ABSTRACT
It is by no means clear that child and maternal welfare policies were primarily responsible for the fall in infant and maternal mortality. Moreover, professional rivalries and political considerations placed considerable constraints on the range of services provided and limited the benefits women gained from them. Women's groups fought hard to establish a more complete maternal and child welfare service, but tended to accept the traditional role of wife and mother that was assigned them. There is no doubt, moreover, that child and maternal welfare policies carried with them a strong ideology of motherhood.
