Growing Up in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: A Cultural History of Middle-Class Childhood and Gender ISBN: 9780191879265 Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Oxford University Press Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited Subjects: Social and Cultural History; Modern History (1700 to 1945);
Why do we send children to school? Who should take responsibility for children's health and education? Should girls and boys be educated separately or together? These questions provoke much contemporary debate, but also have a longer, often-overlooked history. Mary Hatfield explores these questions and more in this comprehensive cultural history of childhood in nineteenth-century Ireland. Many modern ideas about Irish childhood have their roots in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, when an emerging middle-class took a disproportionate role in shaping the definition of a 'good' childhood, with childhood seen as a fluid concept with a variety of meanings and responsibilities dependent on class, gender, and religious identity.
This study deconstructs several key changes in medical care, educational provision, and ideals of parental care. It takes an innovative holistic approach to the middle-class child's social world, by synthesising a broad base of documentary, visual, and material sources, including clothes, books, medical treatises, religious tracts, photographs, illustrations, and autobiographies. It offers invaluable new insights into Irish boarding schools, the material culture of childhood, and the experience of boys and girls in education.
Mary Hatfield, Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow, University College Dublin
Mary Hatfield is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Dublin and was formerly the Irish Government Senior Scholar at Hertford College, University of Oxford.
