The feisty warm-hearted "mum" has long figured as a symbol of
the working class in Britain, yet working-class history has
emphasized male organizations such as clubs, unions, or
political parties. Investigating a different dimension of social
history, Love and Toil focuses on motherhood among the London
poor in the late Victorian and Edwardian years, and on the
cultures, communities, and ties with husbands and children that
women created. Mothers' skills in managing the family budget,
earning income, and caring for their children were critical in
protecting households from the worst hardships of industrial
capitalism, yet poverty or the threat of it molded intimate
relationships and left its imprint on personalities. This book
is also a case study demonstrating the larger argument that the
concept of "motherhood" is more socially and historically
constructed than biologically determined. Shaky household
economics, pressure toward respectability, the close proximity
of neighbors, the precariousness of infant a