100 books like Precarious Childhood in Post-Independence Ireland

I came across this memoir while researching Irish mother and baby homes for my own novel. June Goulding was a young midwife in the 1950s when she was hired by the Sacred Heart Convent in Cork.  Here she found girls,  some as young as 13, punished for the sin of being pregnant, forced to work, tarring roads, scrubbing floors, and rearing their children until they were handed over for adoption – in exchange for a donation to the church – often without their consent. Thirty years later, haunted by what she was party to, Goulding tells the story of how she tried to relieve the suffering of these unfortunate women. 

Fear of the Collar is Patrick Touher’s personal account of his experience in the Artane Industrial School. Artane was the largest Industrial School in Ireland and operated from 1870 – 1969.

At times Artane housed nearly 1,000 boys and was known to be self-sufficient – with the “inmates” making their own clothes, shoes, and the boys produced and grew their own food.

Touher takes the reader through the daily military-like regiment and discipline imposed upon young boys being cared for by the Christian Brothers. His story will evoke an array of feelings. It is important to read the epilogue as you will be in awe of the man Patrick Touher has become despite the harshness of his childhood.

John Rodgers tells the story of his mother’s experience in three Irish institutions, including an industrial school, a Mother Baby Home, and a Magdalene Laundry. Bridie Rodgers’ story reveals the psychological and emotional burdens of an inmate and how they are also felt by their future generations. It is a devastating reality to learn of the many innocent children and women who had been isolated from society and powerless over their own lives. 

In her book Belonging: A Memoir of Place, along with her personal journey, Corless shares her research and activism work towards justice for the lost babies of the Tuam Mother Baby Home. Her book is an excellent resource to learn about the institutions where unmarried mothers paid their penance and gave birth to their “illegitimate” children. Her book includes heart-wrenching accounts from former residents. 

I’ve had several exchanges with Catherine since 2010 when she responded to a query I had posted regarding the Tuam Mother Baby Home. Catherine Corless has brought worldwide attention to a scandal she uncovered: 796 missing burial records of children born in the Tuam Mother Baby Home.

Perhaps the standard bearer in scholarly research about the history of orphanages in America, U Mass Boston Professor Timothy Hacsi’s Second Home is essential reading for anyone seriously studying the subject.

Armed with tables that cogently summarize – by decade - the number and types of orphanages, their populations, funding sources, and staffing ratios, Hacsi surveys the landscape of American public policy in the 19th and 20th centuries as religious groups, Progressives, and ultimately government responded to the needs of dependent children and families. 

Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper is super well-known, even if you don't know that you know it. This switching places story has been adapted and re-done a hundred different ways. The plot has been featured in multiple TV show episodes, some faithful film adaptations, and children's cartoons. It may be the most well-known story of switching places ever written. Mark Twain is considered to be one of the greatest American authors. He wrote books in the same era as Charles Dickens, Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Shelley, and many of the greats of classic literature. 

This book and its plot still hold up pretty well. It's built on themes of class distinction and rich versus poor that are still relevant and still uncomfortable to discuss to this day. It's full of Twain's characteristic humor and it's a generally fairly easy read, mostly because you've seen the plot enough times… show more.

When kids stick it to the (adult) rich capitalists, it just hits different.

I reviewed this outstanding book by Vincent DiGirolamo after it had won multiple awards in 2020. It is deserving of all the accolades and then some. I learned that across America, newsboys weren’t just the purveyors of the news but they actively shaped American history, the urban landscape, and working-class identity.

I found it inspiring that these kids stoked the flames of working-class anger as they cried out the news of labor strikes and organized dozens themselves. This book was a great reminder that we have to include children and young people in the quest to rescue forgotten voices from the “enormous condescension of posterity.” 

This book was edited by economists Duncan and Murnane. Equal numbers of sociologists and economists contributed chapters (I wrote chapter 4).

The book covers an enormous range of issues concerning U.S. education and how it affects children’s life chances.  There is a focus on public policy to help children from disadvantaged families, which is often how sociologists and economists come to talk to one another.

This book was my introduction to magical realism when I studied it as part of my English Literature Degree (more years ago than I care to admit). Salman Rushdie wasn’t so well known in those days, but I fell in love with his trademark wry, dark humour straight away and ended up writing my Honours thesis about it. 

It's a stunning take on the partition of India in 1947. The novel explores those themes that always speak to me: the wielding of power, oppression, justice, and the role of the individual caught in historical forces over which they have no control. 

The author’s account of grinding, unrelentless poverty and neglect, set against her eventual, miraculous escape to a different life made me cheer.

Bravely, Kerry Hudson returns to the scenes of many crimes committed against her to really understand why the past refuses to let her go and whether anything has changed for deprived families in those rundown British towns she grew up in.

In an early chapter the author recalls being pushed between two adults across a table. She thought it was a game, but her parents were in fact arguing over who should keep her. Neither was willing.

This is an important and shameful piece of British social history and an unflinching examination of a dysfunctional family with different recollections of the past.