This book examines women’s experiences of motherhood in England in the years between 1945 and 2000. Based on a new body of 160 oral history interviews, the book offers the first comprehensive historical study of the experience of motherhood in the second half of the twentieth century. Motherhood is an area where a number of discourses and practices meet. The book therefore forms a thematic study looking at aspects of mothers’ lives such as education, health care, psychology, labour market trends and state intervention. Looking through the prism of motherhood provides a way of understanding the complex social changes that have taken place in the post-war world. This book will be essential reading for students and researchers in the field of twentieth-century British social history. However it will also be of interest to scholars in related fields and a general readership with an interest in British social history, and the history of family and community in modern Britain.
‘A fascinating survey of women’s experience of motherhood’, ’eminently readable’, ‘a solid and thoughtful study’, ‘an outstanding piece of oral history’, and ‘ambitiously wide ranging’.
The judging panel for the Women’s History Network Book Prize, 2013.
Table of Content
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. Family and community: surveying women and the family
3. Educating mothers: family, school and antenatal education
4. Pregnancy and childbirth: antenatal care, birth and postnatal care
5. Experts and childcare ‘bibles’: mothers and advice literature
6. Working and caring: women’s labour inside and outside the home
7. Breadwinners and homemakers: ideals of men and women in the family
8. Conclusions
Appendix 1: interview schedule
Appendix 2: interviewees’ biographical details
Select bibliography
Index
About the author
Angela Davis is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Warwick
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