British Family Research Articles

It takes a whole village?

It takes a whole village?

The Archaeology of Resilience: A Case Study from Peel Town, Western Australia, 1829–30

This paper describes the archaeology of one family’s tolerance to the stressors associated with the settlement of a new place. Artifacts associated with the maintenance of clothing suggest that a British family newly arrived at the Swan River colony in the southwest of Australia had the ability to remain composed during a period of reduced resources and psychological strain. The family’s ability to resist stress was probably the result of the social knowledge gained during previous experiences with internal migration in the British Isles during a time of high social dislocation.

Pets and the eighteenth-century British family

ABSTRACT Pets became increasingly common members of British families over the course of the eighteenth century. This was also a period of change in the meaning and makeup of the human family, and attitudes toward pets reflected differences in the ways the family was defined. This article draws on literary, archival, and visual sources to trace the variety of ways pets were depicted throughout the eighteenth century, with attention to continuity and change over time. In Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe (1719), animals form the basis of a patriarchal political family, with pets acting simultaneously as subjects, servants, and companions. In the most common analogy of the eighteenth century, animals were servants within the family, yet pets complicated this analogy because they did not engage in visible labor. Pets thus might be seen as toadies – useless and potentially dangerous companions to women – or as competitors to human servants. Elite pet owners might instead depict their pets as part of an aristocratic family network of lineage and kinship, relying on parallels between animal and human breeding. The rise of the cultures of sensibility and domesticity in the later eighteenth century fostered a model of pets as family members that heightened their emotional roles in the realm of a family also defined by close emotional ties.

“A Fit Companion for a Woman of Sense”: Jane West’s Re-Education of Masculine Norms in Letters Addressed to a Young Man (1802) and The Infidel Father (1802)

ABSTRACT Jane West’s novel, The Infidel Father (1802), carefully undercuts traditional norms, including the usual focus of the didactic novel – making a woman a fit companion for a man of sense. Traditionally considered an anti-Jacobin novelist, Jane West's contributions to the social and political debates of the Revolutionary era are being reevaluated. Known primarily for her fiction, she also wrote conduct books – including one for young men -- which, as a writer of fiction, gives additional clues to the stakes of her writing on men. Letters Addressed to a Young Man on his First Entering Society (1801) and The Infidel Father (1802) are a productive pairing for exploring West'srecalibration of contemporary British masculinity. These texts are in dialogue with earlier manuals of advice, especially Chesterfield’s Letters in their rejection of duplicitous courtliness and a preference for honesty in both public and private matters. The novel presents everything that is wrong with masculinity in the figure of the Infidel Father and invests the hero with a masculinity that is less performative and more informed by genuine feeling and goodness. Read together, they show West’s blueprint for a different kind of Englishman and, by extension, English family and English nation.

‘Royal diplomacy: British preparations for the State Visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to the United States, June 1939.’

ABSTRACT This article explores the preparation made by the British government, primarily the Foreign Office, for the state visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to the United States three months before the outbreak of the Second World War. It considers the dynamics of the relationship between the officials in Whitehall, the British ambassador in Washington, Sir Ronald Lindsay, the agenda of the Roosevelt administration and the role of the British royal family as ambassadors in their own right. Lindsay’s role was also pivotal because he was a personal friend of the King and was also on much respected and influential figure in Washington. The article does not discuss the course of the state visit, although there is discussion of the literature that relates to it. However, it does reveal that securing a concrete alliance with the United States was not the priority of the British government in the summer of 1939; that the focus of the Foreign Office, in particular, was on the growing diplomatic crisis in Europe. Lastly, the article argues that in the months leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War, the Foreign Office was confident in its own ability to lead the formulation of British foreign policy; that it was not eclipsed by Neville Chamberlain’s very personal involvement in appeasing the fascist dictators.

Making Black Motherhood (In)Visible: The Importance of Race, Gender, and Nation in the Mediation of Meghan Markle on Instagram

This article examines Black motherhood within digital media and how the cultural mediation of Meghan Markle’s pregnancy and motherhood online can be understood. In considering the cultural meaning(s) attached to the Duchess of Sussex, this article uses visual semiotic and discourse analyses of @SussexRoyal Instagram posts to examine how the incursion of a Black woman into the British royal family reveals some of the anxieties that circulate around race, gender, and the nation-state in British popular culture. It also examines the ways in which these anxieties are, in part, managed by the illusion of intimacy or access constructed through social media, which obfuscates the bounded division between the British public and the monarchy.

