Mothers: 1910s-1980s

Changes in Expectations for Mothers (1910s-1980s)

• Traditionally, mothers were expected to nurture and care for the family within the home
• The 20th century brought a shift in these expectations for mothers
• The greatest shift in expectations happened during The Great Depression, linked to increased state intervention
• Motherhood shifted again when birth control became legal allowing mothers more control
• The legalization of birth control allowed women to have better control of their destinies

Motherhood During The Great Depression

• During the Great Depression in the 1930s, women started working informally
• There was increased state intervention in how mothers were raising their children
• Women contributed to the family's income during this time
• Due to the tough economic times, money was devalued and families suffered
• Women participated in informal work such as creating canning and kitchen gardens
• In desperate situations, women had to scavenge for fuel and commit petty crimes
• Before this, mothers focused on nurturing children and domestic work
• An increase in state intervention, which was sometimes unnecessary departed from traditional mothering

State Intervention and Advice on Mothering

• Historically, women learned about mothering through word-of-mouth advice
• State-backed scientific advice disrupted traditional knowledge through pamphlets, books, and doctors
• New advice went against maternal instincts and inherited wisdom
• Babies had regimented lives concerning feeding, sanitation, and sleep
• Changing and following state guidance shifted the mother's role, and meant they no longer making independent decisions about raising children

Increased Personal Autonomy After 1969

• After 1969 women had more personal autonomy
• Women gained control over their bodies, as abortion and birth control were legalized and safe
• Fertility rates dropped because women could choose if and when to have children
• In the late 1970s, the fertility rate in Canada fell below the replacement rate
• Women were purposely using birth control to limit or prevent having children
• Planning and controlling family sizes allowed women to pursue endeavours outside the home
• In 1983, half the women with young children worked outside the home, and some were studying a higher education
• Women became breadwinners, spending less time with their children
• Increased personal autonomy changed a mother's role in the late 1960s and offered greater opportunities

Traditional Gender Expectations

• Traditional gender expectations shifted because of the Great Depression and the 1960s
• Women focused on financial survival in the Great Depression and had to enter the workforce
• Increased state intervention in the 1930s guided women on government-acceptable methods of raising children
• Legalizing birth control in the 1960s gave women more control over their bodies as well as their education and career opportunities
• Throughout that century, mother's role changed considerably alongside lower childbirth rate

Understanding Contemporary Social Issues Through Family History in Canada

• Studying family history helps us to understand problems we still see today
• We can see some people want a return to traditional families
• Women should have a choice, because women legally had to stay in horrible marriages
• Seeing those patterns should demonstrate that we should not go back to those times
• Studying the legalization of gay marriage shows how hard people fought to gain recognition
• Some people are strongly against family structures straying from the “traditional” heterosexual, white
• Indigenous land titles are currently a big issue because there have been many instances where people were forcibly removed from their lands

Increasing State Intervention in Canadian Families

• The state intervened more during the Great Depression
• The Colony of New France saw nuns provide social services
• Some areas of intervention decreased
• There is "no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation" - Pierre Trudeau, CBC interview Dec 20, 1967
• Federal government established a Ministry responsible for the Status of Women in 1971

