National University of
Ireland Maynooth
HY 388: The Family in Modern Ireland
Third Arts, 2000-2001
Dr. Moira Maguire
The course aims to introduce students to
the history of childhood and family life from the pre-famine period to the
present. Definitions of childhood and family, and of parental rights and
responsibilities, are not static concepts but have shifted and been
re-negotiated at key moments of political, economic, and social turmoil. This
course examines these shifts and re-negotiations primarily in Ireland with
occasional references to other Western societies to point out the uniqueness and
similarities of the Irish experience. We will also consider how poverty and
wealth shaped experiences of childhood and family life as well as the
differences between urban and rural experiences. The course will progress
thematically to facilitate an analysis of changes over time, and the political
and social forces that gave rise to those changes.
By the end of the semester students
should:
·
understand the socially constructed nature of
definitions of childhood, maternity and paternity, and family life;
·
appreciate how social, economic, and political
agendas have influenced assumptions about and experiences of childhood and
family life at key moments in history;
·
think more critically about the way history is
written and taught, and about the subjects and sources that traditionally have
been considered worthy of study;
·
have utilised primary sources and oral history
in written work and class presentations;
·
have improved their critical thinking and
writing skills.
Assessment in this course will be based
on the following factors:
· Essay of 3,000 words based on primary and secondary sources. Students are free to choose a topic that interests them but must have their topics approved by 28 February 2001: 65%
· Oral history project and class presentation: 20%
·
Final examination paper:
15%
In recent years there has been a flurry of films and autobiographical (or semi-autobiographical) accounts of childhood and family life in 20th century Ireland. Students will be asked to view the assigned films and read at least three autobiographical narratives in preparation for two discussion sessions at the end of the term. The discussions will focus on the images of childhood and family life that are presented, but will also consider the interplay of history and popular culture, and the role these cultural artefacts could and should play in historical scholarship and debate.
Introduction.
These lectures provide an introduction to the course and to the concept of
childhood and family history
Lecture 1: Introduction: discussion of syllabus and expectations for the course, teaching methods and assessment.
Lecture 2: Approaches to the study of childhood and the family: How can we study the lives and experiences of people who have left no written records of their existence/what kinds of sources can we use? What contribution can “history from below” make to broader historical discussions and debates? What can this kind of history tell us about the development of societal norms and values, political processes, and social policy?
Reading:
Linda Pollock, Forgotten children:
parent-child relations 1500-1900 (Cambridge University Press, 1983):
chapters 1-3. Also recommended: Michael Anderson, Approaches to the history of the Western family 1500-1914 (Cambridge
University Press, 1995); Anthony Burton, “Looking forward from Ariès?
Pictorial and material evidence for the history of childhood and family life,”
Continuity and Change vol. 4, no. 2
(August 1989): 203.
Part
1: Defining Norms. These lectures focus on how “norms” of behaviour,
assumptions, values, and expectations have been formed in the 19th
and 20th centuries, how they have changed over time, and the forces
that gave rise to change.
Lecture 3: Childhood before the famine: What did it mean to be a child in the early 19th century? What were the prevailing attitudes toward children and to their place in the family and in society? How did assumptions and experiences vary across classes? What legislative provisions (if any) existed to protect children?
Read: Jane Barnes, Irish industrial schools 1868-1908: origins and development (Irish Academic Press, 1989), Chapter 1; Joseph Robins, The lost children: a study of charity children in Ireland 1700-1900 (Institute for Public Affairs, 1980), skim first few chapters to get general point. Also recommended: Thomas Jordan, Ireland’s children: quality of life, stress, and child development in the famine era (Greenwood Press, 1998), chapters 1 and 2.
Lecture 4: Famine and family: What impact did the famine and subsequent large-scale emigration have on experiences of childhood and family life and on the composition of families?
Lecture 5: Childhood in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Explores the questions outlined in lecture 3 in addition to policies and practices relating to education and child labour: What provisions existed for the education of children and how did the provisions vary by class or by rural/urban settings? What were prevailing attitudes towards child labour and children’s economic contribution to the family? How did class and geographic setting influence these attitudes?
