Legislating Motherhood: The History of Mothers’ Aid in Montgomery County

Abstract

I cannot work because of my children, wrote young Anna Lockett on November 3, 1931, three weeks after her husband Ralph disappeared, leaving behind their brood of four and a number of substantial debts.1 With these words, this Illinois homemaker voiced a concern at the heart of the reform movement that had been plaguing social workers, charity officials, and even government employees for decades: who was best suited provide for social welfare when the family unit failed do so? financial need of American mothers was, by the first decades of the twentieth century, a problem in need of a solution.One of the most widespread and rapidly-accepted answers employed by reformers address this problem was the establishment of mothers' aid, mothers' pension, programs. Considered be the inauguration of United States welfare policy, these programs granted public monetary assistance women who, depending on the legislation, were either widowed, divorced, had been deserted by their husbands and whose families possessed a severe economic need. Adopted by state legislatures and administered on a local level, mothers' pension programs reflected the dominant norms of their environments.From its origins, the mothers' aid program in Illinois had been urbancentered. Its start had been in Chicago, where social workers and public officials, prompted by political concerns, began administering it though the juvenile court system. However, application of the legislation spread far beyond its urban roots. Montgomery County, for example, located over two-hundred miles south of Chicago, was a rural area with a largely working-class population. was led by a group of local officials who conceived of mothers' pensions differently than their urban counterparts. An analysis of the ninety-five mothers' aid applications available from August 1924 January 1932 from Montgomery County reveals that local concerns, stemming from the worries of prominent white, male citizens about the effects of industrialization and immigration in the area, prompted the adoption of, and guided the administration of, the local mothers' pension program.2 Out of concern for social welfare, county leaders acted within a gendered ideological framework that stressed the white, middle-class, nuclear family as the ideal and attempted impose these norms onto their neighbors in order protect the future of their community.Illinois passed the Funds Parents Act, the first law of its kind in the United States, in 1911. By June 30,1930, forty-four other states, as well as the territories of Alaska and Hawaii, had adopted similar mothers' pension legislation.3 Julia Lathrop, the head of the United States Children's Bureau, articulated the principle behind these laws in a 1920 letter. It is against sound public economy allow poverty alone cause the separation of a child from the care of a good mother, she wrote, or allow the mother so exhaust her powers in earning a living for her children that she can not give them proper home care and protection.'1 However, public aid for families, according its proponents, was more than just a means of relieving financial hardship. According one 1934 report, Mothers'aid is given in the interest of future citizenship-the test of its work and efficiency is... the well being of the children under supervision, as expressed in terms of adequate mother care, health, both physical and mental, school progress, and preparation for effective manhood and womanhood.5 Family values, according the legislation's proponents, were at stake.The 1911 Funds Parents Act established within Illinois the opportunity for individual counties provide public aid families. law allowed juvenile court judges to grant pensions of any size any needy parent who was a proper guardian.6 Fathers were included as potential recipients. As Edna Zimmerman pointed out in her 1930 report on mothers' pension administration in Illinois, The first Mothers' Pension Law was really no Mothers' Pension Law at all. …