State Regulation, Family Breakdown, and Lone Motherhood

Abstract

Using a range of parish records, records from the Registrar General of Scotland, charity organizations, and media reports, this article contributes to the historiography which evaluates the effects of World War I in Britain as well as the history of lone mothers and their children. It highlights how during the war, women, especially lone mothers, made significant gains through the welfare system, changing approaches to illegitimacy and the plentiful nature of women’s work but also how in doing so this brought them under greater surveillance by the state, local parishes, and charity organizations. Moreover, as this article will demonstrate, many of the gains made by women were short-lived and in fact the war contributed to high levels of family breakdown and gendered and intergenerational poverty endured by lone mothers and their children.