Women and the family in Northern Ireland

0277-5395/93 $6.00 + .00 Copyright © 1993 Pergamon Press Ltd.

Women's Studits Int. Forum, Vol. 16, No.6, pp. 553-568, 1993 Printed in the USA.

WOMEN AND THE FAMILY IN NORTHERN IRELAND A Review EITHNE McLAUGHLIN

Department of Sociology & Social Policy, The Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast BT7 INN, Ireland

Synopsis- This article reviews published literature on the family in Northern Ireland, complemented by ethnographic data from a study of Derry City. Although 'embedded' families, and especially the extended family focused around 'strong' mothers, are assumed to be characteristic of Northern Ireland, very little study of the family has occurred. In this analysis of the available material, it is argued that although extended families and high levels of physical, material, and emotional reproductive work among women are characteristic features of Northern Ireland, this does not mean that women in Northern Ireland experience the family as a site of power. The interaction of external and internal household relations limit the extent to which women's influence in families can be converted into power. The subordination of influence to power occurs through the limits imposed by, on the one hand, the importance of attained family status (and within that tensions around 'respectability') in a relatively closed society, and, on the other, low levels of economic and political resources among women.

Ifthere is one element of life in Northern Ire-

land which is presumed to be common across the sectarian divide, it is the importance of family and kin relations, in both urban and rural settings. Journalists, politicians, policy makers, and Church leaders proclaim that at least some comfort can be taken in, and from, the strength of family life in Northern Ireland: In Northern Ireland the family and particularly the extended family has always been a strong force within society. (Black, 1979, p. 5).

Academically, the importance of family and kin in Northern Ireland has been documented in such classic anthropological works as R. Harris' Prejudice and Tolerance in Ulster (1972) and Leyton's The One Blood (1973). These works document a distinctive kinship terminology in which relatives are labelled 'friends,' and non-relatives, including friends, 'strangers.' Such distinctive terminology is taken to be part of the greater cultural and social importance of family and family networks in Northern Ireland than in other developed countries, such as Britain. Northern Ireland's predominantly rural heritage, its geographically small size, high fertil553

ity levels, high levels of unemployment, and (until the late 1970s) relatively acute housing shortages, have all led politicians, community activists, policy makers and providers, and many academics, to assume that the role of informal welfare, through the extended family and its pivotal 'strong' women (a variant of the 'Irish Mother' theme), must be even greater in Northern Ireland than in the 'communities of poverty' identified in Britain by those in the community studies' school, such as Young and Willmott (1957) and Townsend (1957). However, despite the importance attached to the family in Northern Ireland culture and society, very few research studies or publications have actually focused on its nature. McShane and Pinkerton (1986) point out that the 1982 bibliography of Northern Irish social science material (Rolston, Tomlinson, O'Dowd, Millar, & Smyth, 1983) had only to of almost 6,000 entries indexed under 'family,' and none of these studies addressed the Northern Irish family specifically or in depth. A number of relevant publications appeared shortly afterwards (Donnan & McFarlane, 1983; Edgerton, 1986; Evason, 1983; Montgomery & Bell, 1986), but a recent bibliography on women in Northern Ireland (Montgomery & Davies, 1990) made the same

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EITHNEMcLAUGHLIN

point. Although there has been a small flowering of material on family size and structures (see later), on the extent of poverty in Northern Irish households (Evason 1980, 1984, 1986; McWilliams 1987), and on women's employment (Davies & McLaughlin, 1991; Kremer & Montgomery, 1992), there has been little research on the meaning of the family for those within it, or on the family's wider social significance in Northern Ireland. Ethnographic accounts of family life are especially in short supply (see, however, Fairweather, McDonagh, & McFadyean, 1984; McLaughlin, 1987; McNamee & Lovett, 1987). Two important bodies of literature do, however, bear indirectly on the question of the nature of family life in Northern Ireland. The first of these is the now reasonably strong demographic literature on fertility (Compton, 1978; Compton & Coward, 1989; Compton, Coward, & Power, 1985; Compton, Coward, & Wilson-Davis, 1986; Coward 1980, 1981, 1986). This literature has not, however, included analysis of how these issues relate to the relative positions and power of men and women within the household/ family. The second indirectly relevant body of literature comprises studies of the effect of political violence and unrest on children and adults in Northern Ireland. Since the late 1970s, this body of literature has argued that the effects of communal violence may be mediated by strong social networks based on households, kinship ties, shared territory, and religion. Strong social networks based on households, kinship ties, shared territory, and religion have also been identified in the limited existing anthropological literature (Donnan & McFarlane, 1983, 1985), and in literature on children at risk (Pinkerton, 1989), coping with unemployment (Evason, 1985; Leonard, 1991; Trew & Kilpatrick, 1984), and marital separation (Evason, 1980). A reading of such literature may lead one to the conclusion that Northern Ireland families and households can cope with the many political and economic difficulties they face through an "embattled but surviving traditional extended family" (McShane & Pinkerton, 1986, p. 174). However, with the notable exception of Evason's work, these studies have not considered the differential meaning of family life for men and women.

