Double Lives

A fabulous new cultural history of working motherhood over the past 180 years … It is truly Big History and Helen McCarthy has rightly made mothers’ feelings and desires her central theme ... McCarthy, measured but sympathetic, has done for working mothers what the historian David Kynaston did for the 1950s -- Melanie Reid * The Times *
“There are no typical lives,” Helen McCarthy writes in her impressive and nuanced study. Each is unique. But the best history writing, like hers, shows how representative the individual life is … McCarthy’s is an economic and social history, but she also wants to give “shade and texture” to what has been thought and said about working mothers. In this she succeeds magnificently -- Alison Light * Guardian *
Helen McCarthy does a brilliant job of tracking the way attitudes to combining work and motherhood in the UK have changed from the nineteenth century to the present -- Vicky Pryce * Literary Review *
Groundbreaking … A fascinating read * Herald *
Impeccably referenced … For anyone interested not just in female employment, but in the labour market generally, it will be a valuable resource … McCarthy’s impressive mining of contemporary sources brings one face to face with grinding toil, inadequate diets, and terror of illness -- Alison Wolf * Financial Times *
This is an important book … Double Lives is a forceful reminder that attitudes to working mothers change abruptly and that politics, not nature, will decide the future of female employment -- Sarah Ditum * Spectator *
Authoritative in scope and calmly judged, but with an ear for voices and an eye for detail, Double Lives is the history we have long wanted of a subject still freighted with emotion and misunderstanding -- David Kynaston
Carefully researched, stylishly written and highly entertaining. The story is rich with female pioneers. McCarthy’s “women of the world” stand as a reminder that, for many women, ours is a world which has not yet been won -- Praise for 'Women of the World' * Sunday Telegraph *
Vivid and engaging. Complexities come out beautifully in the lives recovered in this book -- Praise for 'Women of the World' * Guardian *
As McCarthy eloquently argues in this important book full of brilliant vignettes, fighting to the top is usually harder for a woman -- Praise for 'Women of the World' * Independent *