Description
Book SynopsisThis 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. -- .
Trade ReviewLifts the lid on the last great parenting taboo.'
Tracy McVeigh, The Guardian, 17/03/2012
'This book is published as part of Manchester University Press valuable Gender in History series that provides a vital publishing space for significant monographs.'
Family & Community History, Vol. 16/1, April 2013
Winner of the Women’s History Network Book Prize, 2013
Modern Motherhood offers a fascinating and complex picture of women’s lives as they negotiated the principal changes in post 1945 society.
‘The book is a useful addition to the growing literature on women’s lives in the post-war world and the range of women’s voices demonstrates the variety of experience that depended on the serendipity of location quite as much as social class and ethnicity. It addresses themes of interest to historians of education, especially those interested in constructions of gender through education inside and outside the classroom.’
Stephanie Spencer, University of Winchester, History of Education, December 2016
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Table of Contents1. 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
Select bibliography
Index
