Mothers and the Sheppard-Towner Act-Taylor: Tess Gannaway

Discussion Questions

1. Did the agents of the Sheppard-Towner Act follow the bill's declarations exactly? Or did they take a little bit of license while enacting it? If so how?
2. How did race and class play into the Sheppard-Towner act? Who was the act successful for?
3. What determined the success of the act?
4. Examine the quote “Middle-class women benefited disproportionately from improvements in health care, employment opportunities in welfare programs, and the right to vote. As relatively privileged women made strides toward equality in the public sphere, motherhood became less central to their political identity. However, for poor and working-class women, who still shoulder the burden of child welfare in a period of economic recession and constricting government support, motherhood remains a dominant political concern” (339). What are the implications of this quote? What does it say about how we perceive Motherhood in our society today?