<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>Many studies have been conducted on infanticide and child homicide. Researchers have approached the subject with different theoretical frameworks and explored it from different dimensions, geographical areas, and time periods. As much as the questions have varied so have the answers. This study contributes to greater clarity on the causes of infanticide. Despite numerous studies on the subject, there is still no consensus its causes. My aim has been to combine different strategies for understanding the subject. I have used material both from an aggregated level and from an individual level. The main question I sought to answer was whether social causes rather than individual factors force or trigger women to kill their newborn child? Court material also provides for an in-depth understanding of our history. The social sciences have frequently drawn sketches of the social world with big lines. These lines have been necessary and useful to point at large-scale transformations of civilisation and modernisation but, in terms of understanding real life, they can provide us with a foggy and even mistaken picture. When social scientists enter the historical archives and similar sources, we often blunder in its richness and variation. Society may, in any case, have always been complicated and the every day life for each person as well.</p><p>My findings show that infanticide signals low tolerance. In general, the women did not want to kill their own children. Moreover, my findings, like the results of other studies before mine, demonstrate that women who carry out infanticide represent normal women. To my knowledge, there isn’t one study on infanticide that claims the women were not normal. Women who committed infanticide did so out of fear: fear of losing their social bonds. They killed their children if the existence of the bonds was endangered or threatened. Often social bonds were related to their work situation as maids in farming households. If they couldn’t stay in the household after having the baby, many women had no where else to go. Their parents – poor, elderly or deceased – were unable to help. Sometimes the social bonds were threatened by other factors, often related to the child’s father. If he was already married or had a close relation with the woman’s family, their relationship could in fact, break her bonds to her own family and other relatives. Some women already had an illegitimate child. With a child out of wedlock, they had a difficult time getting work and housing. If they got pregnant again and the father to the new child refused to marry her or to support the child, she could in fact lack any resources for handling the situation.</p><p>Finally: the findings talk about honour and infanticide. It was always shameful to get a child out of wedlock. But demographic research from North of Sweden has shown that these children had almost the same chances of survival during their first year as legitimate children. Sexuality outside marriage was not respected but much discussion around honour was more related to how the women would manage with the child. In my findings, shame seems to be related to having no support. Extramarital relations were not accepted but people probably didn’t care to much about it as far as they managed on their own. Being rejected, helpless, not able to work and not able to take care of the child that was what shame was about.</p><p>Keywords: Infanticide, child homicide, illegitimacy, social bonds, shame</p>

ABSTRACT Many studies have been conducted on infanticide and child homicide. Researchers have approached the subject with different theoretical frameworks and explored it from different dimensions, geographical areas, and time periods. As much as the questions have varied so have the answers. This study contributes to greater clarity on the causes of infanticide. Despite numerous studies on the subject, there is still no consensus its causes. My aim has been to combine different strategies for understanding the subject. I have used material both from an aggregated level and from an individual level. The main question I sought to answer was whether social causes rather than individual factors force or trigger women to kill their newborn child? Court material also provides for an in-depth understanding of our history. The social sciences have frequently drawn sketches of the social world with big lines. These lines have been necessary and useful to point at large-scale transformations of civilisation and modernisation but, in terms of understanding real life, they can provide us with a foggy and even mistaken picture. When social scientists enter the historical archives and similar sources, we often blunder in its richness and variation. Society may, in any case, have always been complicated and the every day life for each person as well. My findings show that infanticide signals low tolerance. In general, the women did not want to kill their own children. Moreover, my findings, like the results of other studies before mine, demonstrate that women who carry out infanticide represent normal women. To my knowledge, there isn’t one study on infanticide that claims the women were not normal. Women who committed infanticide did so out of fear: fear of losing their social bonds. They killed their children if the existence of the bonds was endangered or threatened. Often social bonds were related to their work situation as maids in farming households. If they couldn’t stay in the household after having the baby, many women had no where else to go. Their parents – poor, elderly or deceased – were unable to help. Sometimes the social bonds were threatened by other factors, often related to the child’s father. If he was already married or had a close relation with the woman’s family, their relationship could in fact, break her bonds to her own family and other relatives. Some women already had an illegitimate child. With a child out of wedlock, they had a difficult time getting work and housing. If they got pregnant again and the father to the new child refused to marry her or to support the child, she could in fact lack any resources for handling the situation. Finally: the findings talk about honour and infanticide. It was always shameful to get a child out of wedlock. But demographic research from North of Sweden has shown that these children had almost the same chances of survival during their first year as legitimate children. Sexuality outside marriage was not respected but much discussion around honour was more related to how the women would manage with the child. In my findings, shame seems to be related to having no support. Extramarital relations were not accepted but people probably didn’t care to much about it as far as they managed on their own. Being rejected, helpless, not able to work and not able to take care of the child that was what shame was about. Keywords: Infanticide, child homicide, illegitimacy, social bonds, shame

