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In "Mothers of a New World", historians of Australia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Sweden, and the United States provide a sweeping view of the scope of women's work and make comparisons across societies and over time. The essays analyze tensions between reformers and clients arising from differences of class, race, ethnicity, and religion. Moving to the level of state politics, they examine the outcomes of maternalist initiatives within specific political contexts including conservative and social democratic regimes; limited, decentralized, and strong centralized states; and highly religious and secular cultures. Though the maternalists' "motherworld" was never fully realized, their vision helped shape modern welfare states throughout the West. This collection aims to encourage readers to revise their accounts of welfare state development by moving issues of gender and the work of female reformers from the margins to the centre.