Maternity: Letters from Working-Women

Maternity: Letters from Working-Women

The whole point of this book lies in the letters which it contains; and it might therefore have seemed advisable to leave the reader untroubled by an introduction to gather that point from the letters themselves. The material is, however, in form and in subject of so unusual a kind that it has been thought necessary to explain something of its origin and its authors, and even to touch upon some of the problems which the letters so vividly show to exist. The letters are written by married women of the working-class, all of whom are or have been officials of the Womens Co-operative Guild. The Guild is a self-governing organisation within the Co-operative Movement, and deals with subjects which affect the Co-operative Movement and the position of married women in the home and the state. It might justly claim to speak with greater authority than any other body for the voteless and voiceless millions of married working-women of England, for it has a membership of nearly 32,000, distributed in 611 branches over the whole country. The Guild has for several years given special attention to the subject of The National Care of Maternity. Before the Insurance Bill was introduced, the Guild[2] asked for the inclusion of Maternity benefit, and when the Amending Bill was before the House in 1913, an agitation by the Guild secured the benefit as the mothers own property. Later on it placed a scheme for the national care of Maternity before the Local Government Board, which issued a Circular on July 30, 1914, largely embodying the various suggestions of the Guild. In the course of this work it was considered advisable to obtain information from the members themselves of the conditions under which they had brought children into the world. These letters are the result. The barest indication of the information wanted was given, and the only questions used were those on p. 191, as it was thought that it would be more valuable to allow the women to tell their own story in their own way. We claim for these letters that for the first time are presented in them the real problems of Maternity seen through the womens own account of their lives. If the writers are uneducated in the ordinary sense of school and university, a long schooling in life and suffering has given them a peculiar simplicity and dignity of language in place of the more usual literary style. The letters are left exactly as written by the women, the only alterations made being in the spelling, in the addition of punctuation, and in the omission of a few medical details. All names and places have also been omitted in order to prevent identification. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 50077
Author: Women's Co-operative Guild
Release Date: Sep 29, 2015
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Women's Co-operative Guild