Origins and Legacies of Irish Prudery: Sexuality and Social Control in Modern Ireland

Exploring the construction of the Irish Mammy in ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’

“…In Mrs Brown's Boys, the Irish Mammy is both defined and re-defined in relation to this theme. On the one hand, she is portrayed as a caring, loyal and loving mother who looks after her children which is in line with traditional expectations and her role as the stereotypical home-maker as outlined by Inglis (2002Inglis ( , 2005. Insights into this aspect of her role as a mother can be seen in the last line of Extract 1 where she negotiates her idea of what it is to be a mother asserting that it is about loving her children and being there for them when they need her.…”

“…Although women fought for independence, once this happened, the new Free State began to pass legislation that helped to confine women to the home. Condren (1995in Inglis 2005 discusses that in allowing themselves to be confined to the domestic sphere of family life and imbued with the rhetoric of self-sacrifice, by 1937, their politica l, economic and reproductive rights had been severely curtailed to the extent that they were barred from claiming for themselves a public identity (Valiulis 1995: 120 in Inglis 2005. Their identities were in relation to the home and the church.…”

“…By the 1970s, Inglis (2005) notes that, due to social milestones such as these, the role of women and life in Ireland had finally begun to change. Feminism began to grow steadily from the 1970s, women's movement campaigns lobbied for a change in the laws around contraception, the number of women in the labour force increased which meant that the role of the Irish woman was no longer restricted solely to motherhood.…”

Commercial sex, clients, and Christian morals: Paying for sex in Ireland

“…However, there has also been significant opposition to the criminalization of clients: it was rejected in Scotland in 2012 and was dropped in England in 2014 before even going to a vote i , demonstrating the cultural differences between Ireland and Britain (cf. Layte et al 2006;Inglis 2005).…”

“…In the Republic of Ireland, the continuous influence of the Catholic Church contributes to the permanence of these repressive legal and social norms (Inglis 2005;1998). In Northern Ireland, "politicians and political lobbyists, who might otherwise divide along Catholic/Protestant or (Irish) nationalist/(British) unionist lines (…), form a united, non-sectarian front in opposing sexual and reproductive rights and services" (Smyth 2006: 664).…”