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-182). Also available via the World Wide Web.

The purpose of this study was to make an assessment of social work services extended to putative fathers as part of the administration of the Children of Unmarried Parents Act. This study was undertaken because comparatively little attention is given to the putative father and services he might need. Because the Social Welfare Branch in Vancouver retains a social worker specially for work under the Children of Unmarried Parents Act, this was a relevant setting for the study. Legislation relative to illegitimacy and paternity in some European countries, in the United States and in British Columbia is reviewed. For the Province Of British Columbia, the administrative setting and the legal framework within which the social worker has to operate is described. A series of cases are then reviewed; first, by comparison of brief service cases and continued service cases; second, by comparison of "co-operative" and "non-co-operative" cases, the latter being reviewed (a) statistically and (b) by case examples. The provisional findings of this study are that these differentials are less important than differences in the circumstances of the clients and the quality of the casework which is possible. The exception that shows up statistically is that working out of a lump-sum settlement needs more than one face-to-face interview. Suggestions for further exploration and methods of improving service are made in a concluding section. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

This thesis is a study of the prevalence, context, and experience of illegitimacy in Wales during the long eighteenth century, between approximately 1680 and 1800. It explores levels of illegitimacy across the Welsh counties of Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire, and investigates many of the underlying causes of childbirth outside of wedlock throughout eighteenth-century Wales. It is argued that Welsh illegitimacy was influenced by a combination of courtship-led marriage customs, a decline in traditional forms of social control, and worsening economic circumstances. In addition to exploring broader demographic trends, this study also examines the diverse individual identities, relationships and socioeconomic backgrounds of the mothers and fathers of illegitimate children in Wales, and the lived experience of conception, pregnancy and childbirth for unmarried mothers. The sexual encounters which resulted in the birth of an illegitimate child ranged from consensual sex which took place within the context of courtship, to sexual exploitation and rape. It is argued that these broad range of experiences are central to our understanding of illegitimacy. This thesis also examines infant and maternal survival chances, both in terms of overall risk of mortality in the days, weeks, and months after birth, and in terms of the ways in which fatal violence against illegitimate children and their mothers was contextualised in court records. These narratives reveal how the bodies of illegitimate infants and unmarried mothers often represented deviance, and served as the locus of anxieties surrounding unregulated reproduction. Finally, this study also analyses the provision of care for married and unmarried pauper women immediately before, during and after parturition. The skills, reputation, and availability of midwifery services in Wales are also explored. This thesis unites many disparate historical fields, including social and cultural history, historical demography, and the histories of crime, gender, sex, reproduction, and medicine, and analyses evidence from previously unstudied regions of Wales. It demonstrates that illegitimacy in eighteenth-century Wales was a deeply complex phenomenon governed by diverse regionally-specific social, cultural and economic influences.

<p>Postmodernism and neo-liberalism is often thought of as two opposite conceptions of the reality and the world. This thesis takes on a critical view of this assertion and the main purpose was to perform a correlation between postmodernism and neo-liberalism. With different theoretical assumptions about constructions of thoughts, agency and structure and the welfare-state a theoretical framework was created. According to this framework the two isms were correlated to each other and the welfare-state to see if there where similarities or dissimilarities between the isms. The assumptions of this thesis are that there are correlations between postmodernism and neo-liberalism in the constructions of thoughts, namely similar view on epistemology. The two isms also show similarity between each other towards the foundations upon which the modern welfare-state rests. This is mainly manifested in their common view of the institutions of the welfare-state, which the isms both finds problematic. This results in a mutual problematic view on positive freedom, the foundation of legitimacy, the means and economic democracy as they are manifested in a given welfare-state. However, the motive for criticism rests mostly on different justifications for the two isms. Anyhow, their views share doubts about the legitimacy of the welfare-state in common. This even though postmodernism is partly a result of the welfare-politics. This thesis also shows why postmodernism and neo-liberalism at least in a theoretical perspective can not continue to develop side by side.</p>

