality, 204; children and, 168–9,

240; decline in, 188–9; infant, 53, 80,89, 114, 116, 117, 188

Mortimer, Penelope, 230Mother’s Day, 210mother-goddess, 22, 28, 29, 37mother-headed families, 13, 28, 36–7,

43, 58, 60–1, 130, 133, 193, 195,215, 216

mother-love, 9, 36, 39, 75, 78–9, 131,133, 187, 188, 200, 208, 212, 219

mother-right, 22, 24, 30–1, 49Mozzoni, Anna Maria, 56, 83–4Mujeres Libres, see Free Women

(Spain)Mulinen, Helene de, 95Mussolini, Benito, 157–8, 210

I 347


Mutual Society for the Protection of Women (Netherlands), 52, 72

Mutualité Maternelle, see Maternal AidSociety(France)

Myrdal, Alva, 156–7, 159, 172,179–80, 182, 198, 200, 201, 202, 205, 207, 220–2, 223–5, 230

Myrdal, Gunnar, 156, 172, 179–80,202, 207, 222

Myrdal, Jan, 200

Nadig, Frieda, 215Napoleonic Code, 10, 44, 46, 53, 55,

56, 57, 144, 148Narbonne, Jacques, 214natalism, 144, 151, 157, 172, 176,

210, 213–14natalist organizations, 123, 124,

125, 126, 144, 149, 152, 153,166–7, 172, 181, 210, 211–12, 239, 241

National Alliance Against Depopulation(France), 168

National Alliance to Increase the French Population, 81, 144

National Association of Spanish Women, 148

National Baby Week (Britain), 110National Birth Council Association

(Britain), 165National Birth Rate Commission

(Britain), 123National Committee for Legal

Assistance to the Families of ServicePersonnel (Italy), 117

National Committee for Women’s WarWork (Britain), 113, 119

National Conference of Labour Women(Britain), 151

National Conference on War Service forWomen (Germany), 113

National Congress for Women’s CivilRights and Suffrage (France, 1908),45, 48

National Congress of Italian Women(1914), 77

National Council for Equal Citizenship(Britain), 213

National Council for the UnmarriedMother and her Child (Britain), 147

National Council of French Women, 54, 55, 130, 138, 140, 144, 147,152, 213

National Council of Italian Women, 43,56, 179

National Council of Women(Netherlands), 43, 56, 179

National Custodial Law (Germany), 177National Exhibition of Women’s Work

(Netherlands), 93–4National League of German

Housewives’ Associations, 146National Socialist Party (Germany),

90–1, 92, 146, 157–8, 162, 164,177–8, 180, 181, 210

National Socialist Women’s League(Germany), 157–8, 211

National Society for Sexual Education(Sweden), 165, 217

National Union for Woman Suffrage(France), 140

National Union of Societies for EqualCitizenship (NUSEC, Britain), 141,143, 147, 150, 151, 165, 178, 179

National Union of Woman SuffrageSocieties (NUWSS, Britain), 46, 89, 141

National Women’s Committee (Italy),113, 116

National Women’s Service (Germany),113, 124–5

Nationale Vrouwenraad, see NationalCouncil of Women (Netherlands)

Nationaler Ausschuss für Frauenarbeitim Krieg, see National Committee onWomen’s War Work (Germany)

Nationaler Frauendienst, see NationalWomen’s Service (Germany)

Nationalsozialistisches Frauenwerk, seeNational Socialist Women’s Bureau

Naumann, Friedrich, 65Nederlandse Vereniging voor Sexuele

Hervorming, see Dutch Society forSexual Reform

Negri, Ada, 50Nelken, Margarita, 174Neo-Malthusian League (Netherlands),

99, 100

I 348


Neo-Malthusianism, 98, 99, 100–1,108, 162, 166, 168–9

Neosophical Society, 26Netherlands, 3, 6, 9, 11, 31, 41, 42, 43,

44, 50, 51, 53, 55–6, 58, 66, 68, 70,71, 72, 75, 79, 89, 93–4, 99, 128,134, 138, 140, 141, 153, 155, 165,175, 180, 182, 188–9, 203, 211, 217,220, 221, 222, 225, 229, 231–3

