Who cared and why should we? Historical perspectives on gender, family and economy

The structures and relationships associated with care provision are foundational to the functioning and character of every society and economy, yet they have been routinely overlooked by historians. Focusing on child care in Britain during a period of dynamic economic and social change (1650-1850), this lecture asks who was left holding the baby, and what did this entail both in terms of the ‘body work’ required as well as the labour relations involved? Contrary to common assumptions that mothers have traditionally been the core care providers, the lecture will show that child care involved complex networks and hierarchies between women which afford a new perspective on the history of gender inequality, the history of social inequality, and the history of the family.

Alexandra Shepard is Professor of Gender History and Director of the Centre of Gender History at the University of Glasgow. Her books include Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 2003) and Accounting for Oneself: Worth, Status and the Social Order in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 2015), which in 2016 won the Leo Gershoy Award (an annual prize awarded by the American Historical Association for the best book in the field of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century western European history). Prof Shepard is currently leading a Leverhulme International Network on ‘Producing Change: Gender and Work in Early Modern Europe’, and is writing a book on Childcare, Family and Economy in Britain, 1650-1850.