When John met Benny: class, pets and family life in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain

ABSTRACT Histories of human-animal companionship have expanded in recent years but studies of British pet keeping prior to the twentieth century have been skewed towards the middle and upper classes. Such models risk establishing middle-class values and practices as the norm, creating the implicit assumption that working-class difference amounts to deviance or, that middle-class norms ‘trickle down’ the socio-economic scale eventually. While it is broadly acknowledged that working-class families kept birds or animals in domestic settings, there has been little consideration of what animal companionship meant in Victorian and Edwardian working-class family life or, more to the point, the ways in which pet keeping was classed and why this matters. Drawing on three principal methods, this essay explores what pet keeping meant in the financial, spatial and affective context of British working-class family life. It tries to understand how human family members could experience or, at least, articulate a sense of connection with animal members of the household. Resources of time, space and money shaped what pets were possible for people to keep, where they were kept and how relationships with those animals were forged. The choices people made in precarious or restricted material circumstances exposes the classed character of pet keeping and the ‘hierarchical entanglement’ of human-animal relations within a working-class context.

Pets and family relationships in twentieth-century British diaries

ABSTRACT During the twentieth-century British family life was transformed through changes in family size, relationships and the development of new expectations about emotions and behaviour. But in this important social transformation one factor has gone almost entirely unremarked by family historians – the role of animals in family life. Sociologists and psychologists have demonstrated that pets played an important and complex role in British family life in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. However our investigation of the interactions between household members and their pets up to 1960 shows that the personal and familial relationships of pet-keeping could be just as charged and multi-valent. We use three long-run diaries from 1925 to 1960 to investigate the place and role of pets in the family. In spite of some methodological problems, diaries remain a crucial source for investigating pet-keeping in family life. Although, in these cases, the entries were sometimes perfunctory they were also at times rich in expressions of emotions and affinities in relation to animals, allowing us to explore the role that animals played in family dynamics. The long chronological coverage of each diary has provided the opportunity of examining the role that pets played at different stages in the lives of the writers, and how animals became more or less important for the families at different times. All three diaries demonstrate the emotional attachment that individuals had with their pets but also, crucially, how bringing animals into family narratives adds to our understanding of the relationships and interactions in modern family life.

Animals in the family mini-special issue introduction and historiographical review

ABSTRACT In Britain today, pets are often at the heart of family life, but we know relatively little about the roles they played in families in the past. From the early nineteenth century, pets were a central focus of middle- and working-class homes in Britain but are almost completely unremarked in historical studies of the home and family. In this mini-special issue we present four new essays, developed from papers given at the panel, exploring the evolving relationship between pets and family life in Britain in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Taken together they demonstrate the relationship between changes in the way the family was understood and experienced and the development of pet keeping practices. In our introduction we bring together two important strands of recent scholarship – the history of the family and histories of animals. We will review the development of animal histories – paying attention to how they might usefully be brought to bear on the study of the family. As there has been significant research on the role of pet animals in family life across the social sciences, we will also review some of the key work in sociology, social geography and psychology, thinking through the implications of these studies for historians. Finally, we reflect on the cumulative findings of the four essays – and how they add a new dimension to our understandings of modern British family life.

Documenting Queen Victoria’s Christmas Tree

In December 1848, the Illustrated London News (ILN) created a sensation by presenting Queen Victoria’s Christmas tree at Windsor Castle. Inspired by Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined communities and drawing upon his analysis of newspapers along with Michael Buckland’s documentary dimensions, this article presents a conceptual documentary analysis of Queen Victoria’s Christmas tree to illuminate documentation’s central role in materializing and constituting the evergreen coniferous tree as a customary holiday tradition. Specifically, the ILN materialized the Christmas tree for a global audience as they read, viewed, and interacted with this document, thereby bringing the royal family’s festive tradition into the presence of their own homes and holiday celebrations. It was this documentary access to Queen Victoria’s yuletide celebrations that helped popularize the Christmas tree and ultimately established it as a signature feature of Christmas, not only for the British royal family, but also for all Christians and Christmas celebrants worldwide.

