The ideology of the citizen-mother was based on a kind of social contract, in which women’s provision of citizens to the state was rewarded by the granting of political rights and various kinds of support. In the immediate prewar years, feminists objected that the state had not fulfilled its side of the bargain. Some called for a “birth-strike,” or a strategic refusal of service to states that were still so resistant to gender equality.
The “birth-strike” (or greve des ventres) was first advocated by the French Neo-Malthusians, who since the 1890s had urged workers to refuse to produce more human material to be consumed by industry and war.124 Nelly Roussel gave their message a feminist twist. Women, she swore in 1903, would no longer produce children for a society that offered them nothing but scorn and degradation. “We will put them on notice, the strike has been declared. . . in the circle, still narrow, of those who think and understand, but it will spread further.”125 In 1904 Roussel, a professional actress, attracted wide public attention as the star of her own dramatic portrayal of the birth strike, a play entitled Revolt (Par la revolte). Roussel’s character, symbolically named Eve, declared to a figure representing “Society” that she would perform “no work without a salary! I am weary of bearing ingrates,” she continued. “The tree of life refuses its fruit to the executioners.”126
From Norway, Katti Anker Moller predicted that “the expanding birth- strike, that has already started in the upper classes, is the vice that will force state authorities to give in to our claims.”127 And from Austria, Henriette Herzfelder stated that “if men had to bear children under these conditions, they would long ago have resorted to the means that they use to fight for better living conditions—the mass strike. And would it be a matter for surprise or condemnation if women, too, planned a strike?”128
British suffragists claimed that the “strike” had already begun. The declining birthrates of Western countries were identified by the editors of The Vote as an “outward sign of revolt against the degradation of the highest and holiest of functions.”129 At the height of the militant suffrage movement, Christabel Pankhurst called on women not only to refuse childbearing but to avoid all sexual contact with men, 70 to 80 percent of whom she claimed were infected with venereal disease.130 In 1914, the Women’s Freedom
League, a suffrage organization that favored non-violence, discussed new tactics to be used in the struggle. Some members seriously suggested distributing contraceptives among working-class women. “We have got at least twenty members who are ready to do it. . . . The real force here rests with the women, if you refuse to have children, the country is powerless,” urged a member, Mrs. Huntsman. Others agreed on the goal, but rejected the means. “The only right way to limit the birth-rate is by having no relationships with men,” argued one. “Otherwise you are giving people opportunities for unlimited license. . . We object to prostitution, are we going to make prostitutes of women, of married women?”131
In Germany, the initiative came from two socialist physicians, who in 1913 urged the women of the proletariat to refuse childbearing until the state improved social and medical services to families. The leaders of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), including prominent women such as Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg, had rejected Neo-Malthusianism from the beginning because it placed the needs of the individual above the need of the working class for increased numbers.132 They immediately condemned the birth — strike, arguing that the proletariat needed “soldiers for the revolution.” The strike was more popular among the rank and file, who turned out in great numbers to discuss and support it. “Comrade Zetkin does not really understand the living conditions of the poor,” said a speaker at a mass meeting. “I advise them to go ahead and strike.”133 But the opposition of the SPD leadership consigned the movement to oblivion.
The freedom to control fertility was at the heart of feminist aspirations to be both a mother and a human being. The most conspicuous rhetorical strategy of prewar feminists presented gender equality in such areas as politics, economic life, and marriage less as an intrinsic right than as a reward for a service. This service was motherhood, the production of citizens. As many historians have pointed out, this was in some ways a productive strategy, which by linking the cause of women to the welfare of the nation initiated the first stage in the development of the modern welfare state. Changes in laws regarding marriage and unmarried parenthood, new forms of state provision for mothers and children, and the first discussions of reproductive rights were among this era’s most important developments. But as the birth-strikers asserted, these gains were limited. And the definition of motherhood as a public contribution had raised some new threats to the liberty of individuals—threats that Helene Stocker was one of the few feminists to recognize. Criticizing her colleagues who regarded “children, even in the womb, as the property of the state,” Stocker asserted the primacy of the individual: “the state exists for the sake of the individual, not the individual for the state.”134 And Cicely Hamilton, a British suffragette and unregenerate spinster, noted that her contemporaries had put the cart before the horse. Women would not be given equality out of respect for motherhood—a function that they had little choice but to exercise. Only when women gained equality would motherhood, as the free choice of a free women, deserve respect. Until then, Hamilton saw nothing particularly distinguished about mere breeding. “After all, it is not upon the performance of a purely animal function that a human being should found his or her title to respect; if woman is reverenced only because she reproduces her kind, a still higher meed of reverence is due to the rabbit.”135 But amid the patriotic hysteria that would soon greet the outbreak of war, such thoughts were out of season.
