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In historical, comparative and modern social policy contexts. These originated in an obsession with vintage sewing machines combined with having four children of my own. Domesticity Matters
A history of shifts in theories about bringing up babies and young children from John Locke’s hardening theories of the eighteenth century to Benjamin Spock’s twentieth century tenderness and Gina Ford’s brisk routines. I wrote this book while bringing up my own young children. It was intended both to comfort anxious mothers and to show that parents in the past had inspired ideas as well as terrifyingly dangerous ones. It remains on many reading lists, and influenced Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time.
A history of how new kinds of power and domestic appliances transformed our homes and women’s lives. This took the 1851 catalogue of the Great Exhibition as a starting point, and showed how feminism grew out of a totally new domestic situation for women.
A post-war history that show how much out new habits of eating have altered our health and our domestic situations. Published by the BBC to accompany a six part documentary series produced by Jane Root.
Lavishly illustrated with colour photographs, this ranges from medieval ingenuity and the ‘living larder’ of rabbit warren and fish ponds to the great Lutyens mansions of Edwardian times.
A guesstimate of future trends of family organization. Article for Prospect.
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