The Other Side of Me: Moving words into motion

This article reflects upon the practice-led research project The Other Side of Me. It asks how to translate the life story of a young Aboriginal man born in Australia’s Northern Territory – adopted by an English family and raised in a remote hamlet in Cornwall, United Kingdom – into a narrative that engages with experiences of indigeneity in the contemporary world. At the project’s core is a collection of approximately 30 letters and poems that are crucially concerned with the trauma he suffered as a transracial adoptee – the conflicts of an individual coming to terms with two very different cultures. Telling his story raises issues of cultural appropriation. We propose here that adapting his story into dance offers one way to negotiate the challenges of cultural appropriation. Importantly, this process of adaptation is iterative, creating space for multiple voices and bodies to retell and reinterpret a story of personal trauma that sits at the limits of linguistic expression.

Working with British Army Families: A Qualitative Study of Child Protection Practitioners' Views and Experiences

Key Practitioner Messages Closed, often tight‐knit army communities can potentially provide protective factors for children; however, this environment can make it difficult to seek help or to speak out when there are concerns about children's safety or wellbeing. The needs and experiences of non‐serving parents (often female partners) can be overlooked unless, or until, child protection concerns are serious. Army‐connected children benefit from accessing army and civilian health, education and welfare services; however, transitions and communication between these services need to be improved.

The Impact of Demographics on Child and Parent Ratings of Satisfaction with Hospital Care.

Patient satisfaction ratings differ between minority and nonminority respondents in studies of hospitalized adults, but little is known about such differences in pediatrics. Our goal was to determine if patient satisfaction ratings completed by hospitalized children and their parents at the point of discharge differed by race/ethnicity, language, child gender, and age. We used a mixed-methods design. English and Spanish-speaking families from 5 inpatient units at 1 pediatric hospital completed ratings, face-to-face, before scheduled hospital discharge (T1), and again by telephone after discharge (T2). Participating children and their parents completed an 8-item satisfaction survey, and parents additionally completed 7 discharge readiness items. The refusal rate was 10.7%, with 600 families enrolled; non-white families represented 66% of both study refusals and completions. The proportion of racial/ethnic groups in our study exceeded those in our standard survey sample. There were no significant differences in satisfaction ratings between non-white and white families or by child gender, age, or language. The lack of rating differences by demographic characteristics, the low refusal and attrition rates, and a more racially/ethnically representative sample of both child and parent perspectives indicate this approach to measuring satisfaction is acceptable and feasible to demographically diverse families.

Ending the 'Cult of the Broken Home': Divorce, Children and the Changing Emotional Dynamics of Separating British Families, c. 1945-90.

From the 1960s, rising divorce rates forced a re-thinking of family dynamics beyond the nuclear. Traditionally, experts and the public had presumed that children from 'broken homes' typically drifted into juvenile delinquency and crime. Children of divorce were blamed for a plethora of social problems. The increasingly common nature of divorce meant that this model was no longer sustainable. Post-war children of divorce were more likely to be framed as 'emotionally vulnerable' and studied in more nuanced ways, not least because it seemed increasingly obvious that not all affected children grew up delinquent. However, a new consensus emerged that problems could only be avoided if parents created appropriate emotional conditions while separating and divorcing, and if parents and children openly communicated their feelings throughout the process. Children themselves were actively encouraged, through a new genre of divorce manuals often aimed at them, to express their emotions with parents and friends. Using Britain as a case study, this article argues that emotions became central to discussion of divorce in the post-war period, placing onuses on breaking down families to create a positive emotional space for affected children.

Parenting of Adolescent Single Children: A Mixed-methods Study

Globally, the average number of children per household is expected to drop to 1.0 by 2020. Single-child families are increasingly the norm, with nearly half of British families classified as single-child. Despite this, research on only-children and their families is scant. Using a convergent mixed-methods design, this study explores parenting of adolescents in British single-child families. Single-child (31 adolescents, 47 mothers, 25 fathers) and multiple-children families (46 adolescents, 76 mothers, 31 fathers) completed online surveys. In-depth interviews were also conducted with 15 only-child families and 15 multiple-child families. All adolescents were aged 11 years to 14 years. Surveys did not find any differences in parenting between one-child and multiple-children families. However, interview data found single-child families were more child-centered, reporting higher overprotective and pushy parenting, but less authoritative and authoritarian parenting. Findings challenge negative stereotyping of single-child families and provide an in-depth insight into the experiences of adolescent only-children and their parents.

Patterns and Predictors of Professional Interpreter Use in the Pediatric Emergency Department.