Read: Hugh Cunningham, The children of the poor: representations of childhood since the seventeenth century (Blackwell, 1991), chapters 1, 7, 8; Timothy Guinnane, “Coming of age in rural Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century,” Continuity and Change, vol. 5, no. 3 (1990): 443-472. Also recommended: Catriona Clear, Growing up poor: the homeless young in nineteenth century Ireland (Galway Labour History Society, 1993).
Lecture 6: Motherhood and fatherhood in the 19th century: How were parental roles, rights and responsibilities defined, and how did assumptions and expectations vary across class, religious persuasion, and region? What social policies or legislative measures reinforced certain parental roles and responsibilities? How did parents cope with their inability - through poverty, illness, external circumstances beyond their control, or apathy - to meet their responsibilities to their children?
Read: Ellen Ross, Love and toil: motherhood in outcast London, introductory chapter and conclusion, otherwise skim to get the general point; Anthony Fletcher and Stephen Hussey. Childhood in question: children, parents and the state (New York: Manchester University Press, 1999), chapters TBA. Also recommended: Anna Davin, “Loaves and fishes: food in poor households in late nineteenth-century London,” History Workshop Journal, vol. 41 (1996): 167-192.
Lecture 7: Oral presentations
Lecture 8: Motherhood and fatherhood in the 20th century - Considers the above questions in the context of the social, political, and economic imperatives of the independent state.
Read: Lynn Abrams, “’There was nobody like my daddy’: fathers, the family, and the marginalisation of men in modern Scotland,” Scottish Historical Review, vol. 78 no. 2 (1999): 219-242; Ralph LaRossa, The modernization of fatherhood: a social and political history, chapters TBA.
Lecture 9: Oral presentations
Lecture 10: Family life in the 19th and 20th centuries: How did church and state define the family and its role in contemporary society? To what extent was the English Victorian ideal applicable to Irish social conditions? What were relationships like within the family? What legislative measures reinforced prevailing assumptions about the family’s role in contemporary society? What impact did social upheavals of independence, war, and state-building have on changing definitions of childhood and of parental rights and responsibilities? How did poverty affect conceptions of family life and relationships within the family?
Read: Michael Ignatieff, “Total institutions and working classes: a review essay,” History Workshop Journal, 15 (Spring 1983): 167-173; Mark Finnane, “Asylums, families and the State,” History Workshop Journal, 20 (Autumn 1985): 134-148; Donna Birdwell-Pheasant, “Irish Households in the early twentieth century: culture, class, and historical contingency,” Journal of Family History, vol. 18, no. 1 (1993): 19-38. Also recommended: Susan Pedersen, Family, dependence, and the origins of the welfare state: Britain and France 1914-1945. (Cambridge University Press, 1993); Mel Cousins, “The introduction of children’s allowances in Ireland 1939-1944,” Irish Economic and Social History vol. 26 (1999): 35-53.
Lecture 11:
Oral presentations
Part 2: Transgressing norms. These
lectures focus on definitions of “abnormal” or inappropriate experiences of
childhood, maternity, and family composition.
Lecture 12: Problem children 1: Juvenile delinquency in the 19th and 20th centuries: how was juvenile delinquency defined, and how did those definitions change from the 19th to the 20th centuries? What mechanisms existed to deal with the problems of juvenile delinquency and to “reform” problem children so that they might become “upstanding” citizens? How did the shift from English to native rule influence attitudes and policies?
Read: primary source articles to be distributed in class.
Lecture 13: Oral presentations
Lecture 14: Problem children 2: Illegitimate, abandoned, and orphaned children: How did notions of and attitudes toward illegitimacy change from the 19th to the 20th centuries, and what affect if any did independence have on assumptions about and treatment of illegitimate and vulnerable children? What role did the forced emigration of children from institutions in England and Ireland, and the overseas adoption of children, play in the State’s efforts to deal with problem children?