Increased Diversity in Family Formations

• Canadian family structures and dynamics have evolved
• Societal factors influenced families' evolution
• Extended families broke down into nuclear families
• Acceptance and denial of immigrant groups diversified families
• The Omnibus Bill let families have greater autonomy
• Legalizing same-sex marriages diversified families
• Families functioned as largely an economic unit during early European settlement (1663-1673) and produced necessities for survival
• The government encouraged marriage and children then
• Most incoming women married, often having a say in their partner
• Widows often remarried fast because they relied on men for sustenance and help with physically demanding tasks
• It was not uncommon to have 10 or more children, who were legally dependent until 25
• Companionate marriage started to develop in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in British North America
• Separate social roles developed for men and women and were increasingly viewed as part of the private sphere
• Women in farming families had to perform physically taxing tasks
• Self-sustaining family economy outside of farming decreased and it was common and encouraged to have children because people saw infertility as divine punishment
• The history of immigration has shaped family formations
• Canadian immigration policies have promoted some groups while racially excluding others
• Waves of immigration from many world areas have increased diversity throughout history
• Canada welcomed refugees from communist countries during the Cold War
  • Hungary (1956-57: 37,000)
  • Czechoslovakia (1968: 12,000)
  • Vietnam (1979-80: Over 50,000)
• Immigration agents and social workers (gatekeepers) tried to assimilate newcomers into Anglo-Canadian middle-class ideals and marriage, including in areas like marriage and child-rearing
• Societal attitudes toward family structures have evolved with legalizing gay marriage
• Gay liberationists "challenged the dominance of the nuclear family" (Chenier)
• Couples such as Girouard/Tremblay and Vogel/North, aimed to counter negative stereotypes of homosexuals to demonstrate their ability of stable loving relationships
• family structures could be diverse and based on principles of equality and mutual support instead of traditional, rigid roles
• Family structures evolved from self-sufficient economic units with high birth rates and traditional gender roles toward more diverse forms
• Influences include industrialization, urbanization, gender, evolving notions of marriage, immigration, changing values and legislation

Part Two Study List

• Short paragraphs are needed to identify and explain the significance of three key terms
• For each term, one must identify it, describe its background/location/date, and significance to the course
• Identify why this topic was included in the course
• Write a short paragraph to explain why one of the three terms is most significant
• Ask, If only one of these three terms was included in History 1155, which one should it be? Why?

Charivari

• Practiced in New France until the 18th century, and less so in Ontario
• Charivari was a custom expressing social disapproval of “inappropriate” marriages

Pro-Natalism

• Pro-natalism encourages having children
• Governor Charles Huault de Montmagny worried about the French colonist population vs the British colony and native populations in 1700s New France
• He and the state tried to encourage marriage and childbirth
• Helen MacMurchy was also a pronatalist, and a eugenicist because she wanted to prevent people of non-Caucasian descent from being able to reproduce
• MacMurchy wrote a book known as "How to Take Care of the Family"

Helen Allen

• Allen was a key figure who was involved in the “sixties scoop” for the adoption movement

Food Banks

• Food banks support families who couldn’t afford food
• During Brian Mulroney's time as prime minister (1984-1993), the government should not be responsible for ensuring the social well-being of all citizens

Africville, Nova Scotia

• Africville, Nova Scotia was a Black community that the city of Halifax destroyed as part of an urban renewal in 1970

"Second Shift"

• 1969 book written by Arlie Hochschild
• Discussed the changing gender norms in households
• Mentioned the additional work that women do at home after paid work

Marsh Report (1943)

• A blueprint for a comprehensive social security system
• Programs predating the Marsh Report had limited scope and were means-tested e.g. old age pensions introduced in 1927
• Available to people of all socioeconomic statuses

"Sixties Scoop"

• A practice that saw Indigenous children removed from their families and put up for adoption
• Parents did not understand this practice
• Children were stigmatized as inferior
• Kids lost their Indigenous culture, and experienced trauma

Population Bomb (Book)

• Book published in 1962 by Paul R. Ehrlich
• It claimed that there would not be enough standing room in the world, due to population by 2026

Family Allowance

• Introduced in 1946
• Money was awarded to families regardless of income or assets
• Canada’s first universal welfare program
• Each child was awarded $5 to $13 per month

Michel Girouard and Régeant Tremblay

• The first same-sex couple to be married in Canada (1972)
• “Compulsory Heterosexuality” existed in the 1950s and there was a narrowly-defined “normal” family presented as the ideal
• Homosexuals were targeted by the RCMP as security risks in the 1950s

Second World War Day Nurseries

• Day nurseries for young children existed for mothers working in factories supporting the war effort
• They were disestablished after the war because people thought it was communist
• Assumed that there would no longer be a need for daycare

