In Children, childhood and Irish society, 1500 to the present, Maria Luddy and James M. Smith provide an admirable analysis of Irish childhood in light of both recent controversies and theoretical developments in areas such as children’s studies. Their volume – consisting of twenty-one contributions – adopts an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from disciplines including history, literary studies and sociology. As the editors acknowledge, children occupy a complex space in Irish society (past and present). Issues relating to their health and well-being have perpetually raised fears about the moral condition of the nation itself. Prior to independence, the Irish nation was regularly depicted as inherently childlike; the Irish were infantilized in colonial discourse. Following independence, Ireland became perceived as a country where the innocence of childhood appeared constantly under threat from harsh institutