Abstract
When Nora, the heroine of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, walked out the door of her comfortable home, her husband Torvald frantically sought to hold her back. “Before all things, you are a wife and mother,” he protested. “I don’t believe that any longer,” was Nora’s response, “I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being, just as you are—or at any event, that I must try and become one.” Nora, the mother of three, aspired to autonomy for her own sake and for the sake of her children. In her present state of child-like dependence, she reflected sadly, she was “of no use to them.”1 As she slammed the door on her husband and children, Nora raised the question that this book will address: is it possible to be both a mother and an autonomous individual? This is what I will call the “maternal dilemma.”
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Notes
Denise Riley, “Am I That Name?” Feminism and the Category of “Women” in History (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 58, 97.
Ellen Key, Über Liebe und Ehe, trans. Frances Maro (Berlin: Fischer, 1906), 222.
Maternité esclave, “quoted in Yvonne Knibiehler”, La Révolution maternelle: Femmes, maternité, citoyenneté depuis 1945 (Paris: Perrin, 1997), 171
see also Yolanda Astarita Patterson, Simone de Beauvoir and the Demystification of Motherhood (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1989), 25.
Karen Offen, “Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism in Fin-de-Siècle France,” American Historical Review 89 (June 1984): 648–676 (quotation 654).
Karen Offen, “Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach,” Signs 14 (1988): 119–158 (quotation 152).
Joan Wallach Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), passim.
Karen Offen, “Challenging Male Hegemony: Feminist Criticism and the Context for Women’s Movements in the Age of European Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions,” in Sylvia Paletschek and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, eds., Women’s Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: A European Perspective (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 11–30.
Hubertine Auclert, “Les Femmes dans l’État,” in Le Vote des Femmes (Paris: Giard and Brière, 1908), 22–26 (quotation 22).
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso, 1991).
Cf Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
Cf. George M. Fredrickson, “From Exceptionalism to Variability: Recent Developments in Cross-National History,” The journal of American History 82 (September 1995): 587–604
Ian Tyrell, “Ian Tyrell Responds,” American Historical Review 96 (October 1991): 1068–1072
Hartmut Kaelble, Der historische Vergleich: Eine Einführung zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 1999).
Theda Skocpol, “The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (April 1980): 174–197.
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 3; cf. Sylvia Paletschek and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, “Concepts and Issues,” in Paletschek and Pietrow-Ennker, eds., Women’s Emancipation Movements 3–10.
John Knodel and Etienne van de Walle, “Lessons from the Past: Policy Implications of Historical Fertility Studies,” in Ansley J. Coale and Susan Cotts Watkins, eds., The Decline of Fertility in Europe: The Revised Proceedings of a Conference on the Princeton European Fertility Project (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 390–419.
Collections of articles: Ulla Wikander, Alice Kessler-Harris, and Jane Lewis, eds., Protecting Women: Labor legislation in Europe, the United States, and Australia, 1880–1920 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1995)
Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, eds., Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (New York: Routledge, 1993)
Gisela Bock and Pat Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies: Women and the Rise of the European Welfare States, 1880s–1950s (London and New York: Routledge, 1991)
Jane Lewis, ed., Women and Social Policies in Europe: Work, Family and the State (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1993)
Valerie Fildes, Lara Marks, and Hilary Marland, eds., Women and Children First: International Maternal and Infant Welfare, 1870–1945 (London and New York: Routledge, 1992)
Paletschek and PietrowEnnker, eds., Women’s Emancipation Movements; Johanna Gehmacher, Elizabeth Harvey, and Sophia Kernlein, eds., Zwischen Kriegen: Nationen, Nationalismen und Geschlechterverbältnisse in Mittel- und Osteuropa, 1918–1939 (Osnabrück: Fibre, 2004)
Mary Jo Maynes et al., eds., Gender, Kinship, Power: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary History (New York: Routledge, 1996).
Comparative works: Susan Pedersen, Family, Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
Alisa Klaus, Every Child a Lion: The Origins of Maternal and Infant Health Policy in the US and France, 1890–1920 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993)
Silke Neunsinger, Die Arbeit der Frauen—Die Krise der Männer: Die Erwerbstätigkeit verheirateter Frauen in Deutschland und Schweden, 1919–1939 (Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2001)
Teresa Kulawik, Wohlfahrtsstaat und Mutterschaft: Schweden und Deutschland, 1870–1912 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 1999)
Wiebke Kolbe, Elternschaft im Wohlfahrtsstaat: Schweden und die Bundesrepublik im Vergleich, 1945–2000 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2002)
Karen Offen, European Feminisms 1700–1950: A Political History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000)
Richard J. Evans, The Feminists: Women’s Emancipation Movements in Europe, America, and Australasia, 1840–1920 (London and New York: Croom Helm and Barnes and Noble Books, 1977).
Richard J. Evans, The Feminist Movement in Germany, 1894–1933 (London: Sage Publications, 1976), 115–175, 235–281
Marie-Louise Janssen-Jurreit, “Nationalbiologie, Sexualreform, und Geburtenrückgang—Über die Zusammenhänge von Bevölkerungspolitik und Frauenbewegung um die Jahrhundertwende,” in Gabriele Dietze, ed., Die Überwindung der Sprachlosigkeit: Texte aus der neuen Frauenbewegung (Darmstadt and Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1979), 139–175
Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), 1–51 and passim.
Anna Davin, “Imperialism and Motherhood,” History Workshop 5 (1978): 9–65.
Elisabeth Badinter, Mother Love: Myth and Reality: Motherhood in Modern History [1980] (New York: Macmillan, 1981), 4.
Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, “Introduction: Mother Worlds,” in Koven and Michel, eds., Mothers of a New World 1–42 (quotation 2).
See e.g., Carol Smart, “Disruptive Bodies and Unruly Sex: The Regulation of Reproduction and Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century,” in Carol Smart, ed., Regulating Womanhood: Historical Essays on Marriage, Motherhood, and Sexuality (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 7–32 and other essays in this volume
and Anna Davin, Growing Up Poor: Home, School and Street in London, 1870–1914 (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1996), 208–215.
Hubertine Auclert, “Programme électoral des femmes,” La Citoyenne (August 1885), cited in Karen Offen, “Minotaur or Mother?”
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), 288–317 (quotation 316).
Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood; A Social History of Family Life (New York: Knopf, 1962)
Hugh Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500 (London and New York: Longman, 1995).
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan [1651], in Edwin A. Burtt, ed., The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill (New York: Random House, 1967), 193.
George Alter, “Theories of Fertility Decline: a Non-Specialist’s Guide to the Current Debate,” in John R. Gillis, Louise A. Tilly, and David Levine, eds., The European Experience of Declining Fertility, 1850–1970: The Quiet Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992), 13–27
John C. Caldwell, “The Delayed Western Fertility Decline: An Examination of English-Speaking Countries,” Population and Development Review 25 (September 1999): 479–513
Ron Lesthaeghe and Chris Wilson, “Modes of Production, Secularization, and the Pace of the Fertility Decline in Western Europe,” in Coale and Watkins, eds., The Decline of Fertility in Europe, 261–292.
See the chart in Bock and Thane, eds., Maternity and Gender Policies, 17; and Simon Szreter, “Falling Fertilities and Changing Sexualities in Europe since c. 1980: A Comparative Survey of National Demographic Patterns,” in Franz X. Eder, Lesley A. Hall, and Gert Helena, eds., Sexual Cultures in Europe: Themes in Sexuality (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 159–194.
Francine van de Walle, “Infant Mortality and Demographic Transition,” in Coale and Watkins, eds., The Decline of Fertility in Europe 201–233
John Knodel, “Demographic Transitions in German Villages,” in Coale and Watkins, eds., The Decline of Fertility in Europe 337–389.
Cf. Viviana Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (New York: Basic Books, 1985).
H.G. Wells, Socialism and the Family (London: A.C. Fifield, 1906), 57
on the legal revolution see e.g., George K. Behlmer, Child Abuse and Moral Reform in England, 1870–1908 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982); Anna Davin, Growing Up Poor 199–217
Edward Ross Dickinson, The Politics of German Child Welfare from the Empire to the Federal Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
Cf Jacques Donzelot, The Policing of Families, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979).
Amended Draft: Declaration of the Rights of the Child, “quoted in Edward Fuller”, The Rights of the Child: A Chapter in Social History (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1951), 74.
Lady Sybil Smith, “Men are Men and Women are Women,” Votes for Women, August 26, 1910.
Mabel Atkinson, The Economic Foundations of the Women’s Movement (London: Fabian Society, 1914), 22, 24; see also Riley, “Am I that Name?” 55–56.
Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, Woman and the Law: A Series of Four Letters by Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy (London: Women’s Emancipation Union, 1896), 6.
Helene Stocker, “Die neue Mutter,” in Stocker, Die Liebe and die Frauen (Minden: J.C.C. Bruns Verlag, 1905), 75–83 (quotation 76).
Mrs. Donald Shaw, “Woman’s Sphere-Past, Present and Future,” The Vote, February 24, 1912.
Lenore Davidoff, “The Family in Britain,” in P.M.L. Thompson, ed., The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750–1950, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 71–129.
Cf. Shari Thurer, The Myths of Motherhood: How Culture Reinvents the Good Mother (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 225.
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© 2005 Ann Taylor Allen
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Allen, A.T. (2005). Introduction: From Destiny to Dilemma—Motherhood In the Twentieth Century. In: Feminism and Motherhood in Western Europe, 1890–1970. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981431_1
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