Overview
- Examines working-class mothers’ child caring practices in the north of England during 1850-1899 and their relationship to it
- Challenges existing accounts, arguing that working-class mothers were responsive and responsible towards their infants
- Offers a new interpretation and investigative methodology of value to researchers in history and other disciplines associated with this area
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
Infant Mortality and Working-Class Child Care, 1850-1899 unlocks the hidden history of working-class child care during the second half of the nineteenth century, seeking to challenge those historians who have cast working-class women as feckless and maternally ignorant. By plotting the lives of northern women whilst they grappled with industrial waged work in the factory, in agriculture, in nail making, and in brick and salt works, this book reveals a different picture of northern childcare, one which points to innovative and enterprising child care models. Attention is also given to day-carers as they acted in loco parentis and the workhouse nurse who worked in conjunction with medical paediatrics to provide nineteenth-century welfare to pauper infants. Through the use of a new and wide range of source material, which includes medical and poor law history, Melanie Reynolds allows a fresh and new perspective of working-class child care to arise.
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Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Melanie Reynolds is Associate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, UK and was previously Tutor in History at Ruskin College. Her other publications include 'A Man Who Won't Back a Woman is No Man at All': The 1875 Heavy Woollen Dispute and the Narrative of Women's Trade Unionism' in Labour History (2006).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Infant Mortality and Working-Class Child Care, 1850-1899
Authors: Melanie Reynolds
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137369048
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-36903-1Published: 03 February 2016
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-67654-5Published: 08 March 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-36904-8Published: 21 May 2016
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 251
Topics: History of Britain and Ireland, Social History, Cultural History, Modern History, Popular Science in Education