During both the Weimar and Nazi eras, politicians across the political spectrum, clergy, feminists, and doctors were united in the belief that the promotion of motherhood was necessary to boost the birthrate and improve national health. Perceiving women's resistance to motherhood as central to the nation's problems, many Germans advocated rallying women to resume their duties as mothers, while others argued that Germany's health depended on controlling who became a mother. Profound differences in how politicians on the Right and Left envisioned motherhood – and hence how to rehabilitate it – opened debates on Malthusianism and neo-Malthusianism, racial hygiene, pronatalism, and even sterilization.

Celebrating and honoring mothers presented itself to Weimar politicians as a way to unite the divided nation and strengthen the population. With the strong support of the churches, state officials increasingly recognized mothers' crucial contribution to society. Yet as they weighed welfare and pronatalism against the implications of sexual equality as enshrined in the Constitution, they found that no consensus existed about how to celebrate mothers. They disagreed about whether mothers should be publicly or privately honored and whether all or just some mothers deserved recognition.

In 1940, when Frau Ludwig bore her fourth child, Uli, she was awarded the Honorary Cross for German Mothers. Shortly after her daughter's birth, a recent high school graduate was sent to her by the National Socialist Women's Organization (NSF) to help Frau Ludwig with housework and childcare and fulfill her own Pflichtjahr (Service Year) obligations. Frau Ludwig, who had heeded her mother's advice – “Hilde, don't put your children in a kindergarten! You have them only so long for yourself” – was grateful for another pair of hands to help with her older children (ages five, three, and two). The teenager remained with the family during the war and helped when the fifth and sixth Ludwig children were born.

Though she partook of some of the benefits the Nazi state extended to child-rich mothers, Frau Ludwig opted out of others: she attended no courses on mothering, never visited a recuperation home, and did not recall bringing any of her children to advice centers. And she did not otherwise recognize any state influence on her experience as a mother. Moreover, she categorically denied having had her children because the Nazis wanted large families, attributing her decision instead to a belief that “better situated people” needed to have big families for Germany's sake. Frau Ludwig told me that she fundamentally believed that mothering was a woman's private responsibility, but she did not turn away the help proffered to aid child-rich families.

Lina E. was employed as a maid when she became pregnant in 1922 at the age of twenty-three. One month before she gave birth to her daughter, Martha, she quit her job and moved in with her parents. When her lover, August K., denied paternity and refused to pay child support, Lina and Martha's case became embroiled in a complex system of legal and social policies governing illegitimacy and single motherhood. During the fifteen years of Lina's involvement with the courts and child welfare agencies, children born outside of marriage and their mothers were at the center of debate at the national level, and policy implementation underwent substantial change at the local level.

For Weimar politicians, single mothers represented a breach of traditional morality, while their children promised to ameliorate the falling birthrate. Repeatedly, Weimar policymakers asked: How could the state admonish single mothers without hurting their children – or, inversely, how could it help illegitimate children without condoning the behavior of their unmarried mothers? What would deter childbirth outside of marriage if the state removed the stigma of single motherhood? The high infant mortality rates after the First World War prompted all politicians to agree with the general goal of improving the health and well-being of illegitimate children. Given the financial cost of raising a child, however, few wanted the state to shoulder the burden. Most believed fathers should support their illegitimate children. But what if paternity could not be proven?

In 1932, Frau R. petitioned the Dortmund Landgericht (regional court) for a divorce from her husband Otto, claiming that in his drunken stupors, he threatened her with statements such as: “You whore! You swine! I will beat you to death.” Earlier that year, he had hit her in the face with his fists. Otto did not deny the charges against him but responded with the counterclaim that his wife was having an affair with another man.

In 1939, Herr Voges, a photographer, filed a petition to divorce his wife, Beate, on the grounds that she neglected the household and refused to cook meals for him. He further asserted that her multiple criticisms of the Führer and defense of Jews made her an enemy of the state (staatsfeindlich eingestellt). In her rebuttal, Frau Voges flatly denied that she had neglected her household, portraying herself as a good wife and mother whose husband had so severely abused her that she had appealed to the Führer himself for advice. While she admitted that she thought some Jews were good Germans, she emphasized that overall she supported the Third Reich.

