The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State

Elizabeth Garner Masarik's book, The Sentimental State, explores how middle-class women used nineteenth-century sentiment to generate political action in the Progressive Era, shaping the American welfare state and advocating for government support for infant and maternal welfare.

Format: Hardback
Length: 277 pages
Publication date: 01 April 2024
Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Elizabeth Garner Masarik's book, The Sentimental State, explores how middle-class women, both white and Black, used the nineteenth-century culture of sentiment to drive political change during the Progressive Era. In contrast to the eighteenth-century emphasis on rationalism and the development of the analytic mind, nineteenth-century sentimentalism emphasized human emotional responses and the public's capacity to feel sympathy to establish morally based truth and build support for improving the welfare of women and children. This sentimentality played a significant role in women's entry into the public sphere of political action, particularly in the formation of the American welfare state. Women recognized a social need and filled it by creating a network of voluntary organizations that tapped state funding and support when available. These organizations provided safeguards for women and children and created a network of female-oriented programs that both aided and policed women of child-bearing age at the turn of the twentieth century. Masarik's work demonstrates the strong connection between nineteenth-century sentimental culture and female political action, advocating government support for infant and maternal welfare in the twentieth century.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780820366067