The Work of Motherhood in Ireland 1945-74

Neave’s baby food promoted the ‘digestibility’ of their ‘pre-cooked, scientifically blended cereal food’. Woman’s Life, 26 November 1955, 22.

​The Mother and Baby column in a 1950 edition of Model Housekeeping magazine described key developmental milestones in baby’s first year, from smiling to walking. Connections were made between mother’s performance and baby’s optimum development, conveying the importance of mothers’ child-rearing work: ‘Mother’s job during this first year is to see that baby has a good start – she can do it if she gives him much of her time, all her love and care, and strict attention to practical details’.¹ Nurturing a baby and toddler was presented as requiring dedicated, effective care, that placed both physical and psychological demands on mothers. 
 
Using the work of motherhood from 1945 to 1974 as a framework, reveals the everyday contribution of mothers to life in Ireland. Exploring mothers’ work also presents the wider social and cultural context of the period, enabling a stronger understanding of life in Ireland in the second half of the twentieth century. The marriage bar, which was in place until 1973, represented the official discrimination mothers faced in relation to paid employment. Contrastingly, the work of motherhood constituted the unofficial restrictions they encountered. Media discourse surrounding working mothers discussed the difficulties in managing both sets of responsibilities. How mothers’ work shaped women’s relationship with paid employment is evident in a 1971 ESRI survey. The female participants - single, married and widowed - prioritised ‘no children’ as the preferred conditions for married women working. In addition to childcare responsibilities, managing housework ranked highly in the drawbacks participants perceived to working outside the home.²

Mary Maher, first women’s editor of the Irish Times, founding member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement, and mother of two, published an advice book for mothers in 1973 which began by defining child-rearing responsibilities as a ‘job’.³ In the introduction, Maher noted increased attention on mothers’ care of their children over the preceding thirty years. Since the mid-twentieth century, child-rearing advice had featured child development theories, originating from World War 2 studies by medical professionals on motherhood’s impact on children. Internationally, psychoanalysts such as D.W. Winnicott and paediatricians like Dr Spock became mainstream through their radio programmes and best-selling books. Winnicott advised mothers that how they managed their child-rearing responsibilities would have a lasting impact: ‘…the foundation of the health of the human being is laid by you in the baby’s first weeks and months’.⁴ Former Irish minister for health Dr Noel Browne reflected this in 1971, describing mothers as ‘fashioning from babyhood the total end-product of the mature adult personality’.⁵
 
However, this ‘fashioning’ of an ‘adult’ was not the only work mothers were expected to do. Mary Maher explored the scope of mothering, estimating the time spent on various jobs by mothers of new babies, showing that in addition to basic tasks such as feeding, mothers needed time for psychological duties such as rocking, considered essential to emotional development. This extensive analysis included household responsibilities which Maher claimed mothers undertook along with rearing work due to ‘cultural conditioning’.⁶
 
Drawing on child-rearing advice literature published in Ireland over the period, such as Mary Maher’s You and Your Baby, and women’s magazines, provides insight to the wide-ranging work associated with mothering. In analysing this work the impact of modernisation and consumerism becomes apparent. Advertisements in popular culture publications reveal how mothers’ work, and their position as consumers, were perceived.
 
Advertising for baby formula milk features a recognition of the psychological aspect of mothers’ feeding responsibilities, combined with references to medical professional approval, scientific advances, and modernising processes. Emotional reassurances of mothers who struggled with breastfeeding sought to convince the target market of the product’s suitability as a substitute. A 1959 Cow & Gate Milk Food advertisement provides an example of this. Alongside an image of a mother and baby, the text conveys the sensitive nature of mothers’ critical feeding decisions: ‘A pity she cannot feed him herself, but she can, and will, give him the food that she knows will lay the foundation of good health for the years that lie ahead’.⁷
 
Over ten years later, an advertisement for SMA formula milk similarly endeavoured to reassure mothers that the product enabled them to fulfil their vital duties while bottle-feeding: ‘even though she couldn’t breast-feed, she was able to give her baby a healthy start with S-M-A. Like mother's own milk, easy-to-mix S-M-A is a complete food containing everything necessary for healthy growth, including all important Vitamin D for bones that grow straight and strong.’⁸
 
Using science to reassure mothers that this option was the best choice also appears in  advertisements for babies’ first solid food products. Neave’s baby food promoted the ‘digestibility’ of their ‘pre-cooked, scientifically blended cereal food’.⁹ An emphasis on professional validation is evident in companies such as Neave’s and Heinz Baby Food publishing guidebooks created by medical experts to alleviate ‘the doubts and anxieties that beset every mother’.¹⁰
 
Examining the work of motherhood from 1945 to 1974 presents an opportunity to document the extensive range of duties assigned to mothers through their traditional gender role. Notably, in researching this topic, it is not only the details of mothers’ domestic tasks that come to light. The interconnection between modernisation, consumerism and the work of motherhood becomes apparent in a variety of ways. The assortment of child-rearing guidance material targeted at mothers, from magazine problem pages to advice books, conveys the potential of the women’s consumer power. An emphasis on mothers’ choices in how they carry out this essential work, and the products they employ to assist them, dominate the sources. Advertisements from the period demonstrate an awareness of the impact of mothering on children, and the adult they would eventually become. Drawing on scientific and medical developments, these advertisements present the modern Irish mother as concerned with the latest advances. The prevalence of branded child-rearing guide books written by experts suggests aspirations for proficient childrearing work. Studying mothers’ work in Ireland, reveals the complexity of the women’s role, while providing greater insight to the modernising social and cultural context of the period.
 
Author's contact details: Aviv Corrigan (UCD) [email protected]

Aviv got a special commendation at the 2025 Annual Conference 
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¹ ‘Mother and Baby,’ Model Housekeeping, April 1950, 395.

² Brendan M. Walsh, and Annette O'Toole, Women and Employment in Ireland: Results of a National Survey (Dublin, 1973), p. 73, p. 83.

³ Mary Maher, You and Your Baby (Dublin, 1973), p. 1.

⁴ D.W. Winnicott, The Child, the Family and the Outside World (London,1991), p. 26.

⁵ Dr Noel Browne, ‘Monks and Mothers,’ Irish Times, 10 February 1971, 11.

⁶ Maher, You and Your Baby, p. 144.

⁷ ‘Cow & Gate Milk Food advertisement’, Irish Housewife, 1959, 22.

⁸ ‘SMA advertisement’, You and Your Baby, A Family Doctor Publication by the Irish Medical Association in conjunction with the British Medical Association, 1970, 44.

⁹ Woman’s Life, 26 November 1955, 22.

 ¹⁰Woman’s Way, 19 May 1965, 56.