Abstract
Adoption was not one of the most prominent issues after the First World War, but among those interested in child welfare it became an increasingly important one. The rapid growth of the two new adoption societies and their ability to attract publicity, coupled with the increase in illegitimacy at the end of the War,1 gave adoption a much higher profile than in the past. A commentator attributed the increase in adoption to a number of reasons: a decrease in the number of cheap foster mothers as working-class women found more opportunities for easier work at higher wages; the shortage of housing accommodation and the preference given to lodgers who could pay higher rents and presented less inconvenience than babies; the ‘loss of life during the War seems to have had the effect of accentuating natural love for children, and an increased desire on the part of childless couples of all classes to have children to care for has been noticed’; and also ‘a definite desire on the part of unmarried mothers to place their children secretly and safely in ordinary family life’.2
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Notes
For example, Eleanor Rathbone, The Ethics and Economics of Family Endowment (London: Epworth Press, 1927);
The Case for Family Allowances (London: Penguin Books, 1940). Also see, Hugh Vibart, Family Allowances in Practice (London: P. S. King & Son, 1926).
Eleanor Rathbone, The Disinherited Family (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1986), pp. 369–70.
Murray Ryburn, ‘Secrecy and Openness in Adoption: An Historical Perspective’, Social Policy & Administration, vol. 29, no. 2 (June 1995), p. 155.
A. J. P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965).
This may simply reflect the interest of earlier historians of the period. Sir Gerald Hurst, an MP, lawyer and judge who was involved with adoption policy (see later chapters) was clear in his 1942 autobiography that ‘The “twenties” were a period of social reforms’, and went on to list his involvement in the campaigns to introduce legitimation by subsequent marriage, the equal guardianship of infants and the Criminal Law Amendment Act as well as the legalisation of adoption. See Sir Gerald Hurst, Closed Chapters (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1942), p. 105.
Winifred Holtby, quoted in Dale Spender, Time and Tide Wait for No Man (London: Pandora Press, 1984), p. 103.
Pat Thane, ‘What Difference Did the Vote Make?’ in Amanda Vickery (ed.), Women, Privilege and Power: British Politics 1750 to the Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 279.
Pat Thane, ‘What Difference Did the Vote Make? Women in Public and Private Life in Britain since 1918’, Historical Research, vol. 76, no. 192 (May 2003), p. 273.
Martin Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain 1914–1959 (London: Macmillan, 1992), p. 114.
Stephen Cretney, Family Law in the Twentieth Century: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 600.
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© 2009 Jenny Keating
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Keating, J. (2009). Pressure for Government Action. In: A Child for Keeps. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230582842_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230582842_4
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