The few general commentaries that have been made on the nature of Northern Irish family life tend to focus on the 'traditional' nature of male/female roles and relationships within marriage. Some have suggested this ltraditionalness' is caused by the dominance of organised Christian religion in Northern Ireland, in turn related to the region's historical position as a colonial outpost, the dynamics of the contested Northern Ireland State, and government in a divided society. In terms of accounting for the position of women within the family, then, the emphasis has been on the role of the State (Edgerton, 1986; Evason, 1987; McShane, 1987; McWilliams, 1990; O'Dowd, 1987; Ward & McGivern, 1982) and the Churches (Edgerton, 1986; Fairweather et al., 1984; McWilliams, 1990; O'Dowd, 1987; Ward & McGivern, 1982). Few attempts, however, have been made to analyse the various components of male/female roles within the family in a comparative context to understand, rather than speculate on, what it is that may produce a distinctive nature for Northern Irish family life and gender relations therein. Is there in fact anything distinctive about it, and, if so, what is it? What are the consequences of this for men, for women, and for children, and what is the relationship between the nature of family life in Northern Ireland and life and government in a divided society and economically peripheral region? The main purpose of this article is to stimulate discussion of these issues through a review of published evidence on the family in Northern Ireland, complemented by ethnographic data from my own doctoral research in Derry City (see also McLaughlin, 1989). UNDERSTANDING THE NORTHERN IRISH FAMILY

Neither the household nor the family can be examined in isolation from the wider cultural, social, economic, and political structures with which they intersect. Neither the household nor the family can be taken as unproblematic 'natural' units of empirical description and subsequent analysis (0. Harris, 1981). In particular, the interests and activities of men, women, and children within these units may conflict rather than coincide.

Women and the Family

Acknowledgement of this is central to understanding the meaning and consequences of 'family' life for women. A growing body of feminist critiques of social and economic structures, social policy, and social research have shown that 'the family' in industrialised societies is not a haven of expressive warmth and emotional support as earlier social science writers had presumed (e.g., Parson & Bales, 1956). Feminist analyses of the family have focused on the internal organisation of 'private' relations between men and women and have made explicit the political and economic dimensions of those relationships. Whilst some argue for the primacy of these internal relations in understanding gender inequality (Le., Delphy & Leonard, 1992), others argue that it is not enough to revise our ideas about household and family relations by deconstructing these in isolation. As Moore (1988) says, the complex relationships of household and family forms to the 'public' worlds of economics and politics indicate that we must also revise our views about the nature of extrahousehold relations (e.g., with the State) and interhousehold relations (with other households, with whom relationships may be economic, social, and/or familial). Discussion of the Northern Irish family has yet to take on board most of these developments, and, as the previous section outlined, women's experience of the family in Northern Ireland is at an early stage of investigation. In the late 1980s, studies by McLaughlin (1987), McNamee and Lovett (1987), McCorry (1988), Montgomery (1988), Kilmurray and Bradley (1989), Cecil (1989), and Cecil, Offer, and St. Ledger (1987), began to build on Evason's earlier work to show that comfortable ideas about 'cheery' families supporting their members from evil without is an idealisation rather than an analysis of the nature of family life in Northern Ireland. The remainder of this article seeks to contribute to this body of work by reviewing evidence on the demographic, economic, social, and political structures and processes which construct the context of Northern Irish family life, focusing on the meaning of family life for women in Northern Ireland and drawing on ethnographic material, especially that arising from fieldwork in Derry City between 1983 and 1986 (McLaughlin, 1987).

555

THE DEMOGRAPHIC CONTEXT OF THE NORTHERN IRISH FAMILY

Northern Ireland has shared with the Republic of Ireland the highest birth rate in Europe until very recently-the Republic of Ireland birth rate fell below that of Northern Ireland in 1987 and has continued to fall sharply (see Table 1 and Figure 1). Whatever the causes of relatively high fertility and birth rates, the consequences are that households in Northern Ireland are more likely than in the rest of Europe to be comprised of 'parents and offspring' rather than, for example, single adults or adults without children. As Table 2 shows, in 1988, 40070 of Northern Irish households contained children under 16 years of age, and a further 15% consisted of three or more 'adults.' In many cases these will be households consisting of parentis and their over16, unmarried offspring. Eight percent of all Northern Irish households contain more than one 'family' - defined in official statistics as parentis and their never-married offspring. About 45% of Northern Irish households probably contain 'parentis and (never married) offspring' (assuming that approximately one-third of households comprised of three or more 'adults' are in fact households with parentis under retirement age and unmarried offspring); and, therefore, roughly two-thirds of the population live in this kind of household. In areas with particularly high fertility and birth rates, such as Derry City Table I. Total fertility (average number of children per woman of childbearing age) in European Community, 1960 and 1989 Country

1960

Eur12

2.63

1.58

Belgium Denmark Germany Greece Spain France Republic of Ireland Italy Luxembourg Netherlands Portugal

2.58 2.54 2.37 2.28 2.86 2.73 3.76 2.41 2.28 3.12 3.01 2.69

1.58 1.62 1.39 1.50 1.30 1.81 2.11 1.29 1.52 1.55 1.50 1.85

UK

1989

Note. Data from Eurostat Supplement Target 92, (4) 1991. Adapted by permission.

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EITHNEMcLAUGHLIN

25 r - - - , - - - , - - - - - - - " . , - - - - , , - - , - - - - - ,

-'- --.

10

~ ~

.

5

.

