Sinners? Scroungers? Saints?

This is the first book to describe the real lives of unmarried mothers, and attitudes towards them, in England from the First World War to the present day. The focus is on England because the legal positions, and other circumstances, of unmarried mothers were often very different elsewhere in Britain. The authors use biographies and memoirs, as well as archives and official sources, to challenge stereotypes of the mothers as desolate women, rejected by society and by their families, until social attitudes were transformed in the 'permissive' 1960s. They demonstrate the diversity of their lives, their social backgrounds, and how often they were supported by their families, neighbours, and the fathers of their children before the 1960s, and the continuing hostility by some sections of society since then. They challenge stereotypes, too, about the impact of war on sexual behaviour, and about the stability of family life before the 1960s. Much of the evidence comes from the records of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child, set up by prominent people in 1918 to help a social group they believed were neglected, and which is still very active today, as Gingerbread, supporting lone parents in need of help. Their work tells us not only about the lives of those mothers and children who had no other support, but also another important story about the vibrancy of voluntary action throughout the past century and its continuing vital role, working alongside and in co-operation with the Welfare State to help mothers into work among other things. Their history is an inspiring example of how, throughout the past century, voluntary organizations in the 'Big Society' worked with, not against, the 'Big State'.

Pat Thane's publications include: Maternity and Gender Policies: Women and the Rise of the European Welfare States, 1880s-1950s (1991); Old Age in English History: Past Experiences, Present Issues (2000); Women and Ageing in Britain since 1500 (2001); Unequal Britain: Equalities in Britain since 1945 (2010); Women and Citizenship in Britain and Ireland in the Twentieth Century: What Difference did the Vote Make? (2010) Tanya Evans is working on a transnational history of the family in Australia and Britain from the eighteenth century through to the present. Previously she was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research in London. Her publications include 'Unfortunate Objects': Lone Mothers in Eighteenth-Century London (2005). She is co-editing a Special Issue of Australian Historical Studies on Biography and Life-Writing. She curated an exhibition on Lone Mothers, Past and Present at The Woman's Library, London Metropolitan University in 2007-8 and she has been commissioned to curate another on 'Family Life in Colonial New South Wales' by the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales for the Museum of Sydney in 2013.