Postmodernism and neo-liberalism is often thought of as two opposite conceptions of the reality and the world. This thesis takes on a critical view of this assertion and the main purpose was to perform a correlation between postmodernism and neo-liberalism. With different theoretical assumptions about constructions of thoughts, agency and structure and the welfare-state a theoretical framework was created. According to this framework the two isms were correlated to each other and the welfare-state to see if there where similarities or dissimilarities between the isms. The assumptions of this thesis are that there are correlations between postmodernism and neo-liberalism in the constructions of thoughts, namely similar view on epistemology. The two isms also show similarity between each other towards the foundations upon which the modern welfare-state rests. This is mainly manifested in their common view of the institutions of the welfare-state, which the isms both finds problematic. This results in a mutual problematic view on positive freedom, the foundation of legitimacy, the means and economic democracy as they are manifested in a given welfare-state. However, the motive for criticism rests mostly on different justifications for the two isms. Anyhow, their views share doubts about the legitimacy of the welfare-state in common. This even though postmodernism is partly a result of the welfare-politics. This thesis also shows why postmodernism and neo-liberalism at least in a theoretical perspective can not continue to develop side by side.

This is a study of illegitimacy in a rural industrial district in which the phenomenon became extremely common during the early nineteenth century, subsequently declining sharply in frequency from around the 1840s to levels reminiscent of the preceding century. In the normal course of events a thesis within the field of socio-economic history will often evolve from the author having first selected a subject, then an approach to its study, and finally a location for implementing or testing his model. However in the present case the subject matter was virtually thrust at the author by his chance acquaintanceship with Culcheth's poor law papers the bulk of which, having been discovered in an attic, passed into his custody in 1965 to be dried out and sorted. The surprising volume of bastardy papers and account books led to a perusal of the parish registers and to the discovery of an illegitimacy ratio sometimes exceeding 30% of registered births. This was sufficiently odd to warrant further investigation, although four years elapsed before the author was in a position to embark on the task ... [see pdf file for full abstract].

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Canterbury, 2006. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-108). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Cette thèse explore les antécédents et conséquences de l'illégitimité organisationnelle. Comment l'illégitimité organisationnelle émerge-t-elle? Pourquoi persiste-t-elle? En utilisant une approche fondée sur les logiques institutionnelles, j'étudie la matérialisation d'une catégorie stigmatisée, et comment la variance en termes de désapprobation au sein de cette catégorie peut signaler une certaine proximité vis-à-vis d'une logique de champ, et se révéler bénéfique.Les enjeux que représentent les transferts et manipulations de l'illégitimité favorisent l'apparition d'échanges sociaux dans lesquels les acteurs se rejettent la faute.Ces questions sont étudiées empiriquement dans le contexte de l'industrie de la banque d'investissement aux Etats-Unis dans la période d'après crise, à partir de 2007. Plus particulièrement, j'observe la perception de cette industrie dans la presse écrite. Ce travail de recherche révèle la nature stratégique des évaluations sociales négatives et délivre des enseignements pour la gestion de l'image de l'entreprise et les politiques publiques / This dissertation explores the antecedents and outcomes of organizational illegitimacy. How do organizational illegitimacy emerge? Why does it persist? Using an institutional logis perspective, I investigate the materialization of a stigmatized category, and how variance in disapproval within this category can signal proximity to a field-level logic and yield beneficial outcomes.The stakes of transferring and manipulating illegitimacy set the stage for blame games at the field of organizational level. These questions are examined in the empirical context of the US investment banking industry in the aftermath of the 2007 crisis. I focus in particular on its perception in print media. This work sheds light on the strategic nature of negative social evaluations, and provides implications for corporate image management and policy practice