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JULY 2Ґ it 2.15 pm.
Exhibition
Opposite Westminster Abbey
WESTMINSTER
MONDAY™ SATURDAY
July2 TO July 7
Britannia protecting her children; an advertisement for National Baby Week, first held in Britain in 1917. (Hill Siffken: 1914-18 (?). Poster archive: Hoover Institution.)
“The V alue of B abies” :
Mothers, Children, and
the S tate in W artime, 1914-1918
“The Globe Bristling with W eapons”
In 1900, Ellen Key embodied the new century as “a naked child, who comes down to earth, but turns back in terror at the sight of the globe bristling with weapons, which leaves him not even a small patch of ground where he can set foot.” Key hoped that “the new generation, its care, and its rearing,” would become “the central task of society,” and that the infant century might thus be preserved from the looming danger of war.1 But was peace really in the interest of mothers and children? Key’s worst fears were greatly surpassed by the war that broke out in 1914. And it was in wartime, so many observers remarked, that the value of children was truly appreciated. “The war with its terrible toll of young life has taught us the value of babies,” wrote Maude Royden, a British reformer, suffragist, and theologian, in 1918. “They used to be called ‘encumbrances’; now we are beginning to reckon them up as jewels.”2
Feminists in all countries hoped that the war would indeed result in an enhanced respect for mothers as well as children. For several decades they had insisted that motherhood was as vital a contribution to the life of the nation as men’s military service—a claim that wartime conditions seemed to validate. Now more than ever the state depended on mothers for its survival. And considering the progress made in maternal and child welfare, some historians have concluded that (in the words of Deborah Dwork) war was “good for babies and other young children.”3 But we have seen that feminists aimed not only to provide practical assistance to mothers and children, but even more to enable mothers to become free individuals. And though sometimes beneficial in a material sense, wartime measures eroded the individual liberties of mothers by instrumentalizing reproduction in the service of military objectives. After sketching in the historical context, this chapter will look at three feminist debates—on the wartime role of mothers, on the role of the state in encouraging, compelling, or forbidding motherhood, and on the revival of maternalism in women’s peace movements. The focus will be on the belligerent nations, particularly on France, Britain, and Germany.
In the prewar era, a certain ambivalence about the militarization of motherhood was already apparent in feminists’ rhetoric. To be sure, the comparison of reproduction to military service had become a familiar, indeed a hackneyed trope. Since the late nineteenth century, feminists across the political spectrum had responded to the argument that only those who fought to defend their country truly deserved to govern it by pointing out that the production and rearing of citizens was an equally valuable contribution. Patriots such as the suffragist Hubertine Auclert claimed in 1908 that “the law that repeatedly demands nine months (of service) of women is more demanding than the law that requires two years of men, and many more women die on a bed of pain to create life than men on the battlefield to destroy it.”4 Even pacifists, among them the Swedish Ellen Key, called motherhood a “female military obligation.”5
But when they came up with more practical proposals for a female service obligation, few feminists suggested the recruitment of young women into motherhood. To be sure, most believed that the female military obligation must be gender-appropriate, and the suggestion of the French physician Madeleine Pelletier that women should fight alongside men found little support.6 Female military service, affirmed the League of Austrian Women’s Organizations in 1915, must never require the “training of Amazons.”7 But proponents of a female draft nonetheless hoped to give women a share in the opportunities that military service was said to provide for men—to broaden social awareness through contact with age-mates of all classes and regions, and to learn skills that would be useful in later life. And such a purpose could not be served by tying young women to maternity. In a debate held by the German League of Women’s Organizations in 1912 (the proceedings were published in 1916) the reformer Anna Pappritz asserted that motherhood in itself could never be a constructive form of service, for the woman who was confined to the household could not rise above “family egotism” to become an effective citizen.8
