Re-negotiating Single Motherhood Within the Helsinki Mother and Child Home in Post-War Finland

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter studies how single motherhood was negotiated within the Helsinki Mother and Child Home in post-war Finland. The home was founded by women of the labor movement and aimed at unmarried, mainly working-class women expecting a child. The Helsinki Mother and Child Home represents an important yet seldom studied part of the history of the women’s shelter and maternity care in Finland. Suominen studies the lived institution by analyzing encounters between the institution and single mothers from three dimensions: the ideal, individual, and sociomaterial. She understands the dimensions as overlapping and intertwined, but by studying them separately, it is possible to build a bridge between the ideas, individuals, and structures of society and uncover gendered and class-based processes that were connected to the lived institution and experiences of single motherhood.