Cold War Comforts: Canadian Women, Child Safety, and Global Insecurity

Cold War Comforts examines Canadian women’s efforts to protect children’s health and safety between the dropping of the first atomic bomb in Hiroshima in 1945 and the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Amid this global insecurity, many women participated in civil defence or joined the disarmament movement as means to protect their families from the consequences of nuclear war. To help children affected by conflicts in Europe and Asia, women also organized foreign relief and international adoptions.

In Canada, women pursued different paths to peace and security. From all walks of life, and from all parts of the country, they dedicated themselves to finding ways to survive the hottest periods of the Cold War. What united these women was their shared concern for children’s survival amid Cold War fears and dangers. Acting on their identities as Canadian citizens and mothers, they characterized with their activism the genuine interest many women had in protecting children’s health and safety. In addition, their activities offered them a legitimate space to operate in the traditionally male realms of defence and diplomacy. Their efforts had a direct impact on the lives of children in Canada and abroad and influenced changes in Canada’s education curriculum, immigration laws, welfare practices, defence policy, and international relations.

Cold War Comforts offers insight into how women employed maternalism, nationalism, and internationalism in their work, and examines shifting constructions of family and gender in Cold War Canada. It will appeal to scholars of history, child and family studies, and social policy.

1

Cold War Canada: Mobilizing Women for a New War

Tarah Brookfield

Chapter one examines how women were engaged by the state in the 1940s and 1950s to contribute to civil defence plans designed to protect civilians from a nuclear war. Members of women’s organizations, as well as nurses, teachers, and social workers, were recruited for emergency preparedness work related to the health and welfare of children and families.

2

The Home Front Becomes the Frontline: Fallout Shelter Madness

Tarah Brookfield

Chapter two focuses on the government’s attempts to engage women in support of backyard and basement fallout shelters for their families’ survival in the late 1950s. The lack of consensus and criticism from homemakers contributed to the shelter program’s ultimate failure.

3

In the Name of Children: The Disarmament Movement

Tarah Brookfield

Chapter three explores women’s involvement in the peace and disarmament movement during the 1950s red scare and the surge of ban the bomb groups in the early 1960s. The focus is on the internationalist and maternalist campaigns of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and The Voice of Women.

4

Seeds of Destiny: The United Nations and Child Welfare

Tarah Brookfield

Chapter four analyzes women’s roles and experiences working and volunteering with three United Nations programs dedicated to child welfare. This chapter considers how child focused foreign relief programs such as UNICEF’s popular Trick or Treat campaign was considered a ‘safe’ populist expression of internationalism and a critical part of Canada’s defence plans.

5

Long-Distance Mothers: Foster Parent Plan Programs

Tarah Brookfield

Chapter five examines the sponsorship of orphaned, ill or impoverished children living in sites of Cold War conflict through foster parent plan programs. The relationships created between foster mother and child could be one of great affection, but they were also affected by the broader Cold War politics triggering this form of relief and the sometimes conflicting expectations of adults, children, and sponsoring organizations.

6

A Change in Direction: Starving, Knitting, and Caring for Vietnam

Tarah Brookfield

Chapter six shows Canadian women’s growing awareness about the cost of the Vietnam War on civilians and Canada’s own complicity in the conflict. This dialogue sparked Canadian women’s vigorous participation in the anti-war movement and new relief campaigns that offered foreign relief for the first time to children living in a communist regime.

7

The Politics of Orphans: Origins of International Adoption and Operation Babylift

Tarah Brookfield

Chapter Seven analyzes an alternative and controversial response to the high numbers of war affected children living in Vietnam and neighbouring Cambodia, international adoption. The transfer of children across borders in order to find a new mother and father reinforced the idea that families, even in non-traditional forms, played an important role in Canada’s Cold War.