Social work's revised maternalism: Mothers, workers, and welfare in early cold war America, 1946-1963

Journal of Women's History

Volumn 17, Issue 1, 2005, Pages

  Curran, Laura ^a  

^a Rutgers University

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33748092841     PISSN: 10427961     EISSN: 15272036     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jowh.2005.0005     Document Type: Review

References (99)

1. "Alternatives to ADC," Social Service Review 33, no. 4 (1959): 447-49.
2. Susan Hartmann, "Women's Employment and the Domestic Ideal in the Early Cold War Years," in Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960,
3. Susan Lynn, Progressive Women In Conservative Times: Racial Justice, Peace, and Feminism 1945 to the 1960s (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992);
4. and Joanne Meyerowitz, "Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Post-war Mass Culture, 1946-1958," in Not June Cleaver, 229-62.
5. Molly Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890-1930 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993);
6. Gwendolyn Mink, The Wages of Motherhood: Inequality in the Welfare State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995);
7. Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991);
8. Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992);
9. and Patrick Wilkinson, "The Selfless and the Helpless: Maternalist Origins of the US Welfare State," Feminist Studies 25 (1999): 571-97.
10. Gordon, Pitied but not Entitled; and Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and tlte Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
11. and Joanne Goodwin, Gender and the Politics of Welfare Reform: Mothers' Pensions in Chicago, 1911-1929 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997).
12. Kathryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830-1900 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995).
13. For an additional discussion of maternalism at mid-century, see Yvonne Zylan, "Maternalism Redefined: Gender, the State, and the Politics of Day Care, 1945-1962," Gender & Society 14, no. 5 (2000): 608-629;
14. Ellen Resse, "The Politics of Motherhood: The 1950s Backlash against Aid to Dependent Children" (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1988);
15. Sonya Michel, Children's Interests, Mother's Rights: The Shaping of America's Child Care Policy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999);
16. and Elizabeth Rose, A Mother's Job: The History of Day Care, 1890-1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
17. On the era's celebration of domesticity, see Elaine Tyler-May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988), esp. chap. 1.
18. see also Hartmann, "Women's Employment," 86;
19. and Elizabeth Herzog, "Children of Working Mothers," in Training for Service in Public Assistance, ed. Katherine Goodwin (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1961), 178-82.
20. The motivation for equal pay legislation was not necessarily feminist in origin. See Dennis Deslippes, Rights not Roses: Unions and the Rise of Working-Class Feminism, 1950-1980 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000).
21. and Rose, A Mother's Job, chap. 7.
22. Bureau of Family Services, Characteristics of Families Receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children, November-December 1961 (Washington, DC: Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1963), 10.
23. Mimi Abramovitz, Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present (Boston: South End Press, 1988);
24. Elizabeth Alling and Agnes Leisy, Aid to Dependent Children in a Postwar Year: Characteristics of Families Receiving ADC, June 1948, Public Assistance report no. 17 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Public Assistance, 1950), 319;
25. June Axinn and Herman Levine, Social Welfare: America's Response to Need (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 245;
26. and Nancy Cauthen, "From Quiet Concern to Controversy: The Transformation of Aid to Dependent Children, 1935-1967" (PhD diss., New York University, 1998), 163-64.