0'------------------'

1961

1971

1981

1989

Fig. 1. Birth rates in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (1961-1989). Data from "Marital Fertility and Family Planning," by Pat Clancy and Mhaire Nic Ghiolla Phadraig, 1991, Sociological Association of Ireland Annual Conference, Termonfeckin, Co. Louth; and "The Health of the Public in Northern Ireland: Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer 1988," by DHSS (NI), 1988, Belfast: HMSO. Adapted by permission.

and West Belfast, the dominance of 'parentis plus offspring' households is even more pronounced. Thus, in a survey of two-thirds of Derry City in 1983, 82070 of households were of this kind (McLaughlin, 1987). The significance of this demographic context for our understanding of the nature of the Northern Irish family and the meaning of family life for women and men lies in the intensity and high levels of physical, emotional, and social reproductive activities it implies. As elsewhere, the bulk of social and emotional, as well as physical, reproductive work falls to women in Northern Irish society (see Hinds, 1991; McLaughlin, 1987; McWilliams, 1991).

Although the 1970s did bring important reductions in fertility rates and family size, in the 1980s birth rates were relatively stable (Fig. 1), showing if anything a small rise. The level of women's physical, emotional, and social reproductive work in Northern Ireland may be somewhat lower than it was in the 1960s, but it is no longer declining. The 1980s were also characterised by a doubling of the number of births occurring outside marriage and large increases in the overall proportions of lone parent families. By 1988, 16% of all births were births outside marriage (PPRU, 1989), as opposed to 7% in 1981 and 4% in 1971. Likewise, in 1988,

Table 2. Household size and composition, Northern Ireland, 1988

1 adult (16-59) 1 adult (60 or more) 2 adults (16-59) 2 adults (lor both 60 or more) Parentis and dependent children: Youngest aged 0-4 Youngest aged 5-15 3 or more adults All Base

% of all Households

Mean Size

010 of Persons

8 15 9 14

1.00 1.00 2.00 2.00

3 5 6 9

20 20 15 100

4.40 4.47 3.44 2.98 3,169

30 30 17 100 9,444

Note. Data from Tables 2 and 3, CHS 1988, PPRU Monitor No.3, Sept 1989. Adapted by permission.

Women and the Family

16070 of families with dependent children were headed by a lone mother and 2% were headed by a lone father (PPRU, 1989). There has been a rapid increase ever since the mid1980s when 10% of families were headed by a lone mother and 2% were headed by a lone father (McShane & Pinkerton, 1986). Both the direction of change in this area and the rate of change in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s have been the same in Northern Ireland as in Britain. Neither the causes nor the meaning of this large cultural and social shift in the nature of family life have as yet been fully addressed in either country. At one level, such changes may mean a lower level of physical and emotional reproductive work for women because lone mothers have, on average, nearly one child less than their married counterparts, and because there is often no man in the household requiring servicing. On the other hand, such developments may intensify women's social and emotional reproductive labour because as lone parents there is no other adult within the household with whom to share even partial responsibility and work. THE ECONOMIC CONTEXT OF THE NORTHERN IRISH FAMILY Whilst high levels of physical, emotional, and social reproductive work are characteristic of Northern Irish society and distinguished it from other European societies in the 1980s, Northern Ireland has also been characterised by relatively low levels of what is classically termed 'productive' work - that is, activity in the labour market. Historically high levels of male and female unemployment and low female participation rates have together resulted in many households having no formal place in the labour market. For a minority of such households, informal labour market activity, and informal economic activity more generally, are important (see Howe, 1990; Leonard, 1991). Even in Northern Ireland, however, the 1960s saw women's participation in the formal labour market, and particularly the participation of married women, increase enormously. In 1961 only 30% of female employees were married; by 1971, nearly half were married (47%); and in the 1980s the majority of women in paid employment were married (59% in 1981; NI Census of Popula-

557

tion, Economic Activity Tables, 1961, 1971, 1981). McWilliams (1991) has shown that the male breadwinner pattern is no longer, even in 'traditional' Northern Ireland, the dominant family pattern (Table 3). Instead, it is dual earner couples which are most prevalent. Participation in the formal labour market does not, of course, unambiguously alter women's and men's relationships with each other within the household and family (see Delphy & Leonard, 1992, for a discussion). Nevertheless, increased access to income for women and some increase in men's performance of domestic and childcare labour may have resulted from women's increased formal employment in recent decades (Kremer & Montgomery, 1992). The male role, however, generally continues to be seen as one of 'helping' the woman, who therefore retains ultimate responsibility for the domestic and childcare arena (McLaughlin, 1987; see also Hochschild, 1990, for similar findings in the USA). The decision processes that lead to women's participation in employment are governed not only by jobs on offer in the labour market, but by the hours available, women's largely unshared responsibility for childcare and husbands' employment statuses (McLaughlin, 1992; McLaughlin, Millar, & Cooke, 1989; McWilliams, 1991). Households in which neither partner is earning are particularly significant in Northern Ireland because of the high level of (registered) male unemployment, the way that husband and wife are treated as one income unit for social security purposes, and low levels of employment opportunities for women (Tables 3 and 4). There has been an increasing polarisation of households in Northern Ireland between households of parents and children where neither adult has formal labour market activity and those where both have. This reflects Pahl's observation that households in Britain are becoming increasingly polarised between nonearner and two-earner households (R. Pahl, 1984), as unemployment has risen throughout the 1980s. The high level of couples where neither partner is employed means that Northern Irish couples are more likely than couples in most areas of Britain to be raising their children on very low incomes. Within Northern

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EITHNEMcLAUGHLIN

Table 3. Employment status of couples with dependent children in Northern Ireland and Britain Northern Ireland Employment Status Neither employed Male only employed Both employed Female only employed Base

