Love, Care and the Illegitimate Child in Eighteenth-Century Scotland

Abstract

This article uses a combination of court and Kirk (Church of Scotland) session records, and several sets of letters written by the mothers of illegitimate children to explore how such children were loved and cared for in eighteenth-century Scotland. It argues that legitimacy, as well as class and gender, mattered in the love and care that children received. Illegitimacy also had an impact on who mothered, fracturing the bond between the biological mother and child, for a mothering given by other mothers, including wet-nurses, grandparents and, later, employers. Its conclusion is that how a child was mothered, the love and care they received, were products of a child's positioning – gender, class, legitimacy, parentage – in the world. Love was a social product, framed and shaped by and through the social, economic and legal networks in which the child was positioned. Whilst the legitimate child, both in law and social practice, might have expected its care to be framed primarily through the nuclear family, the bastard child belonged, as the law suggested, to the community, requiring its mothering to be dispersed.

‘It Gives Great Relief to My Mind’ – Family Involvement at Children's Committal to the Sister of Mercy run Irish Industrial Schools, 1868–1936

“…She proffers that it: might be more fruitful to think of love as something offered in degrees, as a social and cultural practice that was highly contextual and situational, and that its situatedness meant that the experience of love could vary enormously across individuals, shaped by their social, cultural and temporal positioning. 92 Love and concern for children's well-being could act as a basis for committal to the schools. Margaret C was widowed and reported as deserted to America in 1907 leaving her five young daughters ranging in age from 2 to 13 to be committed to Dundalk industrial school.…”

Women, love and power in Enlightenment Scotland

“…While across the century, men were always depicted as the active partners in courtship, this change in language saw a move from courtship as a mutually-created relationship to an action that men performed on women. 78 Similarly courting practices amongst the elites homogenised, showing the increasing dominance of the model promoted by writers like Gregory and Fordyce. Like in North America, the conflict between the inexpressive woman and the emotive male suitor developed into an elaborate game.…”

Bastardy in Butleigh: Illegitimacy, Genealogies and the Old Poor Law in Somerset, 1762–1834

“…These have complicated the simple narratives that cast illegitimacy as a function either of 'marriage frustrated', or the 'bastardy-prone sub-society'. Instead, studies by Rebecca Probert, Tanya Evans, Thomas Nutt, Alanna Tomkins, Samantha Williams, Emma Griffin, Joanne Bailey, Angela Muir and Katie Barclay, have shown that the baptism of a child outside marriage was the outcome of complex social processes (Probert 2014;Evans 2005;Nutt 2005;Tomkins 2015;Williams 2014;Griffin 2013;Bailey 2014;Muir 2018;Barclay 2019). Parents might not marry because mobility, unemployment or war prevented it, or even because of passing suspicions, jealousies or gossip.…”