Netter, Yvonne, 141, 159Newsholme, Arthur, 88Nieuw-Malthusiaansche Bond, see Neo

Malthusian League (Netherlands)Nilsson, Ada, 165, 172, 200Norton, Caroline, 45Norway, 11, 44, 48–9, 59–60, 71, 82,

92, 96, 102, 105, 107, 118, 143,144–5, 165, 175, 180, 211, 220, 230

Norwegian National Women’s Council,96, 102, 105

Oddo-Deflou, Jeanne, 27–8Oedipus complex, 36–7, 38, 191Onderlinge Vrouwenbescherming, see

Mutual Society for the Protection ofWomen (Netherlands)

Open Door International, 151, 152Ottesen-Jensen, Elise, 165, 169, 180,

199–200, 217

pacifism, 115, 128, 129–31, 133, 142,192, 193, 199

Pankhurst, Christabel, 104, 107, 113Pankhurst, Emmeline, 113, 118Pankhurst, Sylvia, 118Pappritz, Anna, 112Pardo-Bazán, Emilia, 30parent–child relationship, 9, 10–11, 16,

43, 131–2, 190, 191, 200parenthood, 3, 16; choice, 237;

cooperation in, 207; dangers of, 219;definition of, 83; egalitarianism and,101, 231; encouragement, 172, 237;eugenics and, 90–1; full-time, 204;gratification of, 239; individualism,181, 236; patriarchal families and, 84; as public function, 11–12;redefinition of, 240; rejection of, 232;responsibilities of, 173, 178, 187;self-fulfillment, 240; society and, 125,

179–80; state and, 156, 172;subsidies for, 155; twilight of, 183, 226, 233

parents, affection by, 10, 212;childbearing and, 88, 162, 182; child-rearing and, 46, 101, 205, 207, 211,212, 240; children and, 58, 76–7,118, 123, 127, 146, 151, 173, 191,195, 196–7, 199–200, 202, 205–6;discipline and, 115, 212; duties of,56, 205–6; education and, 96, 156,207; employment of, 153; equality of,46, 47, 143, 144, 148, 215; father’srole and, 199–200; guardianship and, 143–4; independence, 204,205–6; interference from, 199;modern society, 206–7; morality and,96, 178; power of, 44–5;responsibility of, 31, 49, 59, 60, 83,105, 152, 168, 174, 206–7; rights of,31, 43, 48, 56, 137–8, 144, 148,162, 215; role of, 45, 200, 207;sexual education by, 94–5, 190, 200; unmarried, 56, 59, 117, 145–6, 215–16; working-class, 204, 207

paternal authority, 43–4, 46, 47, 48,53–4, 144, 181, 206; behavior, 83;discipline, 115; power, 10, 48, 144,149; rights, 148; role, 195, 205;support, 60–1, 118, 145, 147

paternity, 22, 23, 25, 28–9, 34–5, 42, 50, 53, 56–8, 117, 133, 144–5,147, 233

patriarchy, 209; democracy and, 215;destruction of, 36; Freud and, 37–40;marriage and, 116;, matriarchy and,196; morality, 215; overthrow of,196; reform of, 196; sexual slaveryand, 34–5; violence and, 196; women and, 184

Pearson, Karl, 28Pelletier, Madeleine, 28, 77, 79, 101,

112, 173, 198, 201Pember Reeves, Maude, 80–1Perkins-Gilman, Charlotte, 214Pestalozzi-Froebel House, 62, 80Pethick-Lawrence, Emmeline, 106Petit, Gabrielle, 101Pfeil, Elisabeth, 225, 226, 231–2

I 349


Piecynska-Reichenbach, Emma, 95,100, 103

Pinard, Adolphe, 70, 71, 80, 82, 91, 94, 119, 173, 175

Ploetz, Alfred, 91Pognon, Maria, 54Pollak, Marianne, 183Popelin, Marie, 45, 47Popp, Adelheid, 164Population Commission (Sweden),

156, 157population, crisis, 219, 238–9; decline

in, 212; policies, 125, 149, 151–2,153, 156, 157, 159, 170, 177, 178, 180, 182; trends, 7, 8, 13, 16, 32, 78

Portugal, 6, 44, 53, 56, 105, 162, 220Posada, Adolfo, 47pregnancy, 14, 16, 29, 51, 70, 71, 72,

74, 89, 97, 101, 114–15, 119, 121,122, 123, 127, 167–9, 182, 195,199, 207, 215

prehistory, 20, 21, 23–4, 26, 29, 30, 31,33, 38, 69, 194, 195, 236

Primo de Rivera, José Antonio, 148Primo de Rivera, Pilar, 148privacy, 83, 170, 176, 210, 211–12,

214, 219ProFamilia, 217prostitution, 83, 90, 92, 105, 108, 115,

125, 126, 179, 197Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 64–5psychological theories, 185, 187–9,

191, 194, 196–8, 198, 205–6, 208,212, 213, 215, 223, 224, 226, 229,236, 239

Racial Hygiene Society (Germany), 91, 126

racism, 91, 128, 146, 155, 157, 162, 164, 169, 170–2, 173, 180,210–11

Raschke, Marie, 45Rathbone, Eleanor, 121, 150–1, 210Rechtsschutzverband für Frauen, see

Women’s Legal Aid (Germany)Red Cross Society, 112, 116, 122, 192Reed, Mary, 53Reich Association for Birth Control and

Sexual Hygiene (Germany), 163

Reichstag, 74, 125, 153, 154, 167, 177, 192

Reichsverband deutscherHausfrauenvereine, see NationalLeague of German Housewives’Associations

Reichsverband für Geburtenregelungund Sexualhygiene, see ReichAssociation for Birth Control andSexual Hygiene (Germany)

Reimer, Alva, see Myrdal, Alvareligion, 5, 6, 10, 11, 14, 26, 28, 30,

34, 38, 58, 72, 76, 90, 94, 99–100,103, 111, 124, 137–8, 140, 142,144, 148, 152, 153, 163, 166, 172,175, 176–7, 178, 179, 184, 201,203, 214, 217, 219, 220, 228, 235, 241

Remarque, Erich Maria, 132Renooz, Céline, 26–7, 28, 100, 129–30Report on Infant Mortality, 89reproduction, 1, 5–6, 7, 13, 16, 19, 25,

26, 28, 33, 61, 65–6, 69, 70, 87–9,92–3, 102, 114, 115, 122, 124, 161,167–8, 170, 173–4, 175–6, 177–8,180–1, 182–3, 183–4, 195, 212,219, 227, 228, 230, 237, 240, 241;children and, 95, 209; decisions and,172–3; education, 95, 96, 199;employment and, 137–8; ethics and,103; eugenics and, 90–2; fathers and,195–6, 199; feminists and, 28, 90–2,111, 137–8, 163; marriage and, 106,162; men and, 97, 199, 219; militaryand, 112; morality and, 92, 162;poverty and, 98, 151; privilege, 107;public service and, 124–5; religionand, 103; rights and, 108, 109;science and, 103; self-determination,90, 92; state and, 16, 124–5, 172–3,210; technology and, 239–40

Republican League of PortugueseWomen, 48, 56, 105

Reventlow, Franziska zu, 36Riksförbundet för sexuell Upplysning,

see National Society for SexualEducation (Sweden)

Rivet, Gustave, 54Rivolta Femminile, 233Robin, Paul, 100

I 350


Rochefort, Christiane, 216Roehl, Elisabeth, 145Roman Catholics, 94–5, 127, 131,

140, 144, 145, 146–7, 152, 153,155, 166, 171–2, 175, 176, 180,191, 201, 211–12, 216, 217, 219, 220

Roten, Iris von, 222, 228–9, 230Roubiczek, Lili, 202–3Roussel, Nelly, 1–2, 17, 18, 27, 44, 49,

53–4, 67, 81, 100–1, 104, 107, 129,161, 166, 168, 214, 239

Rouzade, Léonie, 53–4, 81Royal Commission on Venereal Disease

(Britain), 126Royden, Maude, 111, 118, 128, 150,

170, 201Rühle-Gerstel, Alice, 169–70Russell, Alys, 80Russell, Bertrand, 192, 196, 205Russell, Dora, 137, 164, 165, 169,

