Parenting, poverty and the NSPCC in Ireland, 1889–1939

Abstract

This chapter addresses a number of key questions surrounding parenting, poverty and the state in Ireland from 1889 to 1939.1 Concentrating on the period from the opening of the first Irish branch of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) to the beginning of the Second World War, it highlights international concerns involving child protection, parenting, and the state, as well as specific Irish anxieties surrounding class, gender, emigration, sexuality and the family. This was an era in which parenting was increasingly seen as national duty, and, as Harry Hendrick has asserted in a broader history of child welfare and the NSPCC in Britain, ‘“Civilised” parenting, especially by the Irish and the poor, was testimony to progress.