Helen McCarthy (1)

Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood is about women in Britain from 1840 (in the middle of the Industrial Revolution) to 2020 (the publication date of this book).

I borrowed this in hardback from the library. It is a detailed study by an academic, with very comprehensive and detailed endnotes (92 pages compared to just under 400 of main text) and a 27 page bibliography but is well written and quite clear and readable. Helen McCarthy draws on a range of sources including newspaper and magazine articles, inspection reports and popular fiction as well as other academic sources. She outlines what is known and statistics gathered about women's patterns of paid employment, from 19th century cotton mills to white collar and professional employment, and also at childcare provision, government, employer. media and social attitudes to mothers going out to work. There are also 16 pages of photographic plates, mostly black and white but with a couple of colour reproductions of a Victorian painting and of a picture/headline of Nicola Horlick, a woman famous for combining a top job in the City of London and bringing up 7 children.

An interesting and thoughtful account, though sometimes depressing - though attitudes have changed recently, reading this left me wondering how much they have really shiffted.… (mer)