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A fully revised and rewritten second edition of a book which is now regarded as a classic. Takes full advantage of new research and places strong emphasis on voluntary action and the role of women in the shaping of social policy. It retains the excellent historical perspective that makes it unique among its competitors, comparing recent policy changes to pre-1950 welfare policy.
A clear, comprehensive survey of British history from 1900 to the present, integrating political, economic, social and cultural history.
At the end of the twentieth century more people are living into their seventies, eighties, nineties and beyond, a process expected to continue well into the next millennium. The twentieth century has achieved what people in other centuries only dreamed of: many can now expect to survive to old age in reasonably good health and can remain active and independent to the end, in contrast to the high death rate, ill health and destitution which affected all ages in the past. Yet this change is generally greeted not with triumph but with alarm. It is assumed that the longer people live, the longer they are ill and dependent, thus burdening a shrinking younger generation with the cost of pensions a...
Covers the stories of unwed mothers and one of the voluntary organization that supported them throughout the century: The National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child (which renamed itself), The National Council for One Parent Families, (and is now, after a merger, called Gingerbread).
How has the UK evolved into the country it is today? This clear, comprehensive survey of its history since 1900 explores the political, economic, social and cultural changes which have divided the nation and held it together, and how these changes were experienced by individuals and communities. Pat Thane challenges conventional interpretations of Britain's past based on stark contrasts, like the dull, conservative 1950s versus the liberated 'swinging sixties', and explores the key themes of nationalisms, the rise and fall of the welfare state, economic success and failure, imperial decline, and the UK's relationship with Europe. Highlighting changing living standards and expectations and inequalities of class, income, wealth, race, gender, sexuality, religion and place, she reveals what has (and has not) changed in the UK since 1900, why, and how, helping the reader to understand how our contemporary society, including its divisions and inequalities, was formed.
This book examines a decade of extraordinary ferment in ideas, and the battles about those ideas out of which emerged the Britain of the late-twentieth century.
This is the first book to describe the real lives of unmarried mothers, and attitudes towards them, in England from the First World War to the present day. The focus is on England because the legal positions, and other circumstances, of unmarried mothers were often very different elsewhere in Britain. The authors use biographies and memoirs, as well as archives and official sources, to challenge stereotypes of the mothers as desolate women, rejected by society and by their families, until social attitudes were transformed in the 'permissive' 1960s. They demonstrate the diversity of their lives, their social backgrounds, and how often they were supported by their families, neighbours, and the...
Seven contributors examine how the best thinkers and artists of each historical epoch in the West have treated old age. Full of surprising and fascinating facts, this is an uplifting companion for those who, like it or not, are beginning to understand the inevitability of their own aging process.
This important collection is the first to analyse the influence of women's movements on the emergence of Europe's welfare state from the 1880s to the 1950s and the limits of that influence. It compares the women's movements and social policies concerning women in the dictatorships of Italy, Germany and Spain with the democracies in Britain, France and Scandinavia and throws new light on feminism, especially in the inter-war period, making a significant contribution to women's studies.