A Comparative View of the Maternalist Welfare State

In his book, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age, Daniel Rodgers refers to recent articles on the development of the maternalist welfare state, and suggests that America was a leader among nations which were developing welfare for mothers and widows. (Rodgers, p. 240) In examining some of the articles Rodgers cites, it seems that such an assertion is partially true, but that the question of the development of welfare programs for women is far more complex than this. In this case, the use of comparative history greatly increases the understanding of such developments.

Some authors find that society-centered factors are not the only factors that influence the development of a welfare state. Ann Shola Orloff and Theda Skocpol offer a state-centered frame of reference to help explain the differences between public social spending in United States and England. They examine three factors that others have offered as reasons why the two nations differed, namely, that England industrialized earlier than the United States, that liberalism was more entrenched in the United States, and that the British industrial working class was politically stronger than its American counterpart. In contrast with these factors, Orloff and Skocpol suggest that the lack of civil bureaucracy in the United States and Progressive efforts to reform corrupt government offices, factors which were not present in England, help to explain the differences between the two systems. (Orloff and Skocpol, pp. 739, 742)

Orloff and Skocpol's article focuses on welfare in a general sense, while Seth Koven and Sonya Michel's article examines the role of women in maternalist welfare states. They assert that in weak states, "that is, those with decentralized or underdeveloped bureaucracies," (Koven and Michel, p. 1093) the private sector is correspondingly stronger, and, ultimately, the political power of women is higher. Thus in France and Germany, where the state was strong and the private sector weak, women did not have much political power to influence the outcome of maternalistic welfare policy. In England and the United States, where the state was weak and the private sector much stronger, women had some political power, yet, ironically, were not able to gain particularly generous benefits for women and children. (Koven and Michel, p. 1103) Ultimately, French and German women received "more and better resources than did those of the United States and Britain," yet had considerably less control over the policies which were implemented. (Koven and Michel, p. 1106)

This "strong-state, weak-state" paradigm that Koven and Michel advocate has been a topic of some debate. Katherine Kish Sklar suggests that she is in agreement with Koven and Michel, and that the work of other authors "can be used to test the hypothesis that women's activism is inversely related to the power of the state." (Sklar, p. 1112) Skocpol, on the other hand, in her book Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States, offers a number of reasons why she feels that Koven and Michel's approach is inadequate. She does concede that their paradigm "suggests analytical possibilities" for those who study social policies in relation to gender. (Skocpol, p. 37)

While Alisa Klaus does not directly subscribe to the "strong-state, weak-state" paradigm, it seems that it has had some influence on her work. While France was primarily concerned with the health and welfare of the nation's children because they were suffering from widespread depopulation, the United States was interested in "the quality and composition of the population." (Klaus, p. 201) The French government had a vested interest in repopulation, thus they were more inclined to pass legislation benefiting mothers and children. In the United States, on the other hand, "resistance to a socially activist state and the commitment of the organized medical profession to a private health-care system" hampered the attempts of American women to help the lives of poor children. The strength of the private sector meant that women would have to exert their political power in order to enact the reforms they felt were necessary. Unfortunately, "the lives of the nation's poor children did not have enough political value to compel an enduring public interest in child health." (Klaus, p. 207)

While most authors concern themselves with the passage of legislation regarding maternalist welfare policies, Barbara Hobson instead considers women's role in the development of welfare institutions, after the reforms were passed. (Hobson, pp. 396-97) She explains that women of Sweden were initially behind their counterparts in the United States, with "a weak position in the social-welfare bureaucracy." (Hobson, p. 401) However, Swedish women were able to formulate and influence public debate regarding policy concerns and issues, an important aspect for the later developments in welfare institutions that American women were not as successful in influencing. (Hobson, p. 408) The United States was home to too many different interest groups, all "trying to steer their needs ahead of others," preventing any one group from success of the type the Swedish women accomplished. (Hobson, p. 413)

The American experience of the creation and development of welfare policies is certainly distinctive from that of other nations. Whether this is a result of women's political involvement, the "strong-state, weak-state" paradigm, or other factors is still a topic of debate among historians of this topic. While other factors, such as distinctions in the ways different races or ethnic groups dealt with the questions of welfare policy,(*) have been discussed as a part of the historiography of the comparative maternalist welfare state, the factors discussed above have figured most prominently in explanations for the differences between America and European models of social welfare.

(*) See, for example, Eileen Boris, "The Power of Motherhood: Black and White Activist Women Redefine the 'Political'," in Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, Mothers of a New World. New York: 1993; Ann Shola Orloff, "Motherhood, World, and Welfare in the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia," in George Steinmetz, ed., State/Culture: State Formation after the Cultural Turn, p. 335.

Works Cited:
Boris, Eileen, "The Power of Motherhood: Black and White Activist Women Redefine the 'Political'," in Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Hobson, Barbara. "Feminist Strategies and Gendered Discourses in Welfare States: Married Women's Right to Work in the United States and Sweden," in Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Klaus, Alisa. "Depopulation and Race Suicide: Maternalism and Pronatalist Ideologies in France and the United States," in Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Koven, Seth, and Michel, Sonya. "Womanly Duties: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, 1880-1920." American Historical Review, 95, 4 (Oct. 1990).

Orloff, Ann Shola. "Motherhood, World, and Welfare in the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia," in George Steinmetz, ed., State/Culture: State Formation after the Cultural Turn. Ithaca: Cornell University Place, 1999.

Orloff, Ann Shola, and Skocpol, Theda. "Why Not Equal Protection? Explaining the Politics of Public Social Spending in Britain, 1900-1911, and the United States, 1880s-1920." American Sociological Review, 49 (Dec. 1984).

Rodgers, Daniel. Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998.

Sklar, Katherine Kish. "A Call for Comparisons." American Historical Review, 95, 4 (Oct. 1990).

Skocpol, Theda. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992.