1985 CHS 0J0 14 40 43 3 1,554

Britain

1985 HES 070

1985 LFS 0J0

1990 WWLS 0J0

1985 GHS 0J0

18 38 39 5 14,256

9 33 55 3 1,918

18 28 48 6

10 31 55 4

668

4,813

Note. Data in columns I, 2, 3, 5 from "The Sexual Division of Labour in Northern Ireland" by Monica McWilliams, 1991, in Women, Employment and Social Policy in Northern Ireland: A Problem Postponed?,

edited by Celia Davies & Eithne McLaughlin, Coleraine, PRI Publications/Centre for Research on Women, University of Ulster. Adapted by permission. Data in Column 4 from "Women and Unemployment" by Eithne McLaughlin, 1992, in Women's Working Lives in Northern Ireland, edited by John Kremer & Pamela Montgomery, London, HMSO. Adapted by permission.

Ireland, there are wide variations in male unemployment rates and hence in the proportions of two-parent families where neither partner is employed, as a comparison of Table 3 (Northern Ireland as a whole) and Table 4 (Derry City) shows. Even within one locality, such as Derry City or Belfast City, there is large variation between districts within that locality. Table 4, for example, shows that the Nationalist working class areas of Bogside and Creggan were dominated by two-parent families where neither partner was employed (62070 and 60%, respectively), whereas the main mixed district (religion and class) in the city was not (Prehen). The significance of these demographic and economic characteristics of the Northern Irish 'family' are explored in subsequent sections which document recent ethnographic material on family life, with the main source being McLaughlin (1987) on Derry City. The nature of family life at both the household and the interhousehold levels is considered.

THE EXPERIENCE OF FAMILY LIFE

Marriage . ... As the previous discussion has shown, most Northern Irish people live in households 'headed' by a married couple, and most Northern Irish people have been, are, or will be married. The nature of the marital relationship therefore forms a critical backcloth to family life. As Gittins (1985) says, it is hard for people to say exactly why they got, or intend to get, married. Having said that, a study of attitudes towards marriage in Northern Ireland in 1987 (Cairns, 1987) showed interesting differences between men and women, and older and younger women, in terms of how they saw motivations to marry. Sexual attraction and romance were regarded by young unmarried men and women and married men as the main reason for marriage. Women who were already married, however, saw having children as the main reason for marrying. That married women,

Table 4. Employment status of couples with dependent and co-resident nondependent children, Derry City, 1983 Derry City

Bogside

Creggan

Prehen

Neither employed Male only employed Both employed Female only employed

42 34 17 7 100

62 15 8 15 100

60 32 4 4 100

21 37 38 4 100

Base

351

Employment Status

Note. Data from "Maiden City Blues: Employment and Unemployment in Derry City," by Eithne McLaughlin, 1987, unpublished doctoral thesis, Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast, Ireland. Adapted by permission.

Women and the Family

but not married men, see marriage predominantly in these terms indicates a fundamental difference in the meaning of 'being married' to adult men and women in Northern Ireland. This is not to say that most married women in Northern Ireland do not, or have not, aspired to 'companionable' marriage. As Gittins (1985, p. 73) says, there is no denying the importance of people's search for love through, and in, marriage in Western societies. In my own ethnographic study of family life in Derry City, the companionable or love marriage was the dominant ideal held by women, married or single, and it was more often expressed as an ideal by women than men. However, older married women were more likely than younger women or men to describe this as an ideal which is rarely attained. This may be because the lived reality of marriage is more complex for women than men, and because the lived reality of marriage reveals the power dimensions of that marriage and, in particular, the lower levels of power available to wives than to husbands - dimensions which owe their force to the relationship between internal household relations and external relations of the household with the State, the labour market, and organised religion-themes which are developed further later. . . . and parenthood Marriage can be described as a more complex phenomenon for women than men because although 'being married' is an important badge of adulthood for both women and men, it is more so for women than men, and this relates to the different content of parenthood for each of the sexes. So although the identities of 'adult man' and 'adult woman' both contain the elements of marriage and parenthood, thereafter gender disparity begins. In Derry City, for example, to be a 'good husband/father' required a man not to be bad to his children (McLaughlin, 1987). In other words, the absence of the negative was generally sufficient to invest the husband/ father with positive attributes. In this area of longstanding high male unemployment, the idea that to be a good father/husband, a man 'has to' be employed, was not widely held, though small-scale material generosity to children (bringing children home some sweets or comics) was regarded as conclusive evidence of good fatherhood.

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Being a good wife and mother was a more complex culturally elaborated phenomenon than being a good husband/father in Derry, and, I would argue, in Western societies in general. The absence of negative behavioural patterns was insufficient to earn this label. When a woman was praised by members of her family or local community, praise focused on two, conceptually linked, aspects of the wife/mother role. These were her abilities to stretch small sums of money to cover household essentials and to place her childrens' needs above all else. For example: God rest her. She never saw her children wanting. She mightn't have had a shoe on her foot but the we'ans [children] were always looked after. Whereas housework and most matters of childcare were seen as 'women's work,' so too were negotiations with authorities with which households whose sole incomes came from social security came into frequent contactfor example, the Housing Executive and the local Social Security Office. Such negotiations were regarded as an extension of the wife/mother's responsibility for ensuring that household income covered the household's basic expenses-that is, her responsibility for the material reproduction of household members. The well developed cultural model of 'the Derry mother,' expressed in local folklore, humour, and literature, is also often delineated in conversations about the nature of one's own or other families, as the following quotation shows: In Derry it's "the muther" that's important. The mother's the central figure everybody moves around. Derry people try to stay near their mothers after they get married. It's the first thing you notice about Derry. My mother-in-law's one of those big bosomy women, a real Derry 'muther.' She never says anything but she's the organising force in the family. Whenever they's all ranting and raving about something, she says nothing at the time, and afterwards makes everyone realise that it was just a few words that meant nothing serious. As an outsider I can see she's the strong one in the family-they think their father's the big one, the strong