French women who aspired to military service likewise declined to associate it primarily with motherhood. The legendary Spartan mother—who admonished her soldier son to return from battle as a victor carrying his shield or as a corpse carried on it—was not their chosen role model. They settled on nursing, an occupation that combined maternal nurture with patriotic courage, as women’s most appropriate wartime activity.9 In Britain, the definition of motherhood as a form of military service seems also to have been confined to rhetoric. With the formation of the Volunteer Aid Detachments under the auspices of the Red Cross, young British women committed themselves to wartime service as nurses. This service, they stipulated, was to be voluntary.10
When war broke out in 1914, the majority of feminists sought to turn the crisis to the advantage of their cause by showing that women were ready and willing to take on the responsibilities of citizenship. Everywhere they abandoned struggles for suffrage and for other rights. In an outburst of patriotic enthusiasm, women’s organizations resolved to forget their differences and to join in their own version of the Burgfrieden or Union Sacree declared by political leaders, who called on citizens of all political parties to rally around the national flag. In Germany the National Women’s Service (Nationaler Frauendienst), in France the French Women’s Alliance (Effort feminin frangais) in Britain a diverse group of old and new organizations recruited women into the war effort.11 In 1914, Italian women formed a National Women’s Committee (Comitato nazionale femminile), which promised to “prepare all women who are fit for work to assume public and private offices, so that in case of war the social and economic life of the country will not come to a standstill.”12
When their expectations of a quick and victorious conclusion to the conflict were disappointed, government leaders who had at first contemptuously rejected women’s offers of service now mobilized them to do the work of production. And feminist leaders were given a conspicuous role in recruiting these workers. In Britain, the representatives of several suffrage organizations attended National Conference on War Service for Women called in 1915 by Arthur Henderson, a Labour Party head of the War Cabinet.13 Meanwhile, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst turned their organizational talents to patriotic demonstrations. “The British Lion is awake, so is the Lioness,” read a newsreel headline.14
Gertrud Baumer, the head of the League of German Women’s Associations (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, or BDF) coordinated the National Women’s Service, which engaged women across the political spectrum in the provision of child-care, employment agencies, and other social services to the female dependents and children of service men.15 Two other high-profile feminist leaders were appointed to lead the Women’s Bureau (Frauenreferat) in the Ministry of War: Marie-Elisabeth Luders as head, and Agnes von Harnack as her deputy. Later Luders headed a National Committee for Women’s War Work (Nationaler Ausschuss fur Frauenarbeit im Krieg).16 In France, feminist leaders likewise participated in a Committee on Women’s Work, attached to the Ministry of Munitions.17 “French women in wartime. What they are doing, and what is being done for them,” read a banner headline in the feminist movement’s chief newspaper, LaFrangaise, in May 1915.18 An editorial in the periodical Der Bund, the organ of the League of Austrian Women’s Organization, declared that “what millions of women have done behind the front since the beginning of the war, day in and day out, is as important and indispensable for the course of the war as the sacrifice of millions of nameless heroes at the front.”19
In Britain, women’s total workforce participation increased from about 25 percent to 47 percent, and their share in traditionally male industries increased still more: in building 320 percent, in metal work 249 percent.20 In France, where about 30 percent of the workforce in 1914 was female; the figure increased to about 40 percent in 1918.21 Italian women employed in war-related industries increased in number from 23,000 in 1915 to about 200,000 in 1917, and they also appeared in new roles as streetcar conductors, bank tellers, and post office employees.22 In Germany, where most of the wartime workers had previously held other jobs, the historian Ute Daniel estimates that the increase in the total number of employed women was only about 17 percent.23 Whatever the facts, contemporary observers perceived that the female workforce had increased enormously.
