Abstract

Women in Second World War Britain benefitted from measures to improve maternal and child health. Infant and maternal mortality rates continued to fall, new drugs became available, and efforts were made to improve the health of mothers and babies through the provision of subsidised milk and other foodstuffs. However, in return, women were also expected to contribute to the war effort through motherhood, and this reflected wider cultural ideas in the North Atlantic world in the first half of the twentieth century which equated maternity with military service. The aim of this article is to examine the interplay between narratives of birth and narratives of war in the accounts of maternity from women of the wartime generation. It will explore how the military-maternity analogy sheds light on women’s experiences of pregnancy and childbirth in Britain during the Second World War, whilst also considering maternity within women’s wider role as ‘domestic soldiers’, contributing to the war effort through their traditional work as housewives and mothers. In doing so, the article reveals the complexity of women’s narratives. It demonstrates that they do not simply conform to the ‘medical vs. social’ binary, but reflect the wider cultural context in which women gave birth. Women incorporated the dominant discourses of the period, namely those around war, into their accounts.

Highlights

  • During the Second World War efforts to increase Britain’s population resulted in renewed attention being paid to maternal health.[1]

  • Informed by pronatalism and ideals of motherhood as being a woman’s contribution to the war effort or national good, women used these linguistic elements in their construction of their own narratives

  • In discussing the increased medical involvement in pregnancy and birth which had occurred during the postwar decades, the interviewees contemplated whether having a baby should be viewed as a medical event

Read more

Summary

Introduction

During the Second World War efforts to increase Britain’s population resulted in renewed attention being paid to maternal health.[1]. In addition the essay will consider how wartime pronatalism portrayed women as contributing to the war effort through their traditional role as housewives and mothers It will explore how these discourses were employed in women’s stories and the interplay between narratives of birth and narratives of war in their accounts. British women during the Second World War were called upon to contribute to the war effort in their traditional roles as mothers Those women who stepped into male roles have been remembered most prominently in accounts of women’s wartime work,[20] the majority of women were still doing ‘women’s jobs’, either at home taking care of their families or in forms of employment such as nursing, shop or factory work.[21] Women’s labour was in demand during the war; in December 1941 the government passed the National Service Act (No 2), which made provision for the conscription of women. She ‘vowed to be a soldier too’.’25 describing them as ‘domestic soldiers’, Jennifer Purcell explains that ‘Women became the vanguard in the People’s War.’[26]

The Oxfordshire interviewees
Oral history narratives
Narratives of health and illness
Narratives of war
Babies for the war effort
Lord Woolton’s ‘preggies’: the war and antenatal care
Findings
Conclusion
Full Text
Paper version not known

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.