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one, but he's not. It's been her all along. You know I only ever saw her cry onceand that was when she dropped her iron frying pan and it split! Yet she's the one who has cancer. (Derry woman aged 35). From many sources, a portrait of the ideal Derry Mother emerges: She should be strong in fortitude and equanimity, preferably in an heroic silent way; always open to her sons and daughters, whatever their ages; quick to listen and to offer practical assistance; ready with advice but not interference. She should be a calming influence in the home and family and an intermediary between other family members - fathers and sons or daughters, and between siblings. What is emphasised in accounts of 'the mother' is her ability and competence in reproductive activities - social reproduction in respect not just of raising children while they are young, but also the emotional work involved in maintaining 'the family' as offspring grow older. This social and emotional work is combined with responsibility for the material provisioning necessary to maintain other household members, and the important role of physical bearer of children, to add up to a formidable agenda, in terms of effort and competencies. In Derry, the work of physically bearing children is particularly pronounced. Although Northern Ireland as a whole has high fertility, fertility rates in Derry City have been higher than in any other locality in Northern Ireland (including West Belfast). Women now in their later middle age described their generation's attitude thus: If we were shortchanged in this life, then

our reward would be in Heaven. Each child and pregnancy was a step towards Heaven. The tradition was to work all your life for your sons, so they would get a good education, or job, or whatever. (Derry woman aged 55)

As a Derry mother, martyrdom was a worthy goal in itself for this generation and previous generations of women. Whilst fertility rates have declined in Derry since the 1950s and 1960s, like those in Northern Ireland as a whole, the fall has not matched that in other European countries. So although the present

generation of childbearing women in Derry are unlikely to have as many children as their predecessors, they are likely to have more children than their counterparts in the rest of Ireland, Britain, and Europe. The model of the Derry mother, and particularly it's elements of social and emotional work and competencies, defined for women a perceived arena of 'power' within the household and the wider cross-household family: ... the young girls, they have nothing on their minds except getting married. It doesn't really matter who to, the thing is to get married. Everybody in my family was married before they were 21-except me [he went to college instead]. Once a girl gets married, she joins the married women's set, where they sit around, moan and complain about their husbands, discuss the children . . . Husbands in Derry are treated like another child . . . he's irrelevant, unimportant once the woman's got him. I think it's like matriarchal. Look at all the marriages that break down. (Derry man aged 25) Although this arena of 'power' could be negatively perceived by men, as in the case just noted, this was not necessarily because such 'power' conferred on women a clearly advantageous position within the household or family, as later sections discuss in detail. Before discussing this in more detail, I look more closely at the nature and extent of emotional work and the pivotal role of women therein. Interhousehold family life . . . Derry women know all there is to know about affairs of the heart. The knowledge ... (is) jealously guarded and shared only when the women have decided that the person to whom it should be imparted is of an age to appreciate and benefit from it. Sometimes it is not shared. Often men are not included in the rite of passage and wisdom ... Diplomacy is (women's) art, home rule their demesne, because they have had little else. Matriarchy, it is called. (Nell McCafferty, 1985)

Women and the Family

In some localities of Northern Ireland, most notably urban inner city areas of Belfast and Derry, the importance of 'mother' has gone hand in hand with an image of these areas as 'matriarchal.' This is not unusual in comparative terms - social systems where women playa central, if not dominant, role in kin relationships, where there is a strong sense of female kin solidarity and frequent interaction among female kin, where there is a spatial concentration of female kin and material and nonmaterial aid flowing through female links, have been described as 'matrifocal' in both sociological and anthropological literature. This 'matrifocality' has been noted in both Western and non-Western societies and in advanced and peripheral economies (see Stivens, 1981, for an extended discussion). Evidence from Derry City (McLaughlin, 1987), County Derry (Cecil et al., 1987), and Belfast City (St. Ledger & Gillespie, 1991) all suggest that such matrifocality is a marked characteristic of Northern Irish interhousehold family life in comparison with, for example, Britain. Contact between members of the same family living in different households could involve transfers of material support, labour, and nonmaterial support. The evidence from Northern Ireland suggests that interhousehold networks are primarily the source of nonmaterial support and some transfers of domestic labour. As in Britain, material help is only substantial among the middle classes (see Bell, 1968; Snaith, 1981; Stacey, Batstone, Bell, & Murcott, 1975 in respect of Britain; and Cecil et al., 1987; St. Ledger & Gillespie, 1991, in respect of Northern Ireland). Among lower income families, extended family networks 'provide solid and generous emotional support' (Cecil et al., 1987, p. 113). In Derry it was primarily female kin to whom a woman turned for practical assistance, advice and friendship, and social activities. When children were young, the husband's (female) kin might provide babysitting, but all kinds of help were less common from the husband/father's kin than from the wife/mother's. Women's extended family members offered two forms of assistance: 1. advice and emotional support (mothers and sisters, less commonly aunts)

