Maternalist Visions: The Uncertain Judicial Path to Social Rights

• In Event: Institutional Paths to Equality: The Military, Courts, Marriage, and the Family

Abstract

The Juvenile Court movement began to spread across the country in 1899, the handiwork of female progressive era activists and their allies. They, along with juvenile court judges, provided the impetus behind mothers' pensions, which were, in many places, administered by juvenile courts. Those working to nationalize mothers' pensions assumed the Children's Bureau would administer them, but they ended up in the SSA, where no commitment to women and children existed. The lineage of the means-tested legacy of the juvenile court-administered programs remained. Why and how did this generation of progressive era maternalists lose control over mothers' pensions, and arguably, over a vision of how to address social problems?

Author

• Kathleen S. Sullivan, Ohio University