Review from previous edition ... a work that should make readers cheer, fume with rage and on a couple of occasions laugh out loud ... a valuable study.
Mary Evans, Times Higher Education
provides a series of painful snapshots of how difficult life was in this period for many umnarried mothers and their children .... Poverty, rather than motherhood per se, emerges as the real social evil here
Emily Wilson, Times Literary Supplement
This scholarly book will fascinate readers curious both about the lives of unmarried mothers and their children, and about family life and community networks more generally.
Joanna Bourke, BBC History Magazine
The new histories of the entire twentieth century represent a welcome historiographical trend, and this specific narrative links policy history to social history in a highly productive and readable fashion.
Lucy Delap, H-Soz-u-Kult
this ambitious book makes for an interesting read... For anyone interested in the history of the phenomenon of unmarried motherhood, the changes to the situation of the families concerned, the expansion of welfare provision and the role of the National Council in providing lobbying for their welfare, this is an invaluable book.
Journal of Social Policy
Thane and Evans make an important contribution to deconstructing the often negative stereotypes of both unmarried mothers themselves and also the milieu within which they became pregnant out of wedlock in the twentieth century.
Lesley A. Hall, Population Studies: A Journal of Demography
This is an engaging study of the changing policies and practices affecting unmarried motherhood across the twentieth century.
Simon Szreter, American Historical Review
For anyone interested in the history of the phenomenon of unmarried motherhood, the changes to the situation of the families concerned, the expansion of welfare provision and the role of the National Council in providing and lobbying for their welfare, this is an invaluable book. However, more broadly, the book deserves a wider audience as the idea of unravelling the history of particular group alongside a longstanding voluntary organisation such as the National Council could usefully be applied to other groups.
Tina Haux, Journal of Social Policy
...a thorough and challenging analysis...
April Gallway, English Historical Review
Pat Thane and Tanya Evans use a rich study of unmarried mothers to illuminate changing experiences of inequality, welfare, and family across the twentieth century invaluable to social historians, but also a provocative intervention in contemporary debates about social policy and the reform of the state.
Sian Pooley, Twentieth Century British History