The no-win Mom: motherland in twentieth-century America

Abstract

Interest in the history of motherhood has grown in recent years as more scholars have tried to understand the complex and sometimes contradictory place of motherhood in modern society. Motherhood is a powerful metaphor, symbolising security, domesticity, irresponsibility, or cloying claustrophobia, depending upon one's viewpoint and political stance. Certainly the last fifty years have been marked by an ambivalence toward motherhood and all that it has come to represent, with mothers attacked and valorised for their role in bringing up children and serving as the cornerstone of society. Some of the fiercest political battles have been fought over motherhood, including the issues of abortion and welfare policy. These three studies of motherhood remind us that the term is socially constructed and gendered, with a meaning that resonates beyond the biological into the psychological, economic, social, political, and cultural dimensions of family life and the place of the family in society. It has a gendered and culturally specific significance, changing over time, that makes it a barometer of women's social role and status. Motherhood, the cultural 388 construct, rather than mother, a biological fact, is a relatively recent concept connected to Victorian sentimentality and the efforts of both women and society to define women's roles as the Industrial Revolution and the demographic transition altered the location and meaning of work, the number of children per family, the role of children (as well as women) in the family economy, and the composition of families and households. Modern motherhood has both political and economic origins. This can be seen very clearly in the USA where motherhood became part of the process of securing the future of the nation after the American Revolution challenged existing hierarchies and loyalties. Colonial childhood had been a brief affair, directed by a patriarchal father who disciplined and directed young people's activities, with the mother acting as his agent but not as sole caretaker. Older children, servants, relations, and fathers also participated in bringing up children to work hard and be obedient. The limited role of mothers in child-rearing was nowhere more apparent than in the American South, where slave women were biological mothers, but had more difficulty achieving motherhood in a context where white masters tried to control all aspects of African-American existence. Political and social commentators after the American Revolution emphasised the female role in socialising the young citizens of the new republic and underscored the importance of their roles as educators of the young. The Industrial Revolution commercialised numerous female tasks and transferred them to the public sector so that consumption replaced production of domestic items for many women. These transitions occurred unevenly throughout society since working-class and slave women remained enmeshed in productive labour outside the domestic circle at a time when more affluent white women devoted themselves to raising their families. Women became moral defenders of home and hearth, protecting angelic children from a corrupt world. They, rather than fathers (now more removed from the household through employment outside it), became the primary parents, although not all women could focus their attention closely upon child-rearing. Throughout the nineteenth century, affluent women used this maternal platform as one basis for social activism, greater education, and political integration. By the end of the nineteenth century public concern over mothering increased as immigrants from southern and eastern Europe flooded into the nation's cities, swelling the ranks of the urban poor. At the same time a plethora of scientific advances in fields as diverse as psychology, social welfare, medicine and education seemed to promise solutions to the social conundrums which beset a diverse and complex society. By the beginning of the twentieth century there was a heightened emphasis on intensive, child-centred methods of childcare and a greater reliance upon experts to guide mothers through their care of the innocents in their charge.