This thesis critically examines how informal child-care, performed for money, was subject to sustained scrutiny between 1867-1908. This period saw women who took children into their home in exchange for payment being subject to judicial sanction,press comment and legislative intervention. The passage of the 1908 Children Act marked the point at which all women who took in children for money were subjected to legislation for the first time. Existing scholarship on this topic has largely been confined to a small and unrepresentative sample of women who were convicted of murdering children they were paid to look after and concentrated on exploring the manner in which these women were demonised and labelled with the pejorative term 'baby-farmer.' Thisthesis makes a contribution to scholarship by demonstrating the need to study a wider range of women who took in children for money. It also shows that the template of the criminal 'baby-farmer' was only one possible representation of such women who took in children for payment. To this end, the study utilises a selection of under-analysed case files, court records and campaigning literature. The thesis has found that the term 'baby-farmer' has limited analytical value. A range of social actors told different stories, in different contexts for different purposes. As the period covered by this study drew to a close, narratives were increasingly likely to emphasise functional aspects of childcare performed for money; a shift informed by and informing changing ideas around, female employment, the role of the state, parental authority and the value of the child.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:706591 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Hinks, James |
| Publisher | University of Liverpool |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/2035299/ |
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