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This fascinating book provides a detailed account of the history
of maternity and child welfare in Dublin between 1922 and 1960. In
so doing it places maternity and child welfare in the context of
twentieth-century Irish history, offering one of the only accounts
of how women and children were viewed, treated and used by key
lobby groups in Irish society and by the Irish state. Mother and
Child is of critical importance to understanding the political and
social history of modern Ireland as it examines the responses of
the State, the church, voluntary groups and women to the emergence
of the welfare State in Ireland. As such it makes a welcome
contribution to Irish political, social, medical and gender
history.
This book reframes the Irish abortion narrative within the history
of women's reproductive health and explores the similarities and
differences that shaped the history of abortion within the two
states on the island of Ireland. Since the legalisation of abortion
in Britain in 1967, an estimated 200,000 women have travelled from
Ireland to England for an abortion. However, this abortion trail is
at least a century old and began with women migrating to Britain to
flee moral intolerance in Ireland towards unmarried mothers and
their offspring. This study highlights how attitudes to unmarried
motherhood reflected a broader cultural acceptance that morality
should trump concerns regarding maternal health. This rationale
bled into social and political responses to birth control and
abortion and was underpinned by an acknowledgement that in
prioritising morality some women would die.
This innovative study of poverty in Independent Ireland between
1920 and 1940 is the first to place the poor at its core by
exploring their own words and letters. Written to the Catholic
Archbishop of Dublin, their correspondence represents one of the
few traces in history of Irish experiences of poverty, and
collectively they illuminate the lives of so many during the
foundation decades of the Irish state. This book keeps the human
element central, so often lost when the framework of history is
policy, institutions and legislation. It explores how ideas of
charity, faith, gender, character and social status were deployed
in these poverty narratives and examines the impact of poverty on
the lives of these writers and the survival strategies they
employed. Finally, it considers the role of priests in vetting and
vouching for the poor and, in so doing, perpetuating the
discriminating culture of charity.
This innovative study of poverty in Independent Ireland between
1920 and 1940 is the first to place the poor at its core by
exploring their own words and letters. Written to the Catholic
Archbishop of Dublin, their correspondence represents one of the
few traces in history of Irish experiences of poverty, and
collectively they illuminate the lives of so many during the
foundation decades of the Irish state. This book keeps the human
element central, so often lost when the framework of history is
policy, institutions and legislation. It explores how ideas of
charity, faith, gender, character and social status were deployed
in these poverty narratives and examines the impact of poverty on
the lives of these writers and the survival strategies they
employed. Finally, it considers the role of priests in vetting and
vouching for the poor and, in so doing, perpetuating the
discriminating culture of charity.
Irish women, as actual or potential mothers, were frequently the
direct or indirect targets of much debate and welfare legislation
during the first half of the twentieth century. Considerable
research has been carried out in relation to welfare development
and the centrality of maternal welfare in often Western European
countries. This book provides an analysis of maternity policy and
provision in Dublin thus adding the history of Ireland's maternal
welfare to the growing corpus of international research on the
topic. It also places maternity and child welfare in the context of
twentieth century Irish history offering one of the only accounts
of how women and children were viewed, treated and used by key
lobby groups in Irish society and by the Irish state. This book
re-evaluates the role of various lobby groups in the formation of
welfare policy and reveals a much more complex relationship between
church, state, the medical profession, voluntary groups and
mothers. It also provides fascinating insights into central
personalities in modern Irish history such as Eamon de Valena and
John Charles McQuaid. and gender history.
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