Family breakdown and the ‘Welfare Child’ in 19th and 20th century Britain

Abstract

This article traces new cycles of interest in past children as distinct from past childhood. Recent work highlighting that a conceptualisation of childhood existed even in periods with few written records closes the chapter begun by Philippe Ariès in 1960. Instead, there has been a new surge of interest in children on the edges of family life, as well as children in similarly liminal positions between the worlds of adults and children: runaways, delinquents and orphans. Several themes in the literature are identified, based on the conflicting ideas of 'body/mind', 'victim/threat', 'needs/rights'. It is noted that researchers are using more imaginative ways of reaching the lived experience of children than the family or institutional framework, and that an increasing link is drawn between historical and modern concerns such as child abuse and the care of 'at risk' children.

From Reformatory to Farm Home: Developments in Twentieth-Century Juvenile Justice

“…21 In Britain, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, children who were removed from their families were increasingly placed in rural environments and in family homes in the form of the 'boarding out' system. 22 This concept of the home as a site of reformation and moral development did not necessarily prevent young people from being removed from their families of origin, nor did it protect families from being deemed unfit to care for their children.…”

Between “Families in Trouble” and “Children at Risk”: Historicising “Troubled Family” Policy in England since 1945

“…Uncertainty accompanying the creation of the welfare state meant a range of other statutory and voluntary services each articulated that they were ideally suited to identify and intervene most effectively in ‘problem families’ (Macnicol, ; Welshman, 1999a). Each did so in the purported best interests of the child (Levene, ). Tomlinson (: 8), in his study of ‘problem families’ in Luton — Families in trouble — captured this sentiment: ‘Most of the problem families were discovered through their children’.…”

In pursuit of "the welfare trait": recycling deprivation and reproducing depravation in historical context

“…The competing definitions sought to establish a claim to expertise in the postwar welfare state, whose unprecedented material provision nominally 'exposed' the 'problem family' as those unable to make use of the new services available (Philp and Timms, 1957). It also reflected a heightened concern for child welfare and keeping the family at home, rather than removal to an institution (Levene, 2006). However, these definitions were mainly descriptions and always relied on examples rather than evidence and hinged on vivid depictions of 'household squalor' to showcase their inadequacy (Welshman, 2013: 79-81).…”