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The Enactment of Mothers' Pensions: Civic Mobilization and Agenda Setting or Benefits of the Ballot?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Cheryl Logan Sparks ,
Peter R. Walniuk  and
Theda Skocpol
Cheryl Logan Sparks
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Peter R. Walniuk
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Theda Skocpol
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Abstract

In this Review in 1993, Skocpol, Howard, Lehmann, and Abend-Wein analyzed the rapid enactment of mothers'pension laws in the American states in the 1910s. They concluded that the widespread federations of women's voluntary groups exerted a powerful influence on these enactments even before most American women had the right to vote. Sparks and Walniuk challenge these conclusions, noting that all 10 equal-suffrage states are among the 29 that passed mothers' pensions before 1916, and presenting new measures of suffrage endorsement and suffrage pressures in regression analyses suggesting that women's votes—actual and potential—played a major role in leading some states to adopt mothers' pensions earlier than their normal patterns of legislative change would predict. In response, Skocpol defends the 1993 conclusions. She adduces that the aggregate pattern of enactment of mothers'pensions corresponds much more closely to endorsements by women's groups than to suffrage timing and puts forth reasons to doubt the validity and significance of Sparks and Walniuk's tests.

Type
Controversies
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 89 , Issue 3 , September 1995 , pp. 710 - 730
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1995

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