The Fond and the Feckless: Paternity, Sentiment and Poverty in late Victorian and Edwardian Culture

这项研究实现了两个相互关联的目标，为理解维多利亚晚期和爱德华时代文化中工人阶级和穷人之间的亲子关系提供了一种创新和独特的方法。首先，它考察了父亲身份的思想基础，以及父亲的概念在多大程度上与对男子气概和男人的权利和责任的理解密不可分。其次，该研究在家庭家庭生活的人际背景下考察了父亲。至关重要的是，这项研究建立了这两条父职关系，以证明虽然父亲的职责有助于公民身份和福利的申请，但父亲也利用他们作为养育者和保护者的角色来表达对家庭的依恋。绝大多数情况下，工薪阶层家庭生活的历史倾向于优先考虑母亲和孩子之间的关系。在这个框架内，工人阶级的父亲主要是作为一个工薪阶层，其生计决定了他的受抚养人的地位。这项研究质疑父亲在工薪阶层家庭的情感和家庭生活中理应扮演的边缘角色。特别是，它挑战了通过母亲与子女关系的视角来审视工人阶级童年的倾向。这项研究在工薪阶层家庭的性别动态中确定了父亲的空间、物质和想象。通过追求父亲对家庭生活的参与，家庭作为母性领域变得不那么清晰了。尽管如此，男人(和孩子)认为家庭内部是一个女性化的空间，这使得父亲和孩子可以沉迷于嬉戏、溺爱，有时还会哭泣，而不会损害男性的男性地位。同样，家庭生活和童年的日常生活围绕着父亲的时间：当男人起床工作回来时，当他们吃饭、洗澡并有时间离开带薪工作的时候。当老年迫使男性适应或辞去工作时，根植于家庭缺席(因为工作)的男子气概概念被重新谈判。同样，福利记录表明，(尤其是丧偶的)祖父在一些家庭结构中扮演着关键角色，在与官方或慈善组织的接触中，他们是育儿的提供者，也是家庭的倡导者。至关重要的是，福利和机构记录表明，除了养家糊口外，人们并不认为父亲对家庭生活特别必要，甚至不是特别想要的。养家糊口的父亲的地位可以作为家庭体面的保障，但在养家糊口的情况下，父亲的存在实际上成为福利的潜在障碍；女性可以更容易地与慈善网络谈判，而不必考虑失业的男性。相反，当各机构为庇护和供养无家可归男子的计划寻求捐款时，将成年无家可归男子视为同情对象的唯一方法是，首先将他描绘成一个无助的孩子，其次将他与任何可能的受抚养人分开。此外，人们认为父亲在社会阶层中处于底层的程度很低，这意味着关注这些家庭的福利机构采用了家长式的语言，这塑造了慈善理念和他们与家庭的接触。这项研究还找出了缺席或虐待父亲与占主导地位的亲子关系叙事的关系。即使缺席父亲的推定与慈善机构受助人的记录不符，福利机构也倾向于将父亲归类为养家糊口的人，而未能提供养家糊口的男性则失去了作为父亲的合法性。从这个意义上讲，缺席既可以在字面上也可以在想象中进行。自从ESRC资助了英格兰西北部养家糊口的试点项目以来，进一步的研究已经完成。该应用程序寻求对编写扩展项目的支持。

This study achieves two inter-related aims to provide an innovative and unique approach to understanding of paternity among the working classes and the poor in late Victorian and Edwardian culture. First, it examines the ideological underpinning of the 'father' identity and the extent to which conceptions of paternity were inextricable from understandings of manliness and men's rights and responsibilities. Secondly, the research examines fathers within the inter-personal context of domestic family life. Crucially, the research establishes a relationship between these two threads of fatherhood to demonstrate that whilst the duties of fatherhood were instrumental in claims for citizenship and welfare, fathers also used their role as providers and protectors to articulate attachment to their families. Overwhelmingly, the historiography of working-class family life has tended to privilege the relationship between mothers and their children. Within this framework, the working-class father has featured primarily as a wage earner whose livelihood defined the status of his dependents. This research questions the supposedly peripheral role of fathers within the emotional and domestic life of the working-class family. In particular, it challenges the tendency to examine working-class childhoods through the lens of maternal relations with offspring. The research identifies fathers' space, material and imagined, within the gendered dynamics of the working-class home. By pursuing fathers' engagement with family life, the home as a maternal domain became less clear. Nonetheless, men's (and children's) perceptions of the domestic interior as a feminised space enabled fathers and children to indulge in horseplay, coddling and, sometimes, weeping without compromising men's masculine status. Similarly, the everyday routine of domesticity and childhood pivoted around father time: when men got up for and returned from work, when they ate, washed and had time away from paid employment. Conceptions of masculinity rooted in domestic absence (because of work) were renegotiated when old age forced men to adapt or resign their working selves. Likewise, welfare records suggest that (especially widowed) grandfathers were pivotal in some family formations as providers of childcare and advocates for the family in encounters with official or charitable organisations. Crucially, welfare and institutional records suggested that, beyond breadwinning, fathers were not deemed particularly necessary or even desirable to family life. The status of a breadwinning father could act as guarantor for a family's respectability but, where breadwinning faltered, the presence of the father actually became a potential obstacle to welfare; women could negotiate charitable networks more easily without having to account for an unemployed man. Conversely, when agencies sought donations towards schemes for sheltering and feeding homeless men, the only way to constitute the adult homeless male as a sympathetic subject was, first, to depict him as a helpless child and, secondly, to disassociate him from any possible dependents. Furthermore, the sheer extent to which fathers were presumed to be absent at the bottom of the social scale meant that welfare agencies focused on these families adopted a language of paternalism that shaped philanthropic rationale and their engagement with families. The research also locates the absent or abusive father in relation to dominant narratives of paternity. Even where the presumption of absentee fathers does not resonate with records of charities' recipients, welfare agencies tended to categorise 'fathers' as breadwinners whilst men who failed to provide lost their legitimacy as fathers. Absence in this sense could operate in both a literal and imagined context. Since an ESRC funded pilot project on the Northwest of England on breadwinning, further research was completed. The application seeks support for writing up the extended project.