ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the ways in which the culture of British family life has changed, proposing that, within this process, the impact upon parenting and, in particular, the construction of the role of the mother has been considerable. A. McRobbie claims that ‘previous historical affiliations between social democracy and feminism which aimed to support women as mothers were dismantled and discredited present day demonisation of welfare’. Motherhood has a very long history but scant documentation, given that the daily lives of women and their children were not constructed by human societies as having the same level of importance as that of rulers and battles. In 1980, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her American contemporary Ronald Regan began to introduce a range of cultural changes into Anglo-American society, heralding the rise of a political philosophy which became widely known as neo-liberalism.
