Mothers’ pensions were state-level relief benefits designed to support the children of widowed mothers. The forerunner of the Aid to Dependent Children program developed under the New Deal, mothers’ pensions provided small cash grants to supplement the income of impoverished widows who supported themselves through wage-earning but needed additional funds. Advocates of mothers’ pensions believed that the income supplement would encourage women to keep their children at home, rather than send them to orphanages. They also argued that the pensions would persuade widowed women to take jobs or engage in home work that allowed them to spend the maximum amount of time at home.
An early attempt to pass a statute for the support of widowed women took place in New York in 1897. The state legislature nearly passed a Destitute Mothers’ bill, which would have given deserted women a right to public relief. The timing, however, was wrong. Social work advocates were only just beginning to shake off the legacy of scientific charity, and opponents of the bill could count on public opposition when they nicknamed the measure “the Shiftless Father’s Act.” By 1910, the political climate had changed.
Mothers’ pensions can be seen as part of the larger campaign of “child saving” in the Progressive Era. Linked to other reforms in education, the playground movement, child labor laws, and juvenile justice, the mothers’ pension program sought to provide the best care for poor and working-class children. The same ideal of scientific motherhood that inspired the reformers of the Children’s Bureau shaped the mothers’ pension program. Financial support of women’s role within the family, it was hoped, would give incentives to mothers to provide better parental care and supervision.
Juvenile court judges were among the first advocates of mother’s allowances. Judge E. E. Porterfield of Kansas City lobbied the Missouri legislature to pass a measure giving mothers’ aid to women in Jackson County. Illinois created the first statewide program for mothers’ pensions in early 1911. Supported by divergent groups such as the National Congress of Mothers, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, and settlement house workers, the push for mothers’ aid spread quickly through northern, midwestern, and western states. Within two years, 20 states had passed mothers’ aid laws. By the 1920s, 40 states and hundreds of counties in the United States had mothers’ pensions programs.
Despite the best intentions of its advocates, the mothers’ pensions system failed to live up to its purpose of alleviating the plight of poor children and protecting motherhood. Most states and counties did not have the funds or the political support to expand the mothers’ pension program beyond its modest beginnings and could not raise enough public monies to fund the system. States failed to fund existing mothers’ pensions adequately, due to popular resistance to new property taxes and the absence of any alternatives. Further, many localities refused to develop new agencies and programs for widows. Even in terms of its original modest aims, the mothers’ pension movement had severe drawbacks. Limited in its coverage, it did not fund women who were either deserted or divorced, and its provisions barred unwed mothers from eligibility.
Framed in the language of sacred motherhood, the mothers’ pension effort dictated that its recipients be the moral and deserving poor. Those who received pensions were under moral scrutiny both when they applied and while they received the pension. At the same time, the program demonstrated racial and ethnic exclusivity, especially in the South. Most early recipients of the mothers’ pensions were white, native-born women. Finally, as a state-level program, mothers’ pensions never became the deserved “pension” for mothers that its most radical advocates desired. Mothers’ pensions were tied to the number and age of children. No support was provided for the widow herself, and the stigma of poor relief, with its moral supervision and public disdain, remained.
In the 1930s, the collapse of local relief agencies and the lack of funding, combined with the new policy initiatives, provided the impetus for the development of a federally funded program in 1935 called Aid to Dependent Children. This program also suffered from the failures and limitations of its parent program. State-level administration, miserly grants, chronic lack of funds, moral supervision, and the stigma of relief continued to hobble efforts to provide single mothers, whether divorced, deserted, or widowed, with decent income support in hard times.
Further reading: Joanne L. Goodwin, Gender and the Politics of Welfare Reform: Mothers’ Pensions in Chicago, 1911-1929 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Linda Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled; Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890-1935 (New York: Free Press, 1994).
World History
