Pat Thane and Tanya Evans have written a study of unmarried motherhood from 1918 to 2010. Organized chronologically, the book examines the experiences of unwed mothers and the policies of local and national governments toward them. Side by side with these accounts is an exploration of the role of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child (NC), a major lobbyist for and supporter of one-parent families. The authors choose to concentrate primarily on unmarried mothers rather than single fathers or the experience of the children of unwed parents, but they do include both working- and middle-class experiences. Their main sources are sociological studies, government documents, and the voluminous records of the NC. The authors also consult autobiographies and secondary accounts of unwed mothers and their children when these are available. These latter sources are particularly valuable in showing the many struggles of unwed mothers as they reared children in a society that privileged two-parent families.

The authors discuss both continuities and changes over the course of the century. The major transformations occurred during wartime and with the coming of the welfare state. After the First World War, the problems of unwed motherhood received attention owing to anxieties about the health of the children of “fallen heroes.” The NC began in 1918, in fact, as a result of this concern. All the same, the attention did not lead to the provision of generous financial aid, though it did engender legislation for legitimation and adoption. During and after the Second World War, the same problems emerged, but the Labour governments of 1945–50 and 1950–51 had a more vigorous response to them. Single mothers also benefitted from the full employment, the better housing, and the expanded social safety net associated with the welfare state. Over time, as well, the numbers of children born out of wedlock rose enough that the family formation was no longer as hidden or as novel, despite the negative assessments of psychologist John Bowlby in the 1950s. Interestingly, Thane and Evans argue that the 1950s were less conservative or dominated by Bowlby than historians have assumed; many sociologists challenged his results. Conversely, the authors also argue that the decade of the 1960s was not an age of permissiveness for single mothers; negative stereotypes remained common. These conclusions challenge easy generalizations about the years following the Second World War.

Though change certainly occurred, the authors find a great deal of continuity as well. Unsurprisingly, unwed mothers' poverty and lack of affordable housing were the major difficulties that crossed decades. In addition, a wide variation in the experiences of unwed mothers existed in every period. In contrast to the often stereotypical portrayals of them, these families ranged from stable cohabitation to illicit affairs to broken courtships and every permutation in between. Unfortunately, government policies rarely matched this heterogeneity, and, thus, many women and children did not receive enough aid. Modern practices (such as child benefits) helped far more than affiliation proceedings, but they, too, had administrative faults and blind spots. This was particularly true during Conservative administrations. For example, the Child Support Act of 1991 primarily focused on getting fathers to support first families, regardless of living situation, private agreements, or income. The result, according to the authors, was “arguably the greatest fiasco of the century in British social security policy” (186). Furthermore, the authors show the continuity in depictions of unwed mother over several decades. Commentators vilified them as sexually promiscuous, lazy, and/or pathetic victims of predatory men (the fact that these pictures contradicted each other bothered few). The fathers of unwed children figured less often in the rhetoric, but they were also likely to face harsh criticism if mentioned, either as evil seducers or as feckless deadbeats. The latter stereotype, in fact, had a resurgence during the 1980s. All these characterizations were far too broad to match reality, as the NC argued repeatedly.

Because social policy rarely matched the widely varying problems of single-parent homes, private charities were crucial to filling in the gaps. One thing the book makes abundantly clear is the importance of this public/private partnership. The NC got government grants for many years after the Second World War because the Ministry of Health recognized that it did essential work. The partnership was best shown by the career of Zoe Puxley, who championed the NC for decades while working as a civil servant in the Ministry of Health. After her retirement, she served as chairman of the NC (1953–58). Undoubtedly, the NC is the heroic heart of the book, doing excellent work on a shoestring budget, pioneering the use of radio and cinema to raise money, and repelling repeated attacks on its constituents. Thane and Evans admire its leaders, stating, “It is easy to caricature these philanthropists as patronizing ‘do-gooders,’ but their words and actions suggest a genuine sympathy and capacity to communicate with desperate women of all social backgrounds” (18). In addition, the NC's records were invaluable to this project, especially its annual reports, which offered numerous stories about the experiences of unmarried families. These stories do not exist elsewhere and demonstrate vividly the complexities of single parents' lives and why so many government policies failed. The more simplistic the legislation, the fewer families matched its expectations. For example, government attempts to get more money from fathers often floundered because many men could not afford to support more than one family, not because they were feckless. Similarly, most unmarried mothers were not teenagers trying to get council housing; such young mothers were a minority for the entire century. Nor were they lazy; they did not work full time because they could not make enough money to equal their benefits or because of the lack of affordable childcare. In general, Labour had a better record than the Tories on single parenthood, but Thane and Evans argue that the major lost opportunity was the failure to implement the Finer Report of 1974. Some improvements in benefits and housing did occur, but they were incomplete and later reversed. British governments' amnesia about previous failures meant that the NC (which merged with Gingerbread in 2007) had to fight prejudices and ignorance again and again.

Evans and Thane deserve credit for producing this engagingly written, well-organized study. The authors emphasize policy considerations rather than the social implications of single-parent families, but the book includes enough personal experiences to illustrate their many complexities. With its focus on one aspect of this large topic, the book points the way to future avenues of research in the burgeoning field of twentieth-century family history.