Parenting and the State in Britain and Europe, c. 1870-1950

Raising the Nation

Hester Barron, Claudia Siebrecht, Hester Barron, Claudia Siebrecht

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9783319340838
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319340845
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This innovative collection draws on original research to explore the dynamic interactions between parents, governments and their representatives across a range of European contexts; from democratic Britain and Finland, to Stalinist Russia and Fascist Italy. The authors pay close attention to the various relationships and dynamics between parents and the state, showing that the different parties were defined not solely by coercion or manipulation, but also by collaboration and negotiation. Parents were not passive recipients of government direction: rituals and cultures of parenting could both affirm and undermine state politics. Readers will find this collection crucial to understanding family life and the role of the state during a period when both underwent significant change. 

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Abbreviations
• Notes on Contributors
• Chapter 1: Introduction: Raising the Nation
• Chapter 2: Parenthood, Citizenship and the State in England, c.1870–1914
• Chapter 3: The ‘Breastfeeding Crisis’: Parenting, Welfare Policies, and Ideology in Imperial Germany, 1871–1914
• Chapter 4: Parenting, Infanticide and the State in England and Wales, 1870–1950
• Chapter 5: Parenting, Poverty and the NSPCC in Ireland, 1889–1939
• Chapter 6: ‘I Looked After the State, but the State is Not Looking After Me’: Parenting and the Population Crisis in First World War Germany
• Chapter 7: Parents, Teachers and Children’s Well-being in London, 1918–1939
• Chapter 8: Notions of Parenting and the Home in the Institutional Care of Delinquent Girls in Finland, 1920s–1940s
• Chapter 9: Parents, Children and the Fascist State: The Production and Reception of Children’s Magazines in 1930s Italy
• Chapter 10: ‘Knowing how to be a Mother’: Parenting, Emotion and Evacuation Propaganda during the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939
• Chapter 11: In loco parentis: Junior Cadet Schools in the Soviet Union during the Second World War
• Chapter 12: Motherhood and the Yugoslav Communist State in the Revolutionary Era, 1943–1953
• Index