Single Mothers and their Children: Disposal, Punishment and Survival in Australia

Description

This book is the first comprehensive history of single motherhood in Australia. Shurlee Swain and Renate Howe tell the powerful, if painful and often moving, story of these women and their children and the lives they constructed. Starting in the 1850s when abandonment and infanticide were not uncommon, the book's main focus ends in 1975 when the legal status of illegitimacy was abolished. The book covers issues of baby farming, infanticide, abortion, sex education, birth control, adoption and marriage, in effect becoming a history of sexual practice in Australia. While tracing profound changes from a time when single mothers were locked in gaol for discarding their babies to the establishment of state benefits, the authors find a good deal of continuity over the period. This long-awaited book makes an important contribution to social, welfare and women's history in Australia.

"...Swain and Renate's findings are far-reaching and immediate." Patricia A. Washington, Jrnl of San Diego History "...thorough account of single motherhood in Australia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries... ...Swain brings a sophisticated understanding of 'lived experience' to her interpretations of the oral histories. She deftly situates interview data within a wealth of original quantitative data specific to Victoria and generates it for the purposes of this study..." Nancy D. Campbell, Journal of Women's History "This book combines good history with impassioned political advocacy." Pacific Affairs "...a useful, and, at times, powerful and moving contribution to our knowledge of the history of sexuality, motherhood and family life." Elizabeth Yeoman, Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering