Description
Book SynopsisMotherhood, Respectability and Baby-Farming in Victorian and Edwardian London explores a largely obscured marketplace of motherhood that provided ways for women to manage the stigma of illegitimacy and their respectable identities within Victorian and Edwardian society. It focuses on the extent of womenâs âdirty workâ, when maternal problem management was fundamental to the general maintenance of respectability and, by extension, to Empire and Civilisation.
Despite its intrigue, history has struggled to understand and represent an uncomfortable but significant artefact of Western modernising society: âbaby-farmingâ. During a period when ideologies of respectability and civilisation arguably mattered most, the ârightâ kind of parenthood â especially motherhood â became paramount. As the âwrongâ offspring could jeopardise a womanâs chances of being respectable, a wholesale, informal, and somewhat clandestine marketplace emerged that catered to various maternal difficult
