Poor parents actions and feelings in late Georgian England

What is it about?

This article uses the letters that paupers wrote to their settlement parish when seeking relief to explore how parents talked about supporting and caring for their children. It shows that although society gave fathers the primary role as provisioners, mothers also saw themselves as crucial in providing for their children. The language that both parents used in the letters was shaped by the culture of sensibility, urging poor law authorities to benevolence and sympathy.

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Why is it important?

My article reveals that parenting was not as gendered in the division of labour as the rhetoric of breadwinning implies. It also reminds us that poor men were caring and committed to their children; suffering as much as women when their offspring went without. Finally, it proposes that sensibility was not restricted to the elite, but could be used by the poor to make their needs heard.