Professional interpretation for patients with limited English proficiency remains underused. Understanding predictors of use is crucial for intervention. We sought to identify factors associated with professional interpreter use during pediatric emergency department (ED) visits. We video recorded ED visits for a subset of participants (n = 50; 20% of the total sample) in a randomized trial of telephone versus video interpretation for Spanish-speaking limited English proficiency families. Medical communication events were coded for duration, health professional type, interpreter (none, ad hoc, or professional), and content. With communication event as the unit of analysis, associations between professional interpreter use and assigned interpreter modality, health professional type, and communication content were assessed with multivariate random-effects logistic regression, clustered on the patient. We analyzed 312 communication events from 50 ED visits (28 telephone arm, 22 video arm). Professional interpretation was used for 36% of communications overall, most often for detailed histories (89%) and least often for procedures (11%) and medication administrations (8%). Speaker type, communication content, and duration were all significantly associated with professional interpreter use. Assignment to video interpretation was associated with significantly increased use of professional interpretation for communication with providers (adjusted odds ratio 2.7; 95% confidence interval: 1.1-7.0). Professional interpreter use was inconsistent over the course of an ED visit, even for patients enrolled in an interpretation study. Assignment to video rather than telephone interpretation led to greater use of professional interpretation among physicians and nurse practitioners but not nurses and other staff.

Prosocial television and prosocial toddlers: A multi-method, longitudinal investigation

How screen use might affect early childhood outcomes is an important question for parents, but existing research is patchy. In particular, screen time is often examined in relation to sleep and aggression, but much less is known about its links with prosocial behaviour. To address this gap, we conducted semi-structured observations and interviews / questionnaires with both mothers and fathers in a sample of 195 (predominantly affluent and educated) British families tracked across three time-points, when the first-born child was 14-, 24-, and 36-months old. We also applied an objective coding scheme to assess the relative frequency of prosocial behaviour in the programmes and films children were watching at age 24-months. While our results showed no overall associations between prosocial behaviour and either screen time or screen content, there were interaction effects. Specifically, children whose favourite programmes were slow-paced and rich in prosocial content were particularly likely to show developmental gains in sharing. We discuss these findings in terms of their implications for parents, researchers, and policy makers.

Monarchy is a feminist issue: Andrew, Meghan and #MeToo era monarchy

For a brief period, discourses of feminism were brought into discussions of the British royal family through the figure of Meghan Markle. Such a conjuncture demands a closer look at the monarchy's relationship to feminism. This article considers the figure of a ‘feminist princess’ in the context of an inherently antifeminist institution and alongside the deeply antifeminist figure of the ‘wayward prince’ - both specifically in the case of sexual abuse accusations against Prince Andrew, and historically in mythic stock representations from history and folklore. In so doing, we reveal the limits to the feminist discourses possible ‘from within’ the monarchical institution. We argue that monarchy relies upon interwoven structures of colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, and racism, and as such is incompatible with feminism's work towards dismantling intersecting systems of oppression. No amount of royal campaigns for ‘women's issues’ can elide the fact that the very existence of the monarchy is a feminist issue.

"All that lives must die": Gertrude, Ophelia, and the Idea of a Poisoned Royal Body Politic

In this article, I consider representations of Gertrude and Ophelia in three recent film adaptations of the Hamlet story: Hamlet (Douglass, 2017), Hamlet in the Golden Vale (Hasse and Myers, 2019), and Ophelia (McCarthy, 2018). These films comprise a community-based arts project, an independent theatre enterprise, and a limited release feature. Drawing on the notion of rhizomatic structures, I locate my reading of the films in the context of my consumption of the Hamlet story and consider the connections between these films and the broader textual landscape. Central to my considerations is the precarity of the women in the homosocial world of the Danish court at Elsinore, as it is imagined in the films. In particular, I look at Gertrude and Ophelia as participants in the body royal through the use of their physical bodies for reproductive purposes. With Gertrude already successful as the mother of Hamlet, while Ophelia holds the potential to become a mother, I apply a feminist reading that questions the implications of the women's motherhood within a patriarchal system. Finally, I briefly consider how representations of the precarity of the fictional Gertrude and Ophelia might extend to members of the current British royal family, with a specific focus on Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge and Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex.

Agincourt, Waterloo, Normandy: Screening Henry V and Re-organizing British History for the Royal Family

In 1944, members of the British royal family attended a private screening of Laurence Olivier's film adaptation of Henry V in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle. Henry V has a long history of appropriation for patriotic and monarchist purposes, particularly in times of war. Olivier's film was conceived as propaganda and dedicated to the "Commandos and Airborne Troops of Great Britain, the spirit of whose ancestors it has been humbly attempted to recapture," inviting the viewer to read Henry's English army as a celebratory remediation of British troops in action in 1944.