Parents of Poor Children in England, 1580-1800

This is the first sustained study of the mothers and fathers of poor children in the England of the early modern and early industrial period. Drawing upon a wide range of archival material and a lifetime of research, Professor Crawford illuminates the experience of parenting at this time from the perspective of a group who have left little in the way of literary testimony. The result is a study that reveals just how different the parents of the poor were from those of middling and élite status. Poor families were often broken by death, fathers were frequently absent, and mothers were forced to rear their children with whatever forms of relief they could find. Poverty, not property, dictated their relationships with their children. Book jacket.

Patricia Crawford taught history at the University of Western Australia. She is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. She is the author of a number of books on early modern England, including (with Sara Mendelson) Women in Early Modern England, also published by Oxford University Press.