Dorothea Palmer

• A nurse arrested in 1936 for selling birth control information

Coutume de Paris

• The legal code that regulated marriage in New France

Leilani Muir

• Muir was a Canadian woman sterilized against her will in 1950s Alberta after an inaccurate IQ test
• The idea of eugenics, stemming from Francis Galton, caused this
• The Farmers Women's Association believed "[S]terilization constitutes a violent and drastic invasion of the most elementary human rights"

Criminal Law Amendment Act (1968-69)

• Also known as the Omnibus Bill that
• Pierre Trudeau's government passed
• This bill made birth control legal
• Divorce became easier to obtain because of it
• Therapeutic abortion was legalized

Bertha Wright

• Member of the Temperance Movement during the late 19th century

Benjamin Spock

• An American pediatrician
• He believed the Baby Boomer generation became the most socially active because children should have a say in their own development

Cold War Fallout Shelters

• Underground shelter to protect from fallout from a soviet nuclear attack
• There were proxy wars such as Greece (1946-49), Korea (1950-53), and Vietnam (1954-1975) between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R
• Elites, not average citizens built and used fallout shelters like the “Diefenbunker” (1959-196)

Chinese Immigration Act, 1923 (Chinese Exclusion Act)

• This Act, repealed in 1947, banned most Chinese immigration
• It also required Chinese immigrants to register
• Families were separated
• A head tax was already imposed on Chinese immigrants by 1885
• Proved they weren't welcome, and families were often split up

Don Mills, Ontario

• A planned community and suburb of Toronto (1952 to 1965)

Social History

• A type of history analyzing the experiences of ordinary people

REAL Women of Canada

• Stands for Realistic, Equal, Active, for Life
• The organization speaks for women who believe in the traditional values of family and marriage
• Their website claims, "We see the fragmentation of the family as one of the major causes of disorder in society today.”

Hannah Ingraham

• Ingraham escaped with her family to New Brunswick because she was a “loyalist” and supported the British rather than the Americans
• She lived from 1772 to 1869

"The Pill" (Oral Contraceptives)

• Introduced in 1961 and was initially only used for therapeutic purposes
• Though used extensively, it wasn't legitimized until the Omnibus bill (Criminal Law Amendment Act 1968-69), passed by the Pierre Trudeau government
• Even though people were already using contraception, this destigmatized contraceptives even more
• Women had more autonomy over their bodies and family planning as a result
• In 1969, “the pill” was made legal

Catholic Church Position on Contraception

• “The Catholic Church, to whom God has entrusted the defense of the integrity and purity of morals... proclaims anew...... Intercourse even with one's legitimate wife is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the offspring is prevented.” - Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii
• 1930s: Anglican church gives limited approval for "artificial methods"
• 1958: Anglican church declares birth control a “matter of conscience”
• Mobile birth control clinic, England, late 1920s
• Nurse Dorothea Palmer Trial in 1936
• In 1967, 12 million women worldwide used the pill

"Petty Theft" (as described by Campbell)

• Poor teenager and children practiced petty theft to survive during the Great Depression

"Exiled" Loyalist Families (as described by Condon)

• Different from other immigrants, Loyalist families, lived two lives at once
• One was ordinary, and the other being their imagined life and circumstances

Amber Valley

• A Black community in northern Alberta
• The people there were fleeing persecution in the southern United States (e.g. Oklahoma)
• They were being targeted by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and other racist extremist groups
• The 1,500 Black immigrants faced public opposition when they arrived between 1905-1912
• The government opposed them, and a 1911 proposal that would have banned black immigrants failed to pass

Assisted Human Reproduction Act (2004)

• Respects assisted human reproduction and research
• Bans human cloning
• Shows distance in reproductive technology

Glad Tidings Pentecostal Church (Victoria, BC)

• Pentecostal Church in Victoria, BC