ABSTRACT
The unofficial Maternal Mortality Committee, the Women's Cooperative Guild and the Women's Labour League had always insisted that family income was as crucial a factor as the maternal and infant welfare services in providing the conditions for healthy childbearing and childrearing. These women defined the problem of child and maternal welfare in terms of women's economic dependency within the family. Direct economic assistance or endowment was necessary if motherhood was to be invested with a new status and if women were to guard their own health and that of their families effectively. This analysis provided the impetus for the early struggle of the WCG to secure a maternity benefit as part of the 1911 National Health Insurance scheme, and for the interwar campaign for family allowances.
