Reinforcing the family: The role of gender, morality and sexuality in Irish welfare policy, 1922–1944

Earner-Byrne, Lindsey

doi:10.1016/j.hisfam.2008.09.004

Cited by 15 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…34 Some of this was related to a widespread belief that the familial bonds that maintained order were unravelling following the tumult of Civil War. 35 Another contributing factor was the need for the new state to define itself as morally pure. This foundation myth of Ireland as "pure" was a keystone of the construction of Irish national identity in this period.…”

Section: Mercy By Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

“On the other hand the accused is a woman…”: Women and the Death Penalty in Post-Independence Ireland

Black¹

2017

Law hist. rev.

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Hannah Flynn was sentenced to death on February 27, 1924. She had been convicted of the murder of Margaret O'Sullivan, her former employer. Hannah worked for Margaret and her husband Daniel as a domestic servant, an arrangement that ended with bad feeling on both sides when Hannah was dismissed. On Easter Sunday, April 1, 1923, while Daniel was at church, Hannah returned to her former place of work, and killed 50-year-old Margaret with a hatchet. At her trial, the jury strongly recommended her to mercy, and sentence of death was subsequently commuted to penal servitude for life. Hannah spent almost two decades in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin, from where she was conditionally released on October 23, 1942 to the Good Shepherd Magdalen Laundry in Limerick. Although there is no precise date available for Hannah's eventual release from there, it is known that “a considerable time later,” and at a very advanced age, she was released from the laundry to a hospital, where she died. The case of Hannah Flynn, and the use of the Good Shepherd Laundry, represents an explicitly gendered example of the death penalty regime in Ireland following Independence in 1922, particularly the double-edged sword of mercy as it was experienced by condemned women.

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Section: Mercy By Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

“On the other hand the accused is a woman…”: Women and the Death Penalty in Post-Independence Ireland

Black¹

2017

Law hist. rev.

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“…The panic really set in when illegitimate births, infanticide and rates of venereal disease began to rise in the 1920s (Earner-Byrne, 2008). Surely there was no greater signal that Irish were failing to master the habits of religious life, and hence self-control, when sex outside marriage was occurring with such rampant frequency (Finnane, 2001).…”

Section: The Irish Free Statementioning

confidence: 99%

States of denial: Magdalene Laundries in twentieth-century Ireland

Brangan

2024

Punishment & Society

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On the first day at a Magdalene Laundry, women and girls who had been sent there had their hair cut off, their names replaced, and their possessions taken. In the days and weeks that followed, everything else was stripped from them. How do we make sense of this carceral regime? The new conceived wisdom is to describe Magdalene Laundries as places of containment and confinement, as tantamount to prisons. This paper suggests that Magdalene Laundries were far worse than the prison. I argue that rather than discuss Magdalene Laundries as sites of confinement, we should instead understand them as sites of erasure. That is because the pains of this form of detention were drawn not from the loss of liberty, but the loss of self. The article is based on 33 oral history interviews with women who survived Magdalene Laundries and archival research regarding the nuns and religious, who ran these institutions. We also learn that Magdalene Laundries were important social institutions that open a window onto Irish life in the twentieth century. Magdalene Laundries operated with an undiluted formula that all Irish citizens were expected to subscribe to: a culture of conformity that prided obedience, self-denial and moral purity.

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“…Approximately 90% of voluntary secondary schools are Roman Catholic, mostly owned and managed by male or female religious orders while a small minority of schools are managed by Protestant, Jewish or Independent bodies (Milne, 2003). The school trustees (generally the Bishops, Religious Orders or Trust Bodies) are the owners of the voluntary secondary schools as well as the employer of those who work in the school (Drudy and Lynch, 1993). All non-fee paying schools receive full state funding for incremental salaries and capitation grants, while fee-paying schools receive salaries but not capitation grants.…”

Section: Aim and Focus Of This Papermentioning

confidence: 99%

A Foucauldian perspective on student experiences of family discourses in post-primary schools

Desmond¹

2016

Irish Educational Studies

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This work involves researching normative family discourses which are mediated through post-primary settings. The traditional family, consisting of father, mother and children all living together in one house (nuclear) is no longer reflective of the home situation of many Irish students [Lunn, P., and T. Fahey. 2012. Households and Family Structures in Ireland: A Detailed Statistical Analysis of Census 2006. Dublin: ESRI]. My study problematises micro practices involving families as reported by students in three post-primary schools, to report how family differences are managed and (mis)recognised from their lens. The influence of the dominant educational discourses (contextual and textual), are also considered. A framework using Foucauldian post-structural critical analysis traces family profiling through normalising discourses such as notes home which presume two parents together. Teacher assumptions about heterosexual two-parent families make it difficult for students to be open about a family set-up that is constructed as ‘different’ to the rest of the schools. My findings will be of interest to educational research and policy-makers because they highlight how changing demographics such as family compositions are mis-conceptualised in schools, leading to issues of injustice such as bullying and isolation for the students involved

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Reinforcing the family: The role of gender, morality and sexuality in Irish welfare policy, 1922–1944

Cited by 15 publications

References 6 publications

“On the other hand the accused is a woman…”: Women and the Death Penalty in Post-Independence Ireland

“On the other hand the accused is a woman…”: Women and the Death Penalty in Post-Independence Ireland

States of denial: Magdalene Laundries in twentieth-century Ireland

A Foucauldian perspective on student experiences of family discourses in post-primary schools

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