Public Support and Reproductive Rights
Few, if any, feminists today would argue that the English family allowance represents a good model of public support for childrearing. Indeed, the United Kingdom stands out as one of the least generous countries of Northwestern Europe where support for parenting is concerned.63 The task of designing and implementing an equitable and efficient family policy remains a daunting one.
Still the arguments articulated by early advocates of social motherhood raise a pointed question: If the seemingly private work of raising children creates benefits for society as a whole, how should that work be supported?Early twentieth-century feminists sought to expand state policies in some arenas, but to limit them in others. They insisted on women's individual rights to reproductive choice, rights that the early nanny state explicitly denied. Sanger and Stopes took Adam Smith in the direction he had started, promising that women’s pursuit of self-interest—even in bed—would serve the social good. Women wanted more of everything—more public support for parenting along with greater scope for individual choice. Over the next fifty years they would attain both, though not in the generous measure that they hoped for.
More on the topic Public Support and Reproductive Rights:
- Public Support and Reproductive Rights
- Peculiar Institutions
- Political Activism
- Numbers often seem less easily twisted than mere words. Census reports and national income accounts lend an aura of objectivity to economic history, generating numbers that trace consistent narratives of increased female labor force participation along with economic growth.
- TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Feminism and Abolition
- The Moral Foundations of Liberalism
- The Partnership