And of course, many of these workers were mothers. The feminist press in all countries spoke optimistically of the new respect for women who cheerfully accepted the double burden of work and family: Jane Misme, editor of La Frangaise, reported that a boss had praised his new employees. “With some exceptions, they are wonderful,” he said, “After ten hours of work per day, they find ways to keep a perfect house.”24 However, the reality of many mothers’ lives hardly bore out such idealized reports. Despite official expressions of support for working mothers, their well-being was often sacrificed to the needs of war production. Most legislation designed to protect maternal health was suspended for the duration. As the war went on, shortages of many goods caused hardships that often interfered with the work of mothers. British women complained of the hours that they were forced to wait in line to buy scarce foodstuffs.25 Male and female workers in both France and Britain protested such shortages through a wave of strikes in 1917.26
But the hardships suffered by the populations of these countries, where child and female mortality rates hardly changed during the war years, were slight compared to those that beset families in Germany and Austria. A blockade of the German coastline by the British navy interdicted shipment of food, medicine, and other vital goods to these central European nations, and resulted in widespread hunger and increased maternal and child mortality. When money lost much of its value, barter, foraging, and theft rather than wage work became the most effective means of survival of many working — class urban families. The breakdown of law and order in many cities began the process of de-stabilization that led to the fall of the German and Austrian monarchies.27
Governments recognized women’s patriotism by awarding them medals and other public honors. But among their fellow workers, women’s movement into male jobs often attracted more resentment than praise. Trade unions made clear that the workforce advances made by women were only temporary, to be reversed when the return of the men allowed wives and mothers to return to more appropriate domestic duties. Although changes in women’s employment patterns were in fact quite limited, they were perceived as a catastrophic reversal of gender roles. Would motherhood and motherliness, those essential female qualities, be destroyed by the war? Hands “coarsened in munitions factories,” lamented the British poet Mary Gabrielle Collins, were better suited to “guide the rosy teat swelling with milk, to the eager mouth of the suckling babe.”28
Along with the pressure to work came the pressure to reproduce. Existing natalist organizations expanded and new ones were founded. 29 French postcards that were very risque by the standards of this era equated reproduction with war: one card pictured three babies hanging by their swaddling bands from a soldier’s bayonet over the caption, “A good thrust”; and another, which portrayed an obviously pregnant woman, exhorted women to “work for France.”30 Among the measures that were designed to support childbearing were dependency allowances and social services for the families of soldiers—reforms that will be examined more thoroughly later in this chapter.
However, such measures could do little to reverse the devastating impact of total war on reproduction and family life. As Ute Daniel has pointed out, the absence of fathers, the postponement of marriages, the separation of married couples, and the economic hardships endured by many households disrupted the traditional reproductive and socializing functions of the family. Birthrates were the lowest ever recorded.31 The forced separation of couples brought a rise in all forms of non-marital sexuality, including prostitution, and rates of illegitimacy, venereal disease, divorce, and abortion increased. In Germany, an increase in juvenile delinquency was attributed both to poverty and to affluence—to the shortages that gave rise to petty thievery, and to the enhanced earning power of male adolescents, who in the absence of adult men found both new job opportunities and freedom from paternal discipline.32 All of these developments were interpreted as signs of a social pathology that called for the enhanced supervision and surveillance of private life, especially that of women. Police forces controlled the sexual conduct of soldiers’ wives; infant care agencies sent “home visitors” to check up on new mothers and their babies; new rules on the sale and consumption of alcohol regulated the leisure-time activities of women.33
At the beginning of the war feminist movements split. While the majority supported the war in the hopes that women’s patriotism would finally earn them the rights that they had sought for decades, a minority in every country joined the peace movement which was inaugurated by the International Congress of Women in the Hague in 1915—a meeting of women from both belligerent and neutral nations—and continued by an International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace (later re-named the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom).34 Most accounts of wartime feminism differentiate sharply between patriots and pacifists. But, as Susan Grayzel points out, these groups’ view of motherhood had much in common. Both defined “motherliness,” whether expressed through warlike enthusiasm or nonviolent compassion, as a defining female attribute.35 Both praised women’s sacrificial service to the war effort, hoped that this service would be respected and rewarded, and were frustrated—even enraged—by the way it was belittled by political and military leaders. And all shared in the grief that wartime separation, anxiety, and bereavement brought to civilians everywhere. Thus wartime discourses on motherhood often mixed exaltation with indignation, triumph with mourning, patriotism with dissent.