Catholic Women and the Development of Maternal Welfare in France

Abstract

Anne Cova. "Au service de l'Église, de la patrie et de la famille": Femmes catholiques et maternité sous la IIIe République ["Serving the Church, the Fatherland, and the Family": Catholic Women and Motherhood under the Third Republic].1 Paris: L'Harmattan, 2000. 280 pp., tables. ISBN 2-7384-9837-X (pb). The rise of Social Catholicism prompted the formation of a French Catholic women's movement that, by the end of the Third Republic in 1940, exercised enormous influence on French social welfare policy, particularly as it applied to the protection of motherhood and the family. Using documents from a wide range of private and public archives, Anne Cova traces the development of this movement from 1891, when Pope Leo XIII issued Rerum Novarum, to 1939, when the Ligue Féminine d'Action Catholique Française was the largest organization of women in France with more than two million members. The result is a useful analysis of a movement that has received limited attention from scholars thus far. Social Catholicism became the primary teaching of the Catholic Church with Rerum Novarum. This encyclical reinforced the Church's emphasis on social action and good works and helped to clarify for Catholics the role women were to play in the family and society. It insisted upon the "natural differences between the sexes" (43) and stressed women's "natural function" and "maternal mission" (13). Cova argues that for the rest of the Third Republic, French Catholic women worked to make this vision of women's role in society a reality. The Catholic women's groups created during the decade following Rerum Novarum were generally charitable organizations. Working to improve the lot of poor and working mothers, these groups started day care centers, mutual organizations that allowed women who joined to take paid maternity leave, and gouttes de lait (milk depots) where women who were unable to breastfeed could get high-quality milk. All of these organizations began to establish the trend of intervention by outsiders (first Catholic groups, later the state) in women's reproductive lives. Following the 1900 World's Fair, which included three congresses of women's organizations, Catholic women founded some of the most important women's groups of the Third Republic. Although most claimed to [End Page 189] be under Rome's control and all hoped to help women become effective "mother-educators," Cova argues that these new organizations were far from homogeneous. Each stressed different aspects of Social Catholicism and thus each had quite different programs. Jeanne Chenu's Action Sociale de la Femme tried to educate women so they could complete their "educative mission," Jeanne Lestra and Father Eymieu's Ligue des Femmes Françaises (LFF) worked to re-Christianize France, and the Ligue Patriotique des Françaises (LPDF) (which split from Lestra's LFF in 1902) both defended religious liberties from an increasingly anti-clerical state and became quite involved in social work. These Catholic women's organizations grew quickly and became more influential. Following the enormous causalities of World War I, "depopulation" (the fear that France's population was not growing as quickly as that of its rivals) became a major force in determining French social policy. French women's groups benefited from this fear, as natalist policies tended to mirror Catholic priorities about the protection of women and the importance of motherhood as a patriotic and social duty. Cova credits the very hierarchical nature of such organizations as the LFF and the LPDF for their rapid recruitment of members from all over France, in both rural and urban areas. This hierarchal nature also allowed the leaders of these groups, despite claims to political neutrality or non-involvement, to use their own personal ties with highly placed male politicians to advance their organizations' platforms. Scholars of French feminism will appreciate Cova's constant comparisons between the goals and activities of Catholic women's groups and those...