Feminism and Motherhood in Western Europe, 1890-1970 (PDF)

ANN T. ALLEN is Professor of History at the University of Louisville. She has served on the editorial board of the Journal of the History of Sexuality, History of Education Quarterly and is the author of Feminism and Motherhood in Germany, 1800-1914. She also contributed to a piece on the international kindergarten movement in Kindergartens and Cultures.

"How did maternal destiny morph into a "maternal dilemma"? To some 21st century readers, the pairing of feminism and motherhood may seem contradictory. Ann Allen's accomplishment is to dispell that seeming contradiction by unearthing a rich and important series of feminist debates about motherhood, which she then analyzes within a comparative, transnational framework. From the 1880s to 1970, progressive women and men throughout western Europe addressed the benefits and handicaps imposed on women as mothers in male-controlled economies and nation-states. They came up with very radical answers and creative, sometimes conflicting solutions that had the potential to empower mothers independently of husbands and fathers or to establish egalitarian male-female partnerships, in either case seriously threatening the prevailing male legal and economic hegemony. Can one then be surprised that their woman-centered proposals stirred up serious opposition? Can one wonder that, subsequently, their ideas about constructing woman-friendly welfare states became distorted in application, before being threatened (as is the case today) with dismemberment? Allen's book is exceedingly important for understanding the history of European nations precisely because it insists on the centrality of gender and the politics of reproduction to "mainstream" history. It illuminates today's ongoing debates, including those in the United States, about the "dilemma" women still face in trying to combine family and employment within the "clockwork of the male career," as Arlie Hochschild once put it. It likewise provides rich background for understanding the current controversies that swirl around popular novels that resuscitate the "female principle,"such as The Da Vinci Code. To read this book is truly to experience an "Ah Haa!"moment." - Karen Offen, Institute for Research on Women & Gender, Stanford University "In this outstanding addition to the burgeoning new history of motherhood, Ann Taylor