The Dortmund Landgericht judges who heard these two cases bore responsibility for determining whether the legal conditions for divorce existed. In reaching their verdicts, the judges evaluated not just the facts presented to them in the courtroom but also their own ideas about gender and marriage and their perceptions of the “public good.”

When Lina E., a maid, gave birth to her daughter Martha in 1922, the man she identified as the father denied paternity, and Lina began motherhood without any financial support. When Langenholzhausen city authorities discovered that Lina was virtually penniless, Martha's guardian took the case to court, whereupon the court ordered August K., a bricklayer, to pay child support. For sixteen years, the court, together with the youth department and Martha's state-appointed guardian, ensured that August paid and that Lina and Martha received economic assistance.

At a Mother's Day celebration in Detmold, Frau Brielmann received the bronze Honorary Cross for German Mothers. Her award, the highest honor given to women under National Socialism, came after a close investigation of her mothering skills, her racial background, and her family's “worthiness.” During the meal that followed the distribution of the crosses, Frau Brielmann told the women at her table, “They should have given me the means to stop bearing children instead of the award.” Local Nazi authorities, offended by this remark, began an investigation seeking grounds to revoke Frau Brielmann's Honorary Cross.

Herr Neske, a soldier, returned from the Russian front to discover that his exhausted wife had been strained to the limits caring for their two young daughters in war-torn Detmold. He turned to the local National Socialist authorities for help.

During the summer of 1932, Frau Dewald, a twenty-two-year-old university student, served as a volunteer in the Labor Service on the island of Soest. When she received her first marriage proposal from a co-worker, she remembers thinking: “Me, marry?! Now, when I have just begun to live? No. No…. Impossible.” Instead, she “wanted to live,” she says: “Life stood before me. I wanted to earn money – not always be dependent on my father.” Many Germans would have seen Frau Dewald's postponement of marriage and her search for independence as symptomatic of what was wrong with gender relations after the First World War. If young women balked at marriage, the possibility of rebuilding and repopulating the nation after years of war and turmoil could never be realized.

Women like Frau Dewald seemed to exacerbate the demographic disruption caused by the war and prompted Weimar authorities to get involved in marriage. But beyond a general desire to influence marriage, no consensus existed about what form this influence should assume. While racial theory and eugenics offered the possibility of creating a stronger, healthier race, Weimar politicians did not agree that the state had the right to intervene in marriage. While left-wing politicians advocated strengthening the health of marriage by providing birth control and material support, their more conservative colleagues argued that the state should intervene to prevent “undesirable” marriages.

During both the Weimar and National Socialist eras, many Germans perceived the family to be the critical foundation upon which Germany's future depended. In political debate, policy formation, and unofficial discourse, Germans articulated the view that the nation's survival rested on a revival of marriage and motherhood. Providing German men and women with the security needed to bear children would, they hoped, usher in economic prosperity, create social stability, and raise moral standards. Through family-directed legislation, both Weimar and National Socialist policymakers sought to raise the birthrate, decrease infant mortality, and improve public health. Since the two regimes had a number of aims in common, some historians have viewed their family policies as developing in a continuous line. Indeed, certain programs introduced by the Weimar governments were continued by the Nazis once they took power. During both eras, policymakers advocated the use of marriage certificates, financed kindergartens, and celebrated Mother's Day. And yet, as this study has demonstrated, a dramatic transformation in family policy followed the Nazi takeover. Parliamentary debates gave way to monolithic decrees as the Nazis introduced a race-based ideology and showed a much greater willingness to intervene directly into families. The result was fundamental change in both the aim and impact of family policy.

During the Weimar era, lawmakers across the political spectrum agreed that the German family was critical to social stability and that the war had dangerously weakened the family.

During the Weimar and National Socialist eras, the belief that children were best off in families enjoyed almost unanimous support. Despite this, national demographics made it readily apparent that not all German children could be raised in traditional families. The vast number of orphans and fatherless and indigent children, together with the low birthrate and high infant mortality rate, propelled German officials to reconceptualize their role in helping families and children. It was in dealing with children whose families had broken down that the Weimar and National Socialist regimes faced their most urgent family-oriented responsibility: defining the institution of the family in such a way as to enable the creation of non–biologically based groups that functioned as families.