The Irish Family: Blame, Agency and the ‘Unmarried Mother Problem’, 1980s–2021

Abstract

The recent Final Report of the Commission into Mother and Baby Homes (January 2021) has received considerable criticism for suggesting that the Irish family was as responsible as the churches and state for the mistreatment of single mothers and their children. This article explores a case of two dead babies in mid-1980s Ireland, one single mother, and a rural family that found itself at the centre of an official inquiry. This case provides a prism through which to explore family agency and the official framing of the Irish family as culpable of moral erosion and social destabilisation. In this analysis agency in the familial context emerges as a complex mix of individual and relational exertions comprising conformity and resistance.