ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the role which early twentieth-century infant welfare campaigns played in regulating the relationship between the state and the family on the one hand and in controlling urban family life and family relations on the other. It also examines the process whereby two political ideals the family's responsibility to be self-supporting and male-breadwinner family model became embedded in the apolitical' campaigns, whose explicit aim was to promote the well-being of infants. The chapter explains about Birmingham authorities which managed to reconcile the three objectives. It also explores how the infant welfare campaigns regulated the relationship between social classes and urban space in early twentieth-century industrial cities. The chapter examines how public health legacies and the interests of medical profession affected the form taken by the campaigns. For most of the nineteenth century, mortality league tables had served to sustain Birmingham's reputation as a healthy manufacturing town and had given local policy makers an excuse to ignore certain important health issues.
