Childhood studies is an emerging area of scholarship in Ireland and this volume makes a significant contribution to the field. It ambitiously brings together 21 interdisciplinary essays, dominated by literature and history, but including other areas such as social work. To assist the reader in navigating these diverse studies, Maria Luddy and James M. Smith have arranged the essays into five thematic sections, expertly woven together in their introduction. The first two sections consider ‘the child and history’ and ‘charity, welfare and childcare’. The Irish child was considered instrumental in societal reform and military strategy in Tudor and Stuart times according to Mary O'Dowd, with preoccupations about child welfare only emerging during the 17th century. From the mid-Victorian period, child poverty was a central concern and Gillian McIntosh provides insights into attitudes towards Edwardian street-trading children. Welfare was provided by workhouses, church-run institutions and philanthropic organisations. Luddy highlights the work of the Dublin branch of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in increasing the reporting of neglect and abuse. Virginia Crossman notes that, despite campaigns to increase boarding out, institutional care (particularly church-run) predominated into the late-20th century. Eoin O'Sullivan shows how the 1970 Kennedy Report prompted a gradual transfer of welfare services to state-run professionalised community-based services. As well as improvements in the care and welfare of the ‘public child’ such as increased foster care, Robbie Gilligan identifies a number of gaps in state provision, including monitoring, and allocation of social workers. Despite parents' constitutional rights in relation to their children's education, Mary E. Daly notes that for many years they were excluded from playing any formal role by church, state and the teaching profession. Section three focuses on ‘shaping childhood cultures’. Ríona Nic Congáil analyses the extent to which the Weekly Freeman's children's Fireside Club column influenced the Gaelic League, while Ciaran O'Neill demonstrates how concerns about the imperialistic influence of the British schoolboy novel led to its adaptation for an Irish nationalist audience. Three of the studies use autobiographies to explore individual experiences. Drawing on hitherto underexploited 20th century Irish-language autobiographies Máirín Nic Eoin examines the representation of adult-child relationships, while Barry Sloan uses literary autobiographies to explore mid-20th century boyhood. Focusing on writers, Claire Lynch demonstrates that reading was an apprenticeship for both life and authorship, helping them make sense of the world. The following six essays explore ‘literary imaginings’. Mary Shine Thompson considers early modern understandings of childhood through Jonathan Swift's writing, noting for instance that despite emerging concepts of bourgeois boyhood, little distinction was made between girlhood and womanhood. Brandon Jernigan's re-examination of Oscar Wilde's fairy tales positions them as a space where issues regarding Anglo-Irish participation in Irish nationalism could be addressed. In Irish literature, the child frequently represents post-independence Ireland, mirroring the ideals of the newly formed state. Leeann Lane demonstrates how by foregrounding family, home and rural life, the children's author Patricia Lynch created a sense of history for post-Independence Ireland. Conversely, Eibhear Walsh notes the tensions that exist between the new state's nationalist and patriarchal ideals and European female education as portrayed in Kate O'Brien's The Land of Spices. The maturation narrative, key in Irish literary tradition, is dominated by masculine interpretations and Jane Elizabeth Dougherty argues that despite Ireland's coming of age, symbolised by Mary Robinson's presidency, a maturation narrative for the Irish female child was still not possible in the 1990s. Kelly J.S. McGovern explores the extent to which queer time and space in Eilís Ní Dhuibne's The dancers dancing expands the maturation narrative to encompass the female child. Section five, ‘cultural representations’, commences with Margot Backus's comparative study of the representation of children in nationalist journalism. During the Land War (1882), children were portrayed with little sentiment but by the Lockout (1913) poor children were depicted in emotional and symbolic terms, serving to unify a fragmented nationalist audience. In her analysis of Irish films, Ruth Barton demonstrates how magical realism has given way to social realism; being childlike and innocent is a disability in contemporary Ireland with its corrupting influences. Finally, Harry Hendrick highlights the need for a conceptual framework for researching and writing histories of children and childhood. This volume is a welcome addition to the growing corpus of Irish childhood studies. Although scholars will be drawn to particular topics, reading the volume in its entirety is recommended, providing fascinating insights into the changing relationships between child, family, state and church over time and across disciplines. It will also be of benefit to researchers undertaking comparative studies, providing them with perspectives on childhood as experienced in Ireland, as well as Irish scholarship in this field.
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Open Access
Mar 13, 2024
Edward O’Rourke 
