The term ‘‘nanny state” is often used to deprecate public policies that seem fussy, intrusive, and expensive, policies that would perhaps be unnecessary if individual women were more virtuous.

But the term can also convey the ways that early welfare state policies encouraged motherhood and limited women's reproductive choices. Apprehensions about the quantity and quality of the nation’s population helped motivate the development of social safety nets, family allowances, and tax subsidies for rearing children.

Women’s groups played an important role in the fight for maternalist programs, which, nonetheless often had the effect of reinforcing women’s traditional nanny role.¹

Neither public opinion nor public policy in France, Britain or the U.S. condemned men’s efforts to postpone or avoid fatherhood, whether through abstinence, delayed marriages, purchase of sexual services from prostitutes, or the use of condoms. Yet women’s efforts to postpone or avoid motherhood were often interpreted as selfish efforts to escape female obligation. A small but vocal minority, including many well-known feminists, challenged the

THE NANNY STATE 269 inconsistencies of the sexual double standard.² In doing so, they often invoked the glories of sexual self-interest.

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Source: Folbre N.. Greed, Lust and Gender: A History of Economic Ideas. Oxford University Press,2010. - 304 pages. 2010

The term ‘‘nanny state” is often used to deprecate public policies that seem fussy, intrusive, and expensive, policies that would perhaps be unnecessary if individual women were more virtuous.

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