ABSTRACT

Focusing on the establishment of maternity care services predominantly for young, working-class white and coloured unmarried mothers, this article examines social and institutional responses to and changing conceptions of single motherhood and illegitimacy in early to mid-twentieth-century Cape Town, then one of the country’s largest and most well-established urban centres. It suggests that despite growing organisational support for the plight of the unmarried mother, such women continued to be seen as deviant and were treated in a manner that affirmed this status, although it is possible to track significant shifts in the way in which social workers and the government understood single motherhood between 1910 and 1950. It also argues that in Cape Town specifically, competing racial and religious concerns modulated the language used to describe unmarried motherhood, determining what kinds of services were available, where and for whom.

摘要

本文着眼于主要为年轻、工薪阶层的白人和有色人种未婚母亲建立产科护理服务，研究了 20 世纪中叶开普敦对单身母亲和非婚生的社会和制度的反应和不断变化的观念，然后全国最大和最完善的城市中心。它表明，尽管对未婚母亲的困境越来越多的组织支持，但这些妇女仍然被视为越轨，并以肯定这种地位的方式受到对待，尽管有可能追踪社会工作者和政府理解 1910 年至 1950 年间的单身母亲。它还认为，特别是在开普敦，