 Hi, Professor Gerald Friedman, Department of Economics University of Massachusetts. And we're here today to talk about a second dimension of the New Deal, the maternalist dimension, maternalist as in having to do with mothers. And this goes back to another source of support for social welfare programs in the United States and European countries as well, which is the idea that home production activities cannot be handled through the market. Children can never buy their parents' time. Therefore, we have to find a way, if we're going to be reproduced into the next generation, we have to find a way to support the work, the home production work of parents. Now, this is all true. Children cannot buy their parents' time. Therefore, parents who spend time with their children or parents who hire somebody else to spend time with their children, somebody has to pay for these activities. Somebody other than the children. That said, the natural limit of maternalist policies is the assumption that it is to be the mother who will be the stay-at-home parent, or put it another way, the mother will be a stay-at-home parent. And we need legislation to protect women as mothers. And this was a strong theme running through American social welfare policies throughout the 20th century into the 21st century. It's, if anything, an even stronger theme running through European countries. Just a side note, it's a bigger issue in Europe than in the United States because of military considerations, especially in France, where the French were acutely aware going into entering the 20th century that Germany was a lot larger and was growing faster. The French were very concerned that there are not enough Frenchmen in the world, not enough Frenchmen to take up arms to defend la France from the Germans. So the French government was among the first to actively sponsor child rearing by providing family allowances, payments to mothers, et cetera, the same types of policies were followed later in Germany. Most successfully in East Germany, oddly enough, followed in Scandinavia, followed in the Soviet Union. Family aid policies to encourage child bearing so that there would be more soldiers. Not sure how mothers would feel about this. Well, anyway. But in the United States, this was a theme that goes back to before the Brandeis brief but is well represented in the so-called Brandeis brief, written by Louis D. Brandeis, presented to the Supreme Court in the case of Muller versus Oregon. This was a case involving progressive era, protective legislation for women. Saying that women working in, in this case in the laundry, could only work for a certain number of hours. And it was an attempt to limit the hours worked or the hours that workers could be expected to work. In a period when the Supreme Court would not allow this type of protective legislation to cover men. Because men had a liberty of contract. You cannot restrict what they do. Because if they do it voluntarily and they're not slaves, so we assume that they're doing it voluntarily, then to restrict what they're doing, restrict the number of hours they agree to work, restrict the conditions under which they agree to work, then you interfere with their out of contract. The Brandeis brief said that this approach doesn't apply to women. And in Muller versus Oregon, 1908, the Supreme Court agreed, accepted Brandeis's arguments. Louis D. Brandeis, by the way, 10 years later, or eight years later in 1916, would be appointed to the Supreme Court, where he was a leading progressive figure on civil rights and social legislation, defending social legislation for the next 20 years. Brandeis argues that women are weaker than men and have a special social role because they're going to be mothers. Women's physical structure and the performance of maternal functions places at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence, Brandeis argues. Standing for long times on her feet at work could have injurious effects upon her body. And as healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring, the physical well-being of women becomes an object of public interest, Brandeis argued. Supreme Court bought this. And it became legitimate in the eyes of the Supreme Court that this whole half of the human race is separate from the liberty of contract. Women are not covered by the liberty of contract. Government can regulate the activities of employers and establishments employing women. And this became a big crack in the wall of liberty of contract because if companies are going to hire women and men, if they're not going to be able to employ the women for more than eight hours, progressives were hoping that they would close down after eight hours so that the men would only be working for eight hours. It didn't work that way. What else could employers do? You can only employ the women for eight hours. You want to be open for 10 hours. Do you close after eight hours so that the men leave as well? Or do you not hire women? So progressive, maternalist legislation designed to protect women often became an obstacle to women's employment. And for the maternalist, that was fine because the goal was not to enrich women, not to give women more money so that they could be better mothers. The goal was to make women better mothers. And that could be achieved by not having women working and by raising the wages of men, push women out of jobs. There's less competition for the labor of men. Men get higher wages. And men then can earn a family wage, another concept popular with the maternalists. Men could earn a family wage where they could support their women at home. So the maternalist argument, defending women's role as mothers, becomes an argument saying that what women should do is be mothers. Women should be at home as mothers. This was a strong argument through the 20th century America. Women went into the factories during World War II and were then pushed back out because they should not be taking the jobs of men. Men need these jobs so that they can support their wives. Regular arguments that the first ones to be laid off during economic downturn should be the women because the women aren't supporting a family. Men are supporting a family. You don't want to lay off that guy because he has a wife and kids depending on him. She's either working just for herself or she's working for pin money. She doesn't really need the work. You don't need to worry about women earning less than men because it's just pin money or just money until they get married and have children. And this becomes a circular argument because why do women leave work to get married? Because they're not earning enough money to support a family. It becomes a way that even funny looking guys like Woody Allen can get beautiful women to marry him or marry them because women need to be married since maternalist attitudes, not just the legislation, but the legislation as well, makes it harder for them to have good well-paying jobs. So this becomes a major theme through the 20th century that begins to break up precipitously. And I do not understand. I mean, I lived through some of this and I still don't understand how it happened that happened so quickly. Give you a sense of it. In the 1960s, early 1960s, about half of women in college were education majors. Indeed, Smith College in the late 1960s, a friend of mine did this research using alumni data or alumni data. Suddenly 90% of Smith College graduates got jobs as teachers. Sometime dramatically around 1973, the proportion of women studying education drops like a rock. And by 1980, it's only a little higher than the 10% rate for men. While the proportion of women among people getting degrees in medicine, law, MBA programs, dentistry programs jumps from under 10% for each of these programs in 1972 up to about 40% by 1980, with most of the increase coming in four years, 1973 to 1977. I mean, remarkable change in the attitudes of young women, which no doubt reflects all sorts of change in society and causes all sorts of change in society. How does it happen so quickly? What drove this? I'm not sure. But if any of you are looking for a subject, for a senior thesis, or later in life, for a PhD dissertation, there you have it. I don't think that this is something that is very well understood yet. And it's one of the most important changes in our times and in our lives. So we'll pick up next time and talk about the decline of the New Deal order. Thank you. Have a good day. Bye.