170, 180, 182, 183, 184–5, 188,191, 192, 193, 196, 197, 198, 199,201, 204–5, 206, 207, 239

Russia, 29, 68, 140, 163, 194, 201Rutgers, Johannes, 100, 165Rutgers-Hoitsema, Marie, 70, 100

Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Family Association(Britain), 121

Saleeby, Caleb, 70, 126Salomon, Alice, 75, 83, 181Sanger, Margaret, 163, 183Sartre, Jean-Paul, 217, 227, 232Sassoon, Siegfried, 132Saumoneau, Louise, 129Savigny, Friedrich Karl von, 21Scharlieb, Mary, 80, 123Scheffen-Doering, Luise, 178Schellekens-Ligthart, A. J.,

222, 225Schelsky, Helmut, 212, 214Scheven, Katharina, 102, 105Schiff, Paolina, 71, 73Schirmacher, Käthe, 80, 82Schlesinger, Therese, 164Schmahl, Jeanne, 77Schneider, Elisabeth, 84School for Mothers (France), 80School of Purity, The, 95

Schreiber, Adele, 50, 101, 106, 159,167, 169, 177, 191, 192, 197, 198,199, 200, 202, 204, 205, 206, 207

Schreiner, Olive, 29, 67, 68, 69, 70, 98, 214

Schuler, Alfred, 36Scotland, 23, 97, 194Sección Femenina, see Women’s

Section(Spain)Secombe, Wally, 92Sée, Ida, 42–3Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act

(Britain, 1919), 138Sex-Role Group (Sweden), 231sexual behavior, 105; contract, 107;

crisis, 103; education, 92, 93, 94–6,97, 103, 126, 164, 174, 199, 200,217, 237; enlightenment, 200; love,33; morality, 163–4, 178, 207;orientation, 5, 33, 36; reform, 101,165, 180–1; revolution, 183; slavery,34–5

sexuality, 3, 22, 24–5, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35–6, 37, 38, 50, 52–3, 92–3, 96, 97, 100, 101, 102, 138, 140,146, 163, 164, 165, 167, 172, 174,182, 184, 189, 190, 191, 192, 194,197, 199, 209, 218, 220, 227, 233, 235

Shaw, George Bernard, 103–4, 183–4Sicard de Plauzoles, Just, 82, 83, 173Simon, Helene, 84–5single mother, see unmarried mothersSix Point Group, 141, 151, 213Skard, Åse Gruda, 230Social Democratic Party (Germany), 33,

108, 120, 140, 145, 156, 163–4,192, 200, 215

Social Democratic Workers’ Party(Sweden), 156, 172

Social Pedagogical Institute (Sweden), 198

social services, 42–3, 78, 108, 113, 115, 116, 119, 169, 210, 213, 224,225, 238

Socialdemokratiska Arbetareparti, seeSocial Democratic Workers’ Party(Sweden)

socialism, 4, 5, 12, 20, 23–4, 28, 33,43, 45, 56, 65, 68, 70, 73–4, 75, 76,

I 351


77, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 90, 91, 92,98, 99, 101, 106, 108, 116, 118,119, 120, 121, 125, 126, 127, 129,140, 142, 144, 145, 147, 148–9,150–1, 152, 153–4, 155, 156, 158,159, 163, 164, 165, 168, 169,171–2, 176–7, 179, 183, 192, 194,196, 197, 198, 201, 202–3, 205,206, 215, 228, 230

Société Eugénique, see French EugenicsSociety

Société Néosophique, 26–7Society for Birth Control and Racial

Progress (Britain), 164Society for Population Policy

(Germany), 125, 126Society for Sanitary and Moral Reform

(France), 174Soldiers and Sailors Dependents’ Fund

(Britain), 116Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Family Association

(Britain), 117Somerset, Lady Henry, 80Soviet Union, see RussiaSpain, 6, 7, 11, 30, 44, 47, 53, 148,

