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The circulation of children in rural Ireland during the first half of the twentieth century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2014

JANE GRAY
JANE GRAY*
Affiliation:
National University of Ireland Maynooth.
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Abstract

This paper analyses the interactions amongst family, household and extended kin through an examination of two ‘circulations’ of children within rural Irish communities during the first half of the twentieth century: (1) the daily journey from home to school; (2) going to live with relatives other than parents. Drawing on life-history narratives, the article develops a new perspective on the stem-family system in Ireland by showing how ‘incomplete’ family households formed integral parts of local kinship circles and were deeply engaged in the everyday lives of ‘complete’ family households, including the promotion of extended family survival and social mobility.

La circulation des enfants en irlande rurale au cours de la première moitié du xxe siècle

Les interactions entre famille, ménage et parenté élargie sont analysées grâce à l’étude des enfants qui « circulent » au sein des communautés rurales irlandaises, au cours de la première moitié du XXe siècle. Deux types de circulation sont examinés : d'une part le trajet quotidien des enfants entre la maison et l’école et d'autre part le fait pour certains d'aller vivre chez des membres de la famille autres que leurs père et mère. S'appuyant sur des récits d'histoire de vie, l'auteur propose une nouvelle perspective sur le système de la famille-souche en Irlande, montrant comment des ménages familiaux « incomplets » faisaient cependant partie intégrante de cercles de parenté locaux et étaient profondément liés à la vie quotidienne de ménages à structure familiale «complète », ce qui permettait d’œuvrer à la survie de la famille élargie et à la mobilité sociale.

Die zirkulation von kindern im ländlichen irland in der ersten hälfte des 20. jahrhunderts

Dieser Beitrag analysiert die Interaktionen zwischen Familie, Haushalt und erweiterter Verwandtschaft, indem er zwei Formen der ‚Zirkulation‘ von Kindern innerhalb ländlicher Gemeinden in Irland in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts näher untersucht: (1) der tägliche Weg von Zuhause zur Schule; (2) die Unterbringung bei Verwandten außerhalb des Elternhauses. Er greift auf lebensgeschichtliche Erzählungen zurück und eröffnet dadurch eine neue Perspektive auf das Stammfamiliensystem in Irland. Es zeigt sich nämlich, dass ‚unvollständige‘ Familienhaushalte integrale Bestandteile der örtlichen Verwandtschaftskreise waren und mit dem Alltagsleben ‚vollständiger‘ Familienhaushalte eng verknüpft waren, indem sie unter anderem das Überleben der erweiterten Familie und die soziale Mobilität beförderten.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , December 2014 , pp. 399 - 421
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

ENDNOTES

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2 This is not to say that household processes were unimportant, but rather that they did not loom as large in children's everyday experiences as they did in those of adults – and of the social theorists who have tended to focus on adult concerns. Most of the scholarship on extended families in historic Europe has followed Laslett's classic discussion by asking how extended families and communities may, or may not, have supported households. See Laslett, Peter, ‘Family, kinship and collectivity as systems of support in pre-industrial Europe: a consideration of the “nuclear-hardship” hypothesis’, Continuity and Change 3, 2 (1988), 153–75Google Scholar. See also Kertzer, David L., Hogan, Dennis P. and Karweit, Nancy, ‘Kinship beyond the household in a nineteenth-century Italian town’, Continuity and Change 7, 1 (1992), 103–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Neven, Muriel, ‘The influence of the wider kin group on individual life course transitions: results from the Pays de Herve (Belgium) 1846–1900’, Continuity and Change 17, 3 (2002), 405–35Google Scholar; Plakans, Andrejs and Wetherell, Charles, ‘Households and kinship networks: the costs and benefits of contextualization’, Continuity and Change 18, 1 (2003), 49–76Google Scholar; Wall, Richard, ‘Economic collaboration of family members within and beyond households in English society, 1600–2000’, Continuity and Change 25, 1 (2010), 83–108Google Scholar.

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7 Hannan, Damien F., Displacement and development: class, kinship and social change in Irish rural communities (Dublin, 1979), 69Google Scholar. This article follows both Arensberg and Kimball, and Hannan, in its focus on the kinship groups (or kindreds) mobilised in everyday interactions and relationships. Kinship groups were, of course, related to the system of descent that governed people's understandings of who they were related to. For a detailed discussion see Hannan, Displacement and development, pp. 79–85. With respect to communities, as Arensberg and Kimball observed, their boundaries varied according to the kinds of social interaction in question. Everyday relations of solidarity and exchange occurred within townlands. See Arensberg and Kimball, Family and community in Ireland, 273–4. Hannan argued that neighbouring took place within ‘station areas’, sub-units of parishes that usually covered one or a small number of townlands. See Hannan, Displacement and development, 85. The local primary school was clearly the focal point for many of the childhood memories of community examined in this article. The parish was the basic administrative unit for primary schools, but there could be more than one school per parish. See Coolahan, John, Irish education: its history and structure (Dublin, 1981), 8Google Scholar.

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18 See www.iqda.ie (accessed 22 October 2013). All transcripts in the archived dataset were anonymised to preserve respondent confidentiality. The personal names used throughout this article are, therefore, pseudonyms.

19 J. Gray and S. Ó Riain, Life Histories and Social Change Project [collection]. Maynooth, Co. Kildare: Irish Qualitative Data Archive [producer], ID10028. Irish Qualitative Data Archive [distributor]. The ‘Living in Ireland’ data are available from the Irish Social Science Data Archive: http://www.ucd.ie/issda/data/livinginirelandlii/

20 This is the ISCO88 (International Standard Classification of Occupations) Code 6, which includes farmers, available at http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/stat/isco/isco88/6.htm (accessed 9 June 2014).

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33 Thirteen respondents provided descriptions of the journey to school in their narratives, while a further six described regular patterns of visiting with relatives in separate, non-family households. Eight respondents described instances of the residential circulation discussed in section 5; a further three referred to shorter-term residential circulation, during summer holidays, for example. The analysis is based on an in-depth reading of all the narratives included in the sample. Just two cases provided limited relevant material. In one case the respondent was exceptionally frail and the interview correspondingly thin. In the second case the respondent was from an exceptionally wealthy, elite family and the life experiences were therefore very different from those of other respondents in the study.

34 Alice Taylor, To school through the fields: an Irish country childhood (Dublin, 1988), available at http://www.obrien.ie/to-school-through-the-fields (accessed 7 October 2013).

35 Ferriter, ‘Suffer little children’, 89–90.

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45 See the discussion in Gray, Jane, ‘Poverty and the life cycle in twentieth century Ireland: changing experiences of childhood, education and the transition to adulthood’, Combat Poverty Agency Working Paper Series 10, 4 (2010), 1–59Google Scholar.

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