Read: Mike Milotte, Banished babies: the secret history of Ireland’s baby export business (Dublin: New Island Books, 1997), skim to get the general idea; Gillian Wagner, Children of the empire (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), chapters TBA. Also recommended: Linda Gordon, The great Arizona orphan abduction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999); Gill Pugh, Unlocking the past: the impact of access to Barnardos childcare records (London: Ashgate, 1999); Mary Raftery and Eoin O’Sullivan, Suffer the little children: the inside story of Ireland’s industrial school (Dublin: New Island Books, 1999).
Lecture 15: Oral presentations
Lecture 16: Unmarried motherhood in the 19th century: What was the extent of unmarried motherhood in the 19th century? What were popular and official responses to unmarried motherhood? How did unmarried mothers cope with their plight? Also considers the questions of infanticide and abortion.
Read: Susan Mumm, “’Not worse than other girls’: the convent-based rehabilitation of fallen women in Victorian Britain”, Journal of Social History, vol. 29, no. 3 (Spring 1996): 527-546. Primary source documents to be distributed in class.
Lecture 17: Unmarried motherhood in the 20th century
Read: Janet Fink, “Natural mothers, putative fathers, and innocent children: the definition and regulation of parental relationships outside marriage in England, 1945-1959”, Journal of Family History, vol. 25, no. 2 (April 2000): 178-195. Also recommended: Patricia Burke-Brogan, Eclipsed (Galway: Salmon Publishing, 1994); June Goulding, The Light in the Window (Dublin: Poolbeg, 1998).
Lecture 18: Oral presentations
Lecture 19: Family violence/child abuse: What were prevailing attitudes towards marital violence and violence against/abuse of children? What legislation existed to protect women and children from abuse? How did voluntary agencies define abuse and intervene in allegedly abusive families? How have attitudes toward and concepts of domestic violence and child abuse changed from the 19th to the 21st centuries?
Read: C.A. Conley, “No pedestals: women and violence in late nineteenth-century Ireland,” Journal of Social History, vol. 28 no. 4 (1995): 801-818; Elizabeth Steiner-Scott, “To bounce a boot off her now and then…: domestic violence in post-famine Ireland,” in Women and Irish history: essays in honour of Margaret MacCurtain, ed. Maryann Valulius and Mary O’Dowd. Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1997; Barry Coldrey, “The sexual abuse of children: the historical perspective,” Studies vol. 85 (1996): 370-380.
Lecture 20:
Oral presentations
Lecture 21: Discussion of childhood and family life in film
Lecture 22: Discussion of childhood and family life in autobiographical narratives
Lecture 23: Wrap-up, review and course evaluation
Lecture 24:
In class examination
Dancing at Lunagsa Angela’s Ashes
The Snapper This is my Father
A Love Divided
Butcher Boy
Blain, Angeline Kearns, Stealing sunlight: growing up in Irishtown. Dublin, A.& A. Farmar, 2000.
Doyle, Paddy. The god squad. Dublin: Raven Arts Press, 1988.
Drennan, Mary Phil. You may talk now. Cork: On Stream Publications, 1994.
Fahy, Bernadette. Freedom of angels. Surviving Goldenbridge Orphanage. Dublin: The O’Brien Press, 1999.
Flynn, Mannix. Nothing to say. Dublin: Ward River Press, 1983.
Galvin, P. Song for a raggy boy: a Cork childhood. Dublin: Raven Arts Press, 1991.
MacGill, Patrick. Children of the dead end. Dingle, Co. Kerry: Brandon, 1983.
Matley, Mary. Always in the convent shadow. Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1991.
McCourt, Frank. Angela’s Ashes: A memoir of childhood. London: HarperCollins, 1996.
McGrath, Paul with Cathal Dervan. Ooh Aah Paul McGrath: the Black Pearl of Inchicore. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing Co., 1994.
Noble, Christine. Bridge across my sorrows: the Christine Noble story. London: John Murray, 1994.
O’Connor, Frank. An only child. London: MacMillan, 1961.
Sheridan, Peter. 44: A Dublin memoir. London: MacMillan, 1999.