149, 166, 174, 220Spanish Civil War, 148, 149Spanish Falange, 148Spanish Republic, 148, 166, 174SPD, see Social Democratic Party

(Germany)Spencer, Herbert, 24Spock, Benjamin, 213, 226–7St. Joan’s Society, 140State, as parent, 12; childbearing and,

148, 149, 154, 155, 156, 172, 181;child-care and, 64; child-rearing and,236; children and, 65–6, 108,117–18, 122, 136, 150–1, 169,174–5, 182, 201, 216, 239; familiesand, 12, 65–6, 83, 84, 143, 151, 155,169, 178, 211–12, 214; feministsand, 16, 71, 107, 122, 137–8; healthcare and, 65; mothers and, 13, 71,81, 83, 87, 92, 108, 136, 147, 169,172; parents and, 156, 172;patriarchal, 88; reproduction and,124–5, 170, 172–3, 210, 212;responsibilities of, 16, 83; sexeducation and, 93, 95–6, 97; support,

211, 215, 216, 217; women and,66–7, 83, 107, 108, 124, 161, 170,171, 174–5, 184, 195

Steenhoff, Frieda, 59, 96, 102Steinmetz, S. R., 66sterilization, 164, 176, 177, 178, 179,

180–1, 182, 210, 212Stöcker, Helene, 13, 32–3, 34, 35,

39, 58, 67, 101–2, 103, 104, 108,117, 129, 161, 163, 165, 182, 184, 201, 214

Stopes, Marie Carmichael, 97, 118,126, 150, 164, 165, 168, 173, 179,181, 182, 183, 200

Strauss, Paul, 54, 71, 79, 82, 119Stritt, Marie, 46, 68, 87, 101–2suffrage, 1–2, 11, 12, 14, 25, 27,

29–30, 46, 48–9, 52, 53, 81, 82, 90, 96, 98, 104, 106, 107–8, 111,112–13, 119, 124, 128–30, 131,134, 137, 140, 141, 144, 148, 158,168, 170, 197, 209, 210, 214, 222,228, 229

Sullerot, Évelyne, 218, 219, 220, 222,225, 229

Swanwick, Helena, 124, 129, 134Sweden, 2, 8, 9, 11, 32, 44, 45, 47, 49,

50, 52, 59, 72–3, 78, 91, 96, 102,112, 126, 128, 131, 134, 138, 139,141, 143, 145, 153, 155–6, 157,165, 166, 169, 171, 172, 175, 179,180, 196, 198, 200, 201, 202, 203,217, 220, 223, 224, 225, 231, 237,238, 239

Swiney, Frances, 29, 31, 98Switzerland, 6, 42, 45, 46, 52, 53,

56–7, 70, 71, 74, 95, 100, 129, 163,222, 228

Tamm, Elisabeth, 156–7, 165, 196Texier, Geneviève, 219, 230Theweleit, Klaus, 132Tille, Alexander, 67Tiller, Per-Olaf, 231Trobriand Islands, 194–5Tugendreich, Gustav, 70two roles of women, 220–1, 222, 225,

228, 232, 236, 239two-parent families, 51, 53–4, 58, 147,

188, 195, 196, 205, 215

I 352


Ulich-Beil, Else, 141, 215unemployment, 77, 149, 152, 154,

156, 157, 158, 221, 238Union des femmes françaises, see Union

of French WomenUnion féminine civique et sociale, see

Women’s Civic and Social Union(France)

Union française pour le suffrage desfemmes, see French Union for WomanSuffrage

Union nationale pour le vote desfemmes, see National Union forWoman Suffrage

Union of French Women, 213, 219Union of Italian Women, 213Unione donne italiane, see Union of

Italian WomenUnited Nations, 222, 223United States, 7, 23, 29–30, 46, 68, 96,

128, 129, 131, 163, 182, 189, 190,196, 207, 213, 215, 222, 223, 231,239–40

unmarried mothers, 15, 31, 41, 49–50,54, 55, 56–7, 58, 59–60, 72, 73, 74,104, 106, 116, 117, 118, 142, 144,145, 146–8, 151, 192, 195, 205,206, 210, 211, 215–16, 223, 237, 238

unmarried women, 65, 66, 68, 82, 84,103, 149–63, 195, 219, 236

Vaerting, Mathilde, 193–4Valabrègue, Catherine, 219, 231Valette, Aline, 25, 53–4Van de Velde, Theodoor

