Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood

(Paperback)

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2021 Shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2021 Longlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Crown 2021 'Fabulous' - The Times 'A milestone in women's history' - Observer 'Groundbreaking ... a fascinating read' - Herald In Britain today, three-quarters of mothers are in employment and paid work is an unremarkable feature of womens lives after childbirth. Yet a century ago, working mothers were in the minority, excluded altogether from many occupations, whilst their wage-earning was widely perceived as a social ill. In Double Lives, Helen McCarthy accounts for this remarkable transformation and the momentous consequences it has had for Britain. Recovering the everyday worlds of working mothers, this groundbreaking history forces us not only to re-evaluate the past, but to ask anew how current attitudes towards mothers in the workplace have developed and how far we have to go. 'Impressive and nuanced' - Guardian 'Brilliant' - Literary Review

Reviews

A fabulous new cultural history of working motherhood over the past 180 years It is truly Big History and Helen McCarthy has rightly made mothers feelings and desires her central theme ... McCarthy, measured but sympathetic, has done for working mothers what the historian David Kynaston did for the 1950s -- Melanie Reid * The Times *
There are no typical lives, Helen McCarthy writes in her impressive and nuanced study. Each is unique. But the best history writing, like hers, shows how representative the individual life is McCarthys is an economic and social history, but she also wants to give shade and texture to what has been thought and said about working mothers. In this she succeeds magnificently -- Alison Light * Guardian *
Helen McCarthy does a brilliant job of tracking the way attitudes to combining work and motherhood in the UK have changed from the nineteenth century to the present -- Vicky Pryce * Literary Review *
Groundbreaking A fascinating read * Herald *
Impeccably referenced For anyone interested not just in female employment, but in the labour market generally, it will be a valuable resource McCarthys impressive mining of contemporary sources brings one face to face with grinding toil, inadequate diets, and terror of illness -- Alison Wolf * Financial Times *
This is an important book Double Lives is a forceful reminder that attitudes to working mothers change abruptly and that politics, not nature, will decide the future of female employment -- Sarah Ditum * Spectator *
Authoritative in scope and calmly judged, but with an ear for voices and an eye for detail, Double Lives is the history we have long wanted of a subject still freighted with emotion and misunderstanding -- David Kynaston
Carefully researched, stylishly written and highly entertaining. The story is rich with female pioneers. McCarthys women of the world stand as a reminder that, for many women, ours is a world which has not yet been won -- Praise for 'Women of the World' * Sunday Telegraph *
Vivid and engaging. Complexities come out beautifully in the lives recovered in this book -- Praise for 'Women of the World' * Guardian *
As McCarthy eloquently argues in this important book full of brilliant vignettes, fighting to the top is usually harder for a woman -- Praise for 'Women of the World' * Independent *

Author Bio

Helen McCarthy is University Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Johns College. Her first book was The British People and the League of Nations and her second book, Women of the World: The Rise of the Female Diplomat, won Best International Affairs Book at the Political Book Awards 2015. @HistorianHelen