Mina All New: An Unmarried Mother on Italian Television in the Early 1960s

In 1960s Italy, mass culture played an important role in the circulation of ideas as tens-of-millions of people read magazines, listened to music, and watched television. In 1963, Mina – one of Italy’s most popular singers and a variety television star – had an illegitimate child. Despite this public moral lapse, her records continued to sell, magazines reported on her situation, and advertisers continued to use her to promote products. While the Italian state and the Catholic Church sought to guide the public and slow the pace of social change by restricting mass culture, Mina’s case reveals cracks in the mediation of moral content by the state broadcaster and demonstrates the growing influence of middle-class audiences by the end of Italy’s economic ‘miracle’. The article uses magazine and television content, market research, and viewer surveys to argue that Mina’s case shows the importance of mass culture in social change and new limits to church and state control over audiences. Mina’s career recovery would have been unthinkable a few years earlier. Her return to television variety in 1965 demonstrated the importance of mass culture in social change, and a new role for audiences, advertisers and enterprises in setting Italy’s moral codes.

Nepal – exploited by older married man – young unmarried mother accused of infanticide

In Nepal, it is considered sinful for a woman to have sexual intercourse before marriage while the male is exonerated. The female will be branded a loose character outcast by family and society. Only a small percentage of women who feel the other way and stand mentally strong or who have family support come out to seek justice. Despite the stringent law, the loopholes in the justice mechanism re-victimise female victims. We report a case where a young unmarried pregnant woman who gave birth alone was charged with infanticide.

Subvertendo o ideal da feminilidade: a Sarah e a agência feminina de Mary Lavin

Women’s living conditions in the Republic of Ireland, in the 1940s, were strongly conditioned by the Catholic beliefs, since the Church still held great influence at institutional levels and maintained close relations to leading politicians. The 1937 Constitution was the clearest proof of such relation, and tried to confine women’s role merely to the functions of wife and mother. The short story Sarah, written by Mary Lavin (1943), discloses the patriarchal standards and stifling social mores imposed on women at the time. Sarah, of the title, lives the struggle of being an unmarried mother in a conservative and merciless society. In this paper, I argue that, in spite of being inserted in such constrictive environment, Sarah denotes a position of agency, to the extent that she does not conform with such pre-established moral and socially acceptable behaviors.

El interés superior del menor en el caso de los hijos nacidos en España de madres que no transmiten su nacionalidad por aplicación del Derecho islámico. En particular, la reforma del Derecho marroquí = The superior interest of the child in the case of children born in Spain of mothers who do not transmit her nationality by applying the Islamic Law. In particular, the reform of Moroccan Law

Resumen: La imposibilidad de la mujer de transmitir la nacionalidad a sus hijos en algunos ordenamientos islámicos lleva consigo la apatridia del menor en caso de madre no casada, dado que los hijos nacidos fuera del matrimonio carecen de filiación paterna. Esta circunstancia ha obligado a la DGRN a pronunciarse sobre la solicitud de nacionalidad española de los hijos nacidos en España de padres marroquíes no casados, dando lugar a una doctrina al respecto que ha venido a ser refrendada por la modificación de la Ley de Nacionalidad marroquí. El objetivo de este trabajo es reflejar, a la luz del principio de igualdad constitucional, la evolución de la legislación marroquí en esta materia, tomando como referencia las resoluciones emitidas por la DGRN, a fin de valorarlas teniendo en cuenta el interés superior del menor.Palabras clave: nacionalidad, filiación, Derecho islámico, Derecho marroquí, interés superior del menor.Abstract: The inability of a woman to transmit her nationality to her children in some Islamic systems entails the statelessness of the child in the case of an unmarried mother, since children born out of wedlock are deprived of paternal filiation. This circumstance has forced the DGRN to pronounce on the application of Spanish nationality of the children born in Spain of Moroccan unmarried parents, giving rise to a doctrine in this respect that has been endorsed by the modification of Moroccan Nationality Law. The aim of this paper is to reflect, in the light of the principle of constitutional equality, the evolution of Moroccan legislation in this area, taking as reference the resolutions issued by the DGRN, in order to assess them taking into account the best interests of the child.Keywords: nationality, filiation, Islamic law, Moroccan law, the best interest of the child.

Voluntary action in the ‘welfare state’: the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child

As state involvement in the provision of social and medical welfare grew during the twentieth-century, it was often seen as antagonistic to the work of voluntary associations which had pioneered many different types of welfare provision. Pat Thane argues that such assumptions are a false dichotomy and develops a case study of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child (NCUM), founded in 1918, as a means through which to assess the changing landscape of twentieth-century social welfare and the relationship between voluntary action and public sector welfare. The work of organizations like the NCUM actually intensified with the growth of state welfare provision from the inter-war years onwards; a pattern which was duplicated across the welfare sector more generally Thane contests political arguments that the ‘big society’ should replace the supposed ‘stranglehold’ of state welfare by highlighting the extent to which the historical relationship between voluntary associations and the state has actually been creative and mutually sustaining.