ABSTRACT
From the standpoint of Thatcher’s privatized Britain, the Mother’s Manifesto, issued by a section of women in the West German Greens in 1987, seems radical indeed. Its demands include collective provision for child care, a revision of urban design, pay and pensions for home carers, flexible employment, increased leisure time, and the facilitation of political activity for mothers (Table 1). Yet it provoked a year-long blaze of discussion in the Federal Republic. For ‘emancipationists’ and advocates of ‘equal rights’, the resurrection of ‘Mütterlichkeit’ 1 spelled reaction, even Nazism and Mothers’ Crosses. 2