561

2. financial support and domestic labour (as above plus grandmothers) As Cecil et al. (1987) found in rural County Derry, material assistance was at a low level involving recurrent small loans of money, and more frequently loans of equipment, for example, cots, hoovers, and so forth. Leonard's research (1991) in a low income estate in West Belfast provides a similar picture. Seventy-eight percent of her sample were related to at least one other household in the estate. Extended kinship networks provided a major source of social and economic support for family network members in need. The most significant aid relationships existed between mothers and married daughters with almost daily interaction occurring between them. Mothers and daughters shopped for each other, and mothers often minded grandchildren. Financial assistance was particularly prevalent when the son-in-law was out of work. On the other hand, the difficult economic conditions under which most mothers and daughters lived meant that support between households was more often emotional than financial. What the extended family in Northern Ireland appears to offer the majority of women is friendship or affective and emotional support. The level of that support does seem to be greater in Northern Ireland than in Britain. In the 1970s a variety of English, Welsh, and Scottish studies gave figures of between 13 and 240/0 of women having seen their mothers in the last 24 hours. In contrast, St. Ledger and Gillespie's (1991) study in Belfast found that about half of female respondents had seen their mothers in the last 24 hours. Similarly, nearly half of women had seen their eldest grown-up child in the last 24 hours, but less than one in five had seen their eldest sibling. In rural County Derry Cecil et al. found that four-fifths of parents and nearly two-thirds of adult offspring had been seen within the previous week (Cecil et al., 1987, p. 113). St. Ledger and Gillespie's and Leonard's evidence, like the Derry City evidence, supports a description of Northern Irish family life as 'matrifocal' - women see their mothers and daughters more often than men see their mothers or fathers or sons or daughters. Both the Belfast and Derry City evidence, however, also suggest that though interhousehold contact is frequent, it does

562

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not extend across a wide range of kin. St. Ledger and Gillespie found that in the last 30 days only 8070 of all visits by respondents were to relatives other than parents or parents-in-law, their siblings, or children. In contrast, 34% of such visits were to friends and other nonrelated people. To summarise, the 'extended' family is more important in Northern Ireland than in Britain in terms of frequency of contact between members (though the extended family in this context means in essence three generations of parents and their children); it revolves around women rather than men; and this kin formation serves more of a 'friendship' function than is the case in most areas of Britain. That immediate kin are more important in the lives of women in Northern Ireland than in Britain is, of course, understandable in terms of the demographic and economic contexts of family life in Northern Ireiand outlined earlier - the lower level of employment and higher level of fertility and hence the greater intensity of women's reproductive role in Northern Ireland than in Britain.

The limits of matrifocality A number of writers have suggested that women who are isolated from strong support networks may find themselves more dependent on men and more subject to male authority within the household (Caplan & Bujra, 1978; Moore, 1986; Rosaldo, 1974; Sanday, 1974). Women may be able to use interhousehold kin and friendship relations to gain access to resources outside the household. It is commonplace, therefore, to assume that such matrifocality carries with it more 'power' for women than is the case when matrifocality is absent. Hence matrifocality in the extended family becomes linked to notions of matriarchy. The assumption of female power in such contexts is, however, based on a superficial analysis of the significance and meaning of matrifocality for two reasons. First, although matrifocal interhousehold relations clearly may be a source of support and solidarity among women and may, under certain circumstances, provide limited means by which women can improve their situation socially and economically, the control and 'power' women experience within kin relations is not without its own contradic-

tions - contradictions which are explored further here. Second, matrifocal interhousehold relations derive from women's responsibility for unpaid labour within the household and the internal household relations between husband/father and wife/mother. These internal relations within the household are not a site of power for women. This too is discussed further here. Turning first, however, to the limits of matrifocality in interhousehold relations, Edgerton (1986), discussing the role of conservative religious ideologies and practices and the self-absorbed nature of life in a divided society in producing gender inequality in Northern Ireland, suggested that further underpinnings of women's oppression may lie in family structures and networks: in many working class communities the extended family network has not only remained but been reinforced by the 'troubles' [providing] a further barrier to the development of female independence . . . women . . . are not guaranteed support from female relatives if they are viewed as flouting the community norms and conventions influenced by the local churches. (Edgerton, 1986, p. 81). Edgerton hints at an important concept through which matrifocality in extended family networks must be understood: attained family status. It is the importance of attained family status which mean that matrifocality in kin relations can result in the social control of women by women, as well as by men, through the pursuit of family 'respectability.' 'Respectability' is an attained extended family characteristic. Whilst the economic position of the family is critical in determining a family's social status, so too is family compliance with social norms. A family's reputation as 'respectable' or 'good' or 'decent' is something which is built up, something which has to be worked at, and as a lifestyle it must be constantly and consistently maintained. The 'job' of such maintenance falls mainly to women partly because of the wider cultural 'double standard' in sexual morality and partly because 'respectability' involves nonsexual morality and qualities such as decency, cleanliness, and thrift. Delamont (1980, p. 146) has pointed out that in

