Maternalist reform

Maternalist Reforms in the United States were a series of progressive social reform laws passed beginning in the late 19th and early 20th centuries focused on providing state assistance to mothers with young children lacking the financial support of a male member of the household. This assistance took several forms, including mothers’ pensions and limits on the maximum working hours for women. Female activists were the primary advocates for these reforms, which reflected a maternalist ideology that “exalted women’s capacities to mother and extended to society as a whole the values of care, nurturance and morality” and held that the government had an obligation and an interest in protecting and improving the living standards of women and children.