Introduction

During the early twentieth century the bête noire of those who sought to improve maternal and child welfare was the mother who claimed to know all about childbearing and childrearing because she had ‘born 12 and buried 8’. The cover of Mother and Child, a magazine serving the maternal and child welfare societies during much of the period, showed a Madonna-like mother watching over a healthy, contented baby-in-arms with a well-cared-for older child standing in the protective shadow of its mother. The campaign to ‘glorify, dignify and purify’ motherhood and to transform this image into reality began in earnest soon after the Boer War, and by 1939 ante-natal care, skilled attendance in childbirth, infant welfare clinics, health visitors and hospital facilities for parturient women and infants were among the maternal and child welfare services available. ¹