Progressive Mothers

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates how a host of social justice causes remain at the core of U.S. leftist women's postwar activism, including civil rights and women's equality, and more importantly, peace. Response to their attempts to push the boundaries of good mothering to include such endeavors as political organizing and peace activism suggests the difficulties they would face balancing the personal and the political in the immediate postwar era. The experiences of a group of Progressive Party organizers working across the nation at both national and local levels shows how their determination to continue working for leftist causes, while also performing their social roles as mothers, wives, daughters, and waged workers, was increasingly complicated by domestic reaction to international events.