Private Lives, Public Policy: 100 Years of State Intervention in the Family

Elaine Porter is an associate professor of sociology at Laurentian
University.

This book is about the contradictory nature of state-family relations,
which is at the core of many feminist debates. It turns on the issue of
whether the state merely replaced familial patriarchy or has been a
liberating force for women. To her credit, Ursel keeps an open mind in
her analysis of the historical record and recognizes that it may be
both. The arguments in this book should dispel the suspicions of closet
functionalists that the feminist approach is as one-sided as
male-dominated sociology. Her consideration of legislation at three
levels of government, in three policy arenas (family, labor, and
welfare), in two provinces (Ontario and Manitoba), goes well beyond a
monolithic characterization of the state. She takes in a large sweep of
history (from 1884 to 1968) divided into three periods, each defined by
escalation of state intervention.

What this book contributes to socialist feminist analyses is its
formulation of the welfare-state development as a sequence of
historically grounded resolutions of contradictions between production
and reproduction inherent in any society. It brings to light many
hitherto confidential reports (such as the private papers of William
Lyon Mackenzie King), which, together with Ursel’s logical
extrapolations, build the case that family allowance legislation was a
concession to reproduction that deflected from growing labor pressure
for lifting wage restraints. Rather than discard policies that did not
support her arguments, she sought explanations outside the framework of
her analyses, as in the case of differences in dower rights between
Western and Eastern Canada.

Ursel herself recognizes that her case is more clear-cut in the first
two historical periods than in the post–World War II period. So little
of the equation of reproduction with the privatized nuclear family in
the first two periods is applicable to the present period. Her analysis
of the most recent period amounts to a post-hoc speculation that the
globalization of the economy has allowed business to shift the costs of
reproduction to women in Third World countries. Perhaps greater
elaboration of the central terms in the debate would offer insight into
the operations of current productive-reproductive relations on a global
scale. Her redefinition of reproductive interests as those pitted
against the commodification of human life is a conceptual transformation
that requires the same careful attention she has given to the
pre–World War II periods.