First published in 1992, this book explores the efforts to counteract the high maternal and infant death rates present between the end of the nineteenth century and the Second World War. It looks at the problem in five different continents and shows the varying approaches used by the governments, institutions and individuals in those countries.

List of illustrations; Notes on contributors; Preface and Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction 1. Some international features of maternal morality, 1880-1950 Irvine Loudon 2. Maternity care and the threat of puerperal fever in Sydney, 1870-1939 Milton Lewis 3. Mothers, babies and hospitals: 'The London' and the provision of maternity care in East London, 1870-1939 Lara Marks 4. The medicalization of motherhood: doctors and infant welfare in the Netherlands, 1901-1930 Hilary Marland 5. 'The infant soldier': early child welfare efforts in Ontario Cynthia R. Comacchio 6. 'Why does Congress wish women and children to die?': the rise and fall of public maternal and infant health care in the United States, 1921-1929 Molly Ladd-Taylor 7. Ephemeral lives: the unremitting infant mortality of colonial Burma, 1891-1941 Judith Richell 8. Women and the state: maternal and child welfare in colonial Malaya, 1900-1940 Lenore Manderson 9. 'Getting close to the hearts of mothers': medical missionaries among African women and children in Johannesburg between the wars Debby Gaitskell 10. 'Dangerous Motherhood': maternity care and the gendered construction of Afrikaner identity, 1904-1939 Marijke du Toit 11. 'That welfare warfare': sectarianism in infant welfare in Australia, 1918-1939 Philippa Mein Smith 12. The costs of modern motherhood to low income families in interwar Britain Elizabeth Peretz; Bibliography; Index