Abstract
Norwegian women who did not qualify for maternity benefits under the sickness insurance law often sought public assistance from another law passed in 1915. Written by feminist Katti Anker Møller and her brother-in-law Johan Castberg, the Castbergian Children’s Laws guaranteed certain rights of inheritance to illegitimate children and granted single mothers access to financial assistance during confinement. Due to the rights this legislation granted illegitimate children, the Laws were contested and garnered international attention. This chapter shows how Møller and Castberg were able to get these controversial laws passed by framing the discussion of the laws as a form of protection for children and their mothers. This led to the passage of maternity assistance that was more comprehensive than the provisions outlined under the sickness insurance laws. Yet the assistance was also more restrictive and means-tested than the insurance benefit, and the chapter documents how Møller and Castberg’s rhetoric of protection led to this outcome. The chapter also outlines reasons why the Castberg Laws were passed in Norway at a time when many European countries limited welfare policies to women they found “deserving:” mainly widows and married mothers.
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Notes
- 1.
Retsbok, Case nr. 4, 1912 Akershus court. Adjudicated December 10, 1912, Oslo Lagdømme, Rettergang, Statsarkivet i Oslo.
- 2.
Not everyone thought that mothers who murdered their newborn babies should be free from punishment. Knut Hamsun, for example, vehemently opposed the expression of sympathy for these women and wanted the death penalty reinstituted as punishment for these crimes.
- 3.
Johan Evje, “Barnedrapet,” Dagbladet , December 16, 1912.
- 4.
For the sake of simplicity, I will use the contemporary term “illegitimate” throughout this chapter to refer to children who were born to unmarried parents.
- 5.
The notable exception is France where subsidies to poor families with multiple children were paid starting in 1913.
- 6.
Eva Feder Kittay and Ellen K. Feder, eds., The Subject of Care: Feminist Perspectives on Dependency (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002); Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon, “A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State,” Signs 19, no. 2 (1994): 309–336.
- 7.
Anna M. Peterson, “The Birth of a Welfare State: Feminists, Midwives, Working Women and the Fight for Norwegian Maternity Leave, 1880–1940,” (PhD diss., The Ohio State University, 2013).
- 8.
It is worth noting that the two laws under discussion in this article are the two that deal the most with financial exchanges, assistance and support, or what many would consider to be forms of welfare. The other laws are mainly concerned with codifying and regulating legal responsibilities and relationships between parties. The law on inheritance obviously contains financial aspects but for a very different reason. For these reasons, the conclusions I have drawn about these two laws and the particular sections of these laws that concern maternity are not readily applied to the other laws.
- 9.
Bjarne Markussen, Rettshistorier: Foreldre og barn i litteratur, film og lovgivning (Oslo: Unipub, 2008), 126.
- 10.
Odelstingstidende 1904/1905, 350.
- 11.
Nicolai Rygg, “Om børn, fødte udenfor ægteskab,” Norges officielle statistik nr. 37 (Kristiania: Aschehoug, 1907), 34.
- 12.
Ibid., 34–35.
- 13.
Ibid., 34.
- 14.
Ot. Prp. Nr. 5 1914, “Om utfærdigelse av lover om barn født utenfor egteskap,” 19–20.
- 15.
“Hjemløse mødre og spædbarn,” Nylænde , February 1, 1908, 40.
- 16.
Katti Anker Møller, “Ugifte mødre,” Nylænde, May 15, 1901, 151.
- 17.
Katti Anker Møller, “Ugifte mødre,” Nylænde, April 15, 1901, 116.
- 18.
Ibid., 117.
- 19.
The White Ribbon was a symbol of the temperance movement and this maternity home was operated in cooperation with the Norwegian chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.
- 20.
“Ugifte mødre,” Nylænde , January 15, 1903, 29.
- 21.
Italics added for emphasis. Didrik Konow, “Om underholdningsbidrag under svangerskabet,” Nylænde, October 1, 1897, 258.
- 22.
