Christine Adams is a professor of history at St. Mary's College of Maryland and the author of A Taste for Comfort and Status: A Bourgeois Family in Eighteenth-Century France.

"Richly detailed, well grounded in existing historiography, yet fully willing to challenge existing notions. . . . An excellent monograph with applications in a wide variety of national and transnational historical fields, as well as in the study of the history of childhood."--H-Childhood  "Anyone who is interested in the history of the welfare state would do well to read it."--Journal of Interdisciplinary History"An engaging story of the civic associations that women of privilege created and the ways in which women negotiated between their own expectations, public demands, and state interference."--H-France Review

• Covertitle pageCopyrightContentsAcknowledmentsIntroduction: Maternal Societies in the Nineteenth Century1. "Moses Saved from the Waters": The Origins of the Society for Maternal Charity2. "A Grand and Official Institution": The Society for Maternal Charity under Napoleon3. Modeling Maternal Behavior: Relations between the Dames Visiteuses and the Pauvres Meres Indigentes4. In the Public Interest: Charitable Associations and Public-utility Status5. "Seconding the Views of the Government": Maternal Societies and the StateEpilogue: Toward a Welfare StateNotesIndex

Christine Adams is a professor of history at St. Mary's College of Maryland and the author of A Taste for Comfort and Status: A Bourgeois Family in Eighteenth-Century France.

"Richly detailed, well grounded in existing historiography, yet fully willing to challenge existing notions. . . . An excellent monograph with applications in a wide variety of national and transnational historical fields, as well as in the study of the history of childhood."--H-Childhood  "Anyone who is interested in the history of the welfare state would do well to read it."--Journal of Interdisciplinary History"An engaging story of the civic associations that women of privilege created and the ways in which women negotiated between their own expectations, public demands, and state interference."--H-France Review

• Covertitle pageCopyrightContentsAcknowledmentsIntroduction: Maternal Societies in the Nineteenth Century1. "Moses Saved from the Waters": The Origins of the Society for Maternal Charity2. "A Grand and Official Institution": The Society for Maternal Charity under Napoleon3. Modeling Maternal Behavior: Relations between the Dames Visiteuses and the Pauvres Meres Indigentes4. In the Public Interest: Charitable Associations and Public-utility Status5. "Seconding the Views of the Government": Maternal Societies and the StateEpilogue: Toward a Welfare StateNotesIndex