Hendrik, 189Van Velsen, Dorothee, 211Variot, Gustave, 133, 188venereal disease, 90, 92, 115, 125, 126,

174, 175–6Verband fortschrittlicher Frauenvereine,

see League of Progressive Women’sOrganizations (Germany)

Verband für Kinder-und Frauenschutz,see Association for the Protection ofWomen and Children (Switzerland)

Verein für Mutter-und Kindesrecht, seeAssociation for the Rights of Mothersand Children (Germany)

Vermeersch, Jeanne, 219Vernet, Madeleine, 128, 129, 142, 144,

147, 152, 191–2, 198–9, 201, 203,206, 207

Vérone, Maria, 45, 127, 147Viollette, Maurice, 54Viviani, René, 54Voix des Femmes, La (periodical), 168Volunteer Aid Detachments, 112voting rights, 124, 138, 148, 171,

175, 222von Roten, Iris, 222, 228, 230Vrije Vrouwen Vereniging, see Free

Women’s AssociationVrouw, De (periodical), 55–6, 99

Wägner, Elin, 196Warwick, Evelyn Greville, 123Watson, John, 189–90Webb, Beatrice, 201Weber, Helene, 211–12Weber, Marianne, 34, 36,

48, 57Weber, Max, 34Wedekind, Frank, 93Wegscheider-Ziegler, Hildegard, 69Weimar Republic, 125, 126, 139,

143, 145, 146, 153, 154, 158, 163,167, 188

Weininger, Otto, 35–6, 37welfare state, 7, 8, 9, 43, 64, 74, 108,

209, 214, 216, 219, 225welfare, children and, 81, 88, 111, 116,

128, 134, 145, 146, 151, 152, 153,162, 164, 168, 172, 188, 192, 209;families, 209; feminists and, 105;legislation, 210; mothers and, 88,116, 119, 134, 209; parents and, 162;society and, 105; women and, 176

Wells, H. G., 6, 12, 14, 30, 82, 83West, Rebecca, 131, 133–4, 197Westermarck, Edward, 24, 194–5Wife and Mother in Legal History

(Marianne Weber), 34Wijnaendts-Francken Dyserinck,

Wilmoet, 155, 182Winnicott, Donald, 227Witt-Schlumberger, Marguerite de,

94, 124Woker, Gertrud, 46, 70

I 353


Wolfring, Maria, 146, 147Woman who Did, The (Grant Allen), 41,

52–3Woman’s Cooperative Guild, 121Women and Economics (Charlotte

Perkins Gilman), 68–9Women’s Action (France), 129–30Women’s Bureau (Germany), 113Women’s Civic and Social Union

(France), 140, 144, 149, 152, 201,210, 216

Women’s Cooperative Guild (Britain),74, 92, 93, 116, 120, 123, 179, 213

Women’s Freedom League (Britain),107–8

Women’s International League for Peaceand Freedom, 115, 129

Women’s Legal Aid (Germany), 60Women’s List (Sweden), 157Women’s Section (Spain), 148Women’s Total Abstinence Union

(Britain), 86Woolf, Virginia, 171, 187, 206

Workers’ Birth Control Group (Britain), 164

World League for Sexual Reform, 165, 166

World War I, 15, 16, 35–6, 53, 60, 72,79, 84, 90–1, 98, 99, 100, 103, 106,107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 114, 115,116, 122, 125, 133, 138, 141, 142,143, 144, 147, 149, 150, 151–2,158, 161, 162, 165, 173, 175, 183,184, 188, 190, 192, 193, 194, 199,201, 202, 205, 209, 210, 236

World War II, 6, 9, 15, 16, 90–1, 151, 208, 209–10, 214, 222, 223, 240

Wuermeling, Franz-Josef, 215

Young Women, 219Young, Leontine, 215

Zepler, Wally, 79Zetkin, Clara, 77, 108, 205Zietz, Luise, 145

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