Women and the Family

Britain it is generally women who are thus central to the 'respectability' of families, as has Finch (1983, p. 11), who has described 'respectability' as regarding 'personal conduct, lifestyle, housekeeping and mothering.' In Northern Ireland we might usefully add adherence and devotion to one's religion to such a list. 'Respectability' as a social phenomenon has proven difficult to interpret in either conventional or feminist analyses of class and gender, though it has been given mention in a number of empirical and theoretical texts (d. Bell, 1968; Delamont, 1980; Finch, 1983; Stacey, 1960). As a social phenomenon it appears to be particularly significant in situations where prestige through occupational attainment is difficult to achieve and, hence, class mobility is low; hence its association with the working class and particularly upper-working class in Britain. The greater cultural emphasis in Northern Ireland on women's family role, the greater degree of social contact between kin in Northern Ireland than in Britain, together with fewer opportunities for both men and women to advance themselves and their families through occupational attainment and mobility, mean that the importance of attained family characteristics, such as 'respectability,' are likely to be greater here than in Britain. The often noted 'traditionalness' of male and female roles and the 'strength' of the Northern Ireland family relative to Britain can thus be contextualised. The limitations of the pursuit of such an extended family characteristic for women involves the imposition of limits on the kinds and degree of support received and offered between close female kin. An individual's and family's status depends not on the actions of an individual woman alone, but on those of her close female kin, especially her mother, sisters, aunts, and daughters. The result then can be less, rather than more, 'freedom of choice' for individual women, especially where the norms of the local community include the two-parent family and marriage as the ultimate 'good,' as was certainly the case in Derry and as has been noted for Northern Ireland as a whole by Fairweather et al. (1984). Support of women by related women is by no means automatic by virtue of the kin tie itself-where such support would compromise the family's status, a

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difficult balance has to be negotiated between the obligations and emotional ties of, for example, the mother-daughter relationship, and the wider attained family status. It is not that mothers never support their daughters where such support would contravene strong social and cultural norms, but rather that whether such support is extended, how much of it, and the nature of it, is an area to be negotiated and the consequences of support assessed. It is in this sense that female solidarity is not automatic and hence that there may be social control as well as supportive solidarity of women by women within the 'strong' matrifocal Northern Irish family. What I have suggested is that women's interhousehold relations must be understood as one part of the wider environment within which the family is located. These relations therefore have their own limitations, restrictions, and contradictions because they interact with a nexus of interests about, and in, the family (see also Cecil et aI., 1987, pp. 7-9). Theoretically, this interaction limits the extent to which women can 'trade up' from their undoubtedly important influence within extended matrifocal families to power. Extrahousehold relations (between the household, the labour market, the State, and organised religions) form the wider environment of social norms within which respectability and attained family status are located, and these same extrahousehold relations confer more power on men than on women within the household as the following section shows. Power in the household Both within and without the household there are contradictions and constraints upon women's position, which mean that whatever 'power' (or, more accurately, influence) women have, because of their social and physical reproductive responsibilities and labour, and by virtue of being 'good' mothers, that 'power' is ultimately subject to the power of men within households and male-dominated institutions in wider society. Whether feeling, or regarded by others as, an 'outsider' in his own home or not (as the notion of matriarchy implies), the husband/father has more power than the wife/mother within the household as a result of the interaction between internal household relations and exter-

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nal relations with the labour market, State, and Church. The concept of 'power' has, of course, been the subject of considerable theorising in the social sciences. It is beyond the scope of this article to review this theoretical material. Suffice it to say that in my own work on the nature of male and female relations in Derry, I found it necessary to break down 'power' into three analytical components: material control, moral authority, potential or actual use of physical force. The first of these dimensions of power, material control, has not received as much attention as it should have in relation to power within the household because of prevailing ideologies of the household as a collectivity of mutually reciprocal interests. Assumptions about equitable access to resources within households have been shown to be false by a number of feminist studies in the 1980s (Delphy & Leonard, 1992; Graham, 1987; Land, 1979; Murcott, 1983; Pahl, 1980, 1983, 1984, 1989; Whitehead, 1981). Even in low-income households, and particularly households whose sole income is social security benefits (where women are much more likely than men to have responsibility for managing the household budget), the 'sanctity' of the husband/father's pocket money, his ability to offload the problem of making ends meet from an income inadequate to do so, and the perception of household income as 'his' money, meant that the woman's management of the household's money were all indicators of male, not female, power over material resources: The delegate may be responsible for the execution of tasks, but they are answerable to the person in whom the power to delegate is originally vested. (Murcott, 1983, p. 89). Men's greater contact with the labour market, and hence earned income, and the channeling of social security benefits through the 'head of household' (that is, the man in a married or cohabiting couple), mean that the person in whom the power to delegate is vested is the husband/father, whereas the person who is delegated the often unenviable task of stretching scarce resources over alternative ends is the wife/mother. The designation of men as heads of house-