Hvidebaands Hjem to Katti Anker Møller, April 28, 1904, MS 2416:I, Håndskriftsamlingen, Nasjonalbiblioteket.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Norske kvinners nasjonalråd to Katti Anker Møller, May 3, 1913, Gina Krog, Håndskriftsamlingen, Nasjonalbiblioteket.
- 25.
Beretning om Norsk Kvindesagsforenings 25 aarige virksomhet June 28, 1884–June 28, 1909 utarbeidet av Alette Ottesen, 13. “Norske Kvinneforening 1904–1915,” Randi Blehr, Riksarkivet.
- 26.
Gina Krog, “De ‘uaegte’ barn og vor lovigning,” Nylænde , May 1, 1902.
- 27.
Lise Rosenberg, “Hagar og Ismael I Saras Telt? Holdninger til familie og ekteskap i debatten om de Castbergske barnelovene , belyst gjennom studiet av sentrale kvinnetidsskrifter,” (Hovedfagsoppgave i historie, Universitetet i Bergen, 1981).
- 28.
Ot. Prp. Nr. 5 1914, “Om utfærdigelse av lover om barn født utenfor egteskap, egtebarn m.m,” 1.
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
Inger Elisabeth Haavet, “Milk, Mothers and Marriage: Family Policy Formation in Norway and its Neighbouring Countries in the Twentieth Century,” in The Nordic Model of Welfare – A Historical Reappraisal, ed. Niels Finn Christiansen, et al. (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006), 193.
- 31.
Ot. Prp. Nr. 5 1914, “Om utfærdigelse av lover om barn født utenfor egteskap,” 47.
- 32.
Ibid., 130.
- 33.
Johan Castberg to Katti Anker Møller, n.d., MS 2416, Håndskriftsamlingen, Nasjonalbiblioteket.
- 34.
Ot. Prp. Nr. 5 1914, “Om utfærdigelse av lover om barn født utenfor egteskap,” 130.
- 35.
Fru Klaveness , “Lidt om Jordmødrenes økonomiske Kaar og sociale Stilling,” Tidsskrift for jordmødre, February 1, 1896, 19.
- 36.
Rygg , “Om børn, fødte udenfor ægteskab,” 34–35.
- 37.
Ot. Prp. Nr. 5 1914, “Om utfærdigelse av lover om barn født utenfor egteskap,” 130.
- 38.
Ibid., 88–103.
- 39.
Ibid., 130.
- 40.
Ann Taylor Allen, Feminism and Motherhood in Western Europe, 1890–1970: The Maternal Dilemma (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 82.
- 41.
Ot. Prp. Nr. 5 1914, “Om utfærdigelse av lover om barn født utenfor egteskap,” 88–103.
- 42.
Ibid., 94.
- 43.
Stortingsforhandlinger 1915, Forhandlinger i Odelstinget, “Lov om forsorg for barn,” 228.
- 44.
Ibid., 232.
- 45.
Ibid., 239–240.
- 46.
Ibid., 240.
- 47.
Ibid., 241.
- 48.
Ibid., 243.
- 49.
For the United States case, see: Molly Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890–1930 (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois Press, 1994); For a discussion of the Dutch case, see: Marian van der Klein, “The State, the women’s movement and maternity insurance, 1900–1930: a Dutch maternalism?” in Maternalism Reconsidered: Motherhood, Welfare and Social Policy in the Twentieth Century, eds. Marian van der Klein, Rebecca Jo Plant, Nichole Sanders, and Lori R. Weintrob (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012).
- 50.
Mary Lynn Stewart, Women, Work and the French State: Labour, Protection and Social Patriarchy, 1879–1919 (London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989), 189; Elinor Accampo, et al., eds., Gender and the Politics of Social Reform in France, 1870–1914 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1995).
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Peterson, A.M. (2018). “Protecting Mothers and Children:” The Castbergian Children’s Laws and Maternity Assistance for Single Mothers in the 1910s. In: Maternity Policy and the Making of the Norwegian Welfare State, 1880-1940. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75481-9_4
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