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Fallen Woman, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890-1945). By Regina G. Kunzel. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. xii, 264 pp. $27.50, ISBN 0-300-05030-9.)
In her well-written and persuasively argued Fallen Women, Problem Girls, Regina G. Kunzel charts the shifting representations and experiences of unwed mothers. Throughout, her vivid and nuanced depiction of differences among women advances our understanding of the complex operations of gender, class, and race.
In the late nineteenth century, evangelical women turned to the mission of rescuing "fallen women" pregnant out of wedlock, portraying them as helpless victims of predatory men. Evangelical reformers established maternity homes to shelter their charges and encouraged unwed mothers to raise their children as a redemption for the sin of illicit sexuality.
By the 1910s and 1920s, the...