Best Interests

This dissertation traces the formation, development, and deployment of arguments in favor of maternal employment from the years before World War II through the mid-1990s. Drawing on academic journals, popular periodicals, government documents, feminist writings, and the personal papers of researchers, policy makers, and activists, I argue that defenses of maternal employment have taken two main forms: economic and psychosocial. Although both types appeared throughout this period, the relative influence of each waxed and waned. As a result of the legacy of depression and war mobilization, economic arguments predominated in the immediate postwar years. After a decade of sustained national growth and the rising influence of psychology and sociology, however, arguments that stressed the psychological and social benefits of working mothers became increasingly prominent. The trend reversed again in the 1970s as the economy stagnated and hostility toward the welfare state mounted.