27. Winifred Bell, Aid to Dependent Children (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), chaps. 3 and 4;
28. and Cauthen, "From Quiet Concern," chaps. 5 and 6.
29. Laura Curran, "The Construction of Dependency: Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) and Professional Social Work in Early Cold War America" (PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 2000), chap. 1;
30. Cauthen, "From Quiet Concern"; Lisa Levenstein, "From Innocent Children to Unwanted Migrants and Unwed Moms: Two Chapters in the Public Discourse on Welfare in the Unites States, 1960-1961," Journal of Women's History 11, no. 4 (2000): 10-33;
31. and Resse, "The Politics of Motherhood," chap. 5.
32. and Sarah Soule and Yvonne Zylan, "Runaway Train? The Diffusion of State-Level Reform in ADC/AFDC Eligibility Requirements, 1950-1967," The American Journal of Sociology 10, no. 3 (1997): 738-39.
33. Blanche Coll, Safety Net: Welfare and Social Security, 1929-1979 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 189-92.
34. Ed Berkowitz and Lim McQuaid, "Welfare Reform in the 1950s," Social Service Review 54, no. 1 (1980): 45-58;
35. Cauthen, "From Quiet Concern"; Coll, Safety Net; and Jennifer Mittelstadt, "'Dependency as a Problem to be Solved': Rehabilitation and the American Liberal Consensus on Welfare in the 1950s," Social Politics 8, (2001): 228-57.
36. Curran, "The Construction of Dependency," chap. 6.
37. Paul Molloy, "The Relief Chiselers Are Stealing Us Blind," Saturday Evening Post, 8 September 1951, 32.
38. Coll, Safety Net, 189-92.
39. "Public Assistance Today," Social Science Review 28, no. 2 (1954): 125.
40. Alton Linford, "Which Way Public Assistance Administration," Social Work Journal 33, no. 2 (1952): 119.
41. Martha Eliot, "Child Welfare Priorities in 1954," Child Welfare 33, no. 10 (1954): 5.
42. Margaret Greenfield, Self-Support in Aid to Dependent Children (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956), 107.
43. Kermit Wiltse, "Social Casework and Public Assistance," Social Service Review 32, no. 1 (1958): 47.
44. Eveline Burns, "The Role of Government in Social Welfare," Social Work Journal 35, no. 3 (1954): 124.
45. Elizabeth De Schweinitz, "To Work or Not to Work," Child Welfare 33, no. 12 (1954): 8.
46. Elizabeth Wickenden and Winifred Bell, Public Welfare: Time for a Change (New York: Trustees of Columbia University, 1961), 36.
47. R. Lansdale, "Some Recent Public Welfare Developments," Social Service Review 26, no. 1 (1952): 39;
48. and Rosemary Morrissey, "Public Welfare and Public Opinion: Are We Looking for Magic to Turn the Tide," Social Work Journal 33, no. 3 (1952): 126.
49. American Association of Social Workers, "The Real Crisis in Public Assistance," Social Work Journal 31, no. 2 (1950): 77.
50. For a discussion of the term "dependency," see Curran, "Construction of Dependency," esp. 89-94;
51. Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon, "A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State," in Rethinking the Political: Gender, Resistance, and the State, ed. Barbara Laslett, Johanna Brenner, and Yesim Arat (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 33-60;
52. and Michael Katz and Lorrin Thomas, "The Invention of 'Welfare' in America," Journal of Policy History 10, no. 4 (1998): 399-418.
53. Mariana Jessen, "The Case for Day Care," Proceedings of the National Conference on Social Welfare 89 (1962), 91.
54. Alfreda Yeomans, "Day Care: An Alternative to Placement Away from Home," Child Welfare 32, no. 10 (1953): 7.
55. Hilde Hochwald, "Experience of a Family Agency in Co-operative Arrangements with Day Nurseries," Social Service Review 23, no. 3 (1949): 333.
56. Roy Lubove, The Professional Altruist: The Emergence of Social Work as a Career 1880-1930 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), chaps. 3 and 4.
57. For the statistics on second-year graduate students, see Karl De Schweinitz, "Social Work in the Public Social Services," Social Work Journal 36, no. 3 (1955): 94.
58. See also Laura Curran, "The Psychology of Poverty: Aid to Dependent Children and Professional Social Work in Postwar America (1946-1953)," Social Service Review 76, no. 3 (2002): 365-86;
