Sinners? Scroungers? Saints? is the first book to describe the real lives of unmarried mothers, and attitudes towards them, in England from the First World War to the present day. Pat Thane and Tanya Evans use biographies and memoirs, as well as archives and official sources, to challenge stereotypes of the mothers as desolate women, rejected by society and by their families, until social attitudes were transformed in the 'permissive' 1960s. They...