holds is symptomatic of the moral authority with which the husband/father role is invested. This moral authority flows to the husband/father from a great many cultural and institutional sources - religious ideolo~ies and institutions, political ideologies, legal institutions, social security and taxation structures, and even the health and social services (see Fairweather et aI., 1984, for a comprehensive catalogue of the content of the moral authority invested in husbands/fathers by such sources in Northern Ireland). Much of this moral authority goes unstated and is 'taken for granted,' but it becomes explicit when a wife/mother's behaviour appears unreasonable in the context of male authority. In Derry a not inconsiderable number of women were familiar with the "I'll get the priest to you" threat from their husbands and fathers, whereas women appealing to the authority of the priest or minister in the hope of bringing their husbands 'into line' were usually reminded of the husband's status as head of the household and the life-long nature of the marriage vows. In contrast it is far from clear whether the influence older women undoubtedly exert as the lynchpins of extended families, and within which women therefore have some degree of moral authority, can ever be converted into or traded-up to something as substantial as power. The lack of a material basis for this influence and the everpossible exercise of violence by men within families seems to limit the scope for influence to take on the cloak of power. The potential or actual use of physical force and violence was a lived reality for many women in Derry, as it is throughout the world, precisely because of the moral authority of the father/husband. There is a thin dividing line between verbal aggression and physical violence. The former is sanctioned, even encouraged, among men and boys in Derry, as in the rest of Ireland and Britain, and even regarded as 'manly' or 'macho' (that is, it is part of the social construction of masculinity, see, for example, Tolson, 1977, and Willis, 1977). Women's conversations about their husbands often alluded to a fear that verbal aggression could easily slide into physical violence. This seemed all the more probable because, although domestic violence is officially illegal, it nevertheless remains socially sanctioned in a number of ways: the reluc-

Women and the Family

tance of the police on the ground to intervene in a domestic dispute; the same reluctance on the part of neighbours; the idea that the wife's behaviour provoked the husband; the perceived privacy of what passes between husbands and wives (see Evason, 1982; Montgomery, 1988; Montgomery & Bell, 1986). All of these qualified the status of domestic violence as a crime, and they did so because each in their turn invokes the moral authority of the husband over his wife. There are, too, special dimensions to domestic and sexual violence in the context of a violently divided society. Evason (1982) has identified men's access to firearms, the protection of abusing men through their membership of paramilitary and military organisations, and community bias against calling on police assistance in Nationalist areas, as factors increasing women's vulnerability to domestic violence in Northern Ireland. THE LIMITS OF THE NORTHERN IRISH FAMILY

To conclude, the way in which 'the strong Northern Irish family' is experienced by women is therefore very different than notions of matriarchy or close-knit coping extended families imply. Men's greater control over households' material resources, their socially defined moral authority and potential for violence, all of which derive from the relationship between the household and (maledominated) social and cultural institutions, namely the State and the Church, mean that although the family is a place where women have considerable influence, they do not generally have power relative to men. Intrahousehold relations between women form an important source of affective and emotional support for women, but these relations themselves are subject to constraints imposed by the male-dominated institutions of the State and Church through the definition of acceptable personal behaviour and the importance of attained family status in a relatively 'closed' society with limited opportunities for economic advancement and families living in close spatial proximity. Mens' greater power within the household and the limits of female solidarity in the wider extended family mean that women have less power than men to instigate renegotiation of the terms of marriage

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and the nature of family life, and still remain within it. Therein lies the weakness of the 'strong' Northern Irish family for women. It might be appropriate to end this article with one particular piece of 'alternative humour' from Derry which lays bare the various dimensions of the context and structure of family life in Northern Ireland with which this article has been concerned: YOUNG WOMAN OF DERRY

There was a young woman of Derry, she lived in Brandywell Her husband was out on the batter l , he used to give her helf She went round to Great James Street a doctor for to find "Doctor give me something for I'm going out of me mind" He gave her a bucket of tablets, Roches one to ten Says he, " a holiday in Hawaii and you'll not feel so bad then" She went to see the parish priest, says he "get down on your knees! The husband is the head of the family so no more oul nonsense, please!" She searched the pubs in Waterloo Street, she found the one he was in Says she "Good luck with the kids and the dog, I'm going to do myself in" "Now don't jump off Craigavon Bridge, you know you might be seen, With the scandal I could lose my place as captain of the quiz team." "I think I'll go and drown myself, go up to the reservoir" says she Says he "Come round to Rossville Street and we'll hire a people's car3"

Isocialising and drinking 2usually refers to verbal and physical abuse la common and cheap form of public transport in black London taxis, run as an alternative to the public bus service in most areas of Derry and Belfast Cities

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When they got to the water's edge he went to push her in She bent down to buckle her shoe and he went tumblin' in "Throw a lifebelt in you fool! I'm drowning" he did say Says she "the we'ans from Creggan, love, have stolen it away" Now the darts team's lost it's captain, there's another woman free, There's another Casanova who won't be home for his tea. Song by People of No Property folk group. (1986). Reproduced from Fingerpost, 1(1), Derry: Yes! Publications. REFERENCES Bell, Colin. (1968). Middleclass families. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Black, Sir Harold. (1979). Report of the Children and Young Persons Review Group. Belfast: HMSO. Cairns, Ed. (1987). Love and marriage in Ulster. Belfast Telegraph, 20,21,22 Oct, p. 9. Caplan, Patricia, & Bujra, Janet (Eds). (1978). Women united, women divided. London: Tavistock. Cecil, Rosanne. (1989). Care and the community in a Northern Ireland town. In Hastings Donnan & Graham McFarlane (Eds.), Public policy and social anthropology in Northern Ireland (pp. 107-121). Aldershot: Avebury. Cecil, Rosanne, Offer, John, & St. Ledger, Fred. (1987). Informal welfare. Aldershot: Gower. Clancy, Pat, & Nic Ghiolla Phadraig, Mhaire. (1991, May). Marital fertility and family planning. Paper presented to the Sociological Association of Ireland Annual Conference, Termonfeckin, Co. Louth. Compton, Paul. (1978). Fertility differentials and their impact on population distribution and composition in Northern Ireland. Environment and Planning A, 10, 1397-1411.

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