59. Ellen Herman, The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1995);
60. and Walter Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America (New York: The Free Press, 1994).
61. Alice Mertz, "Working Mothers in the Aid to Dependent Children Program," Public Welfare 10, no. 3 (1952): 67.
62. Trene Josselyn and Renee Goldman, "Should Mothers Work?" Social Service Review 23, no. 1 (1949): 80.
63. and Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1979), chaps. 7 and 8.
64. Curran, "The Psychology of Poverty."
65. and Mittelstadt, "'Dependency as a Problem to be Solved.'"
66. Ethel Verry, "A Day Care Program to Meet Community Needs," Child Welfare 31, no. 4 (1952): 8.
67. Alice Merriam, "Day Care of the Young Child: A Community Challenge," Child Welfare 38, no. 10 (1959), 26.
68. My intention is not to oversimplify a liberal feminist tradition, but a broader discussion is beyond the scope of this article. For a fuller interrogation of liberal feminist discourse, see Ricki Solinger, Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States (New York: Hill & Wang, 2002).
69. Mertz, "Working Mothers," 66.
70. Greenfield, Self-Support, 108. The California ADC program was entitled Aid to Needy Children (ANC).
71. Josselyn and Goldman, "Should Mothers Work?" 80.
72. Florence Rockwood Kluckhohn, "Cultural Factors in Social Work Practice and Education," Social Service Review 25, no. 1 (1951): 46.
73. Margaret Mead, "What Is Happening to the American Family?" Journal of Social Casework 28, no. 9 (1947): 328.
74. Katherine Lenroot, "Day Care and Extended School Services," Child Welfare 30, no. 3 (1951): 10.
75. Ruth Landes, "Family Patterns of the Future," Child Welfare 37, no. 11 (1958): 20.
76. Michel, Children's Interests, chaps. 5 and 6.
77. Phyllis Osborn, "Aid to Dependent Children: Realities and Possibilities," Social Service Review 28, no. 2 (1954): 165-66.
78. Greenleigh Associates, Facts, Fallacies and Future: A Study of the Aid to Dependent Children Program of Cook County, Illinois (New York: Greenleigh Associates, Inc., 1960), 22.
79. Riley Mapes, "The Mother's Employment: Whose Decision in ADC?" Public Welfare 8, no. 4 (1950): 75.
80. Jay Roney, "Special Stresses on Low-Income Families," Social Casework 39, nos. 2-3 (1958): 154.
81. Alvin Schoor, "Problems in the ADC Program," Social Work 5, no. 1 (1960): 10.
82. "Alternatives to ADC," 449.
83. Rosa Wessel, "Implications of the Choice to Work for Mothers in the Aid to Dependent Children Program," in Training for Service in Public Assistance, ed. Katherine Goodwin (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1961), 177.
84. Gordon, Pitied but not Entitled, chap. 4;
85. Dorothy Sue Cobble, "Recapturing Working Class Feminism: Union Women in the Postwar Era," in Not June Cleaver, 57-83.
86. Walkowitz, Working with Class, chap. 4.
87. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (New York: The New American Library, 1963).
88. and Ernest Hollis and Alice Taylor, Social Work Education in the United States: A Report of a Study Made for the National Council on Social Work Education (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951), 98-105.
89. See Michel, Children's Interests; and Rose, A Mother's Job.
90. See, for example, "The Equal Pay Question," Social Service Review 24, no. 3 (1950): 403;
91. "Inter-American Commission on Women," Social Service Review 23, no. 4 (1949): 510-11;
92. "Negro Women Workers," Social Service Review 24, no. 2 (1950): 255-56;
93. "The Status of Women," Social Service Review 23, no. 2 (1949): 231-32;
94. "Women's Trade Union League and a Mid-West Inter-State Conference," Social Service Review 24, no. 1 (1950): 98-99;
95. "The 'Four Freedoms for Women Workers,'" Social Service Review 20, no. 1 (1946): 90.
96. "Negro Women Workers," 255.
97. M. E. Burgess and D. Price, An American Dependency Challenge (Chicago: American Public Welfare Association, 1963), 26.
98. Saul Kaplan, "Public Assistance Costs," Public Welfare 7, no. 3 (1949): 60.
99. Greenleigh Associates, Facts, Fallacies, 10.