Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: “What Nature Itself Demands:” The Development of Maternity Legislation at the End of the Nineteenth Century.- Chapter 3: “For the Health of the People:” Public Health and the Compensation of Maternity Leave in the 1910s.- Chapter 4: “Protecting Mothers and Children:” The Castbergian Children’s Laws and Maternity Assistance for Single Mothers in the 1910s.- Chapter 5: “Getting the Most Money Possible:” Women’s Responses to the Implementation of Maternity Laws, 1916-1930.- Chapter 6:  “Mothers’ Freedom is the Key to Women’s Emancipation:” Feminist Efforts to Expand Maternity Legislation in the Interwar Period.- Chapter 7: Conclusion.- Index.

This book traces women’s influence on maternity policy in Norway from 1880-1940. Maternity policies, including maternity leave, midwifery services and public assistance for mothers, were some of the first welfare policies enacted in Norway. Feminists, midwives, and working women participated in their creation and helped transform maternity policies from a restriction to a benefit. Situating Norway within the larger European context, this book contributes to discussions of Scandinavian welfare state development and further untangles the relationship between social policy and gender equality. This study of poor, rural women alongside urban middle-class feminists is rooted in an inclusive archival source base that speaks to the interplay between local and national welfare officials and recipients, the development and implementation of laws in diverse settings, the divergent effects maternity policies had on women, and women’s varied responses.

Assesses the influence that women had on Norwegian maternity legislation from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century Examines how feminists, midwives and working girls shaped maternity policy, considering the poor and rural, and the urban and middle-class Utilises previously unused sources from Norwegian regional and national archives