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The agency of young women and men in university towns in the 17th century is a great topic, especially relationships and how they argued in the court of law. I like that you are trying to understand both young men and women at the same time. The intersectionality of age, place in community and family, marital status, etc. is important too. It seems your study could be in a good position to comment on how agency must not be understood only in terms of the individual. Any thoughts on this?
You make a good point that institutionalized children are generally viewed as helpless. Your large reach to Australian, Canada and Britain at once is exciting! Focussing on experience and emotions is a good way to look at agency. Can you say a little more about some of the motivations you have uncovered in these children?
Hi Heidi,
Thanks very much for watching my presentation and for your comment and questions. Certainly for the material I’ve been using, approaching the sources in a way that is sensitive to experience and emotions has been particularly fruitful.
In terms of motivations, there’s a lot of material that indicates that children were knowledgeable about what their time in institutional homes might be like, and that they held distinct expectations about rights, entitlements, and opportunities that they might take advantage of in order to shape both their present circumstances and their futures. In particular, I’ve been interested in the ways that they were complicit with and co-operated with institutions and their staff to bring about specific outcomes or to forge and enhance interpersonal relationships. There’s evidence, for example, of children expressing desires to be taught certain trades or skills for the future, of wanting to emigrate or wishing to stay close to the family and friends they knew, of staying in touch with particular friends/peers, and of course, of building bonds with staff members. For some, it’s evident that these relationships were not only forms of affection and attachment, but that these young people knew that they offered opportunities to increase their social capital. Other documents of course point to acts of resistance and conflict between institutions and children – from perceived misconduct and misbehaviour to express their feelings, to running away etc. But more often than not, case records show that young people kept in touch with the institution – most likely because they knew it might offer a safety net if misfortune struck again.
On another level too, the survival of correspondence from parents and relatives also shows how families worked together to meet certain goals and desires, as well as shape the types of care that children did or didn’t receive while living in the homes.
Thanks again for your comments!
Claudia
Great, thanks!
Thank you for a really interesting poster. I was really struck by the letter from HH, particularly as it included his own rationale rather than a more simple request of his wishes. I also work on children in care but in a later period and I think I would jump for joy if I found this in the archives! I was wondering if you could talk a bit more about the letter; are there many examples of this? Was the permission of parents always required? Could children override their parents wishes? And do you know if HH was able to emigrate? Thank you.
Hi Amanda,
Thanks for watching my presentation and for your comment and questions.
HH’s letter is really quite a gem in terms of his rationale for his desire to emigrate. When he entered care, the organisation asked his mother to state whether she consented or objected to his emigration. In his case, she made a strong objection, and after he was received into care, wrote several times over the years to reiterate her preference that he should not emigrate. ‘m not sure what information HH was exposed to in the home about emigration – he may well have been friends with peers that migrated, and it’s probably he encountered some form of ‘education’ about the possibility of life in the colonies in the home. Despite his letter to his mother, HH never migrated – his mother continued to object and asked the Society to transfer him to a home in London where his brother was being trained, and where she could more easily visit him.
Permission was usually sought from the nearest living relative for emigration – there are only 1 or 2 examples that I’ve found in my sample where preferences were over-ruled. What is more common though is for parents/relatives not to answer the question relating to consent or objection, and then to state their objection once children were received into care. In a few other cases, they consented to emigration on application forms, and then later tried to retract their consent – this was sometimes agreed to, and in some cases, not. There are 1 or 2 examples again of children overriding relatives’ decisions – this is normally when they reached the age when they were considered able to decide their futures themselves.
Finally, I’ve been lucky enough to find several letters in the archives I use – much more so in the records kept in British institutions, than in Australian ones, for this time period. Within the British institutions, the nature of correspondence from children and family members is really varied – from everything relating to the types of care children received, complaints, letters of gratitude, and letters from children keeping in touch with both relatives and institutional staff.
Thanks for your questions – we should talk some more!
Claudia
Dear Claudia, thank you so much for your great poster! I’m really looking forward to reading your book. I do like the ways in which you discuss agency, emotions and experiences. I also share your interest in a fuller picture of children in care. Despite its focus on abuse, neglect and violence, the Finnish inquiry into the failures of child welfare in 1937-1983 revealed several positive memories. Among our 300 interviews we can find examples of careleavers’ narratives of friendship, warmhearted caregivers (sometimes contrasted to abusive caregivers), hobbies, favorite places etc. Through the lense of experience we can better understand how people (of all ages) lived the welfare state.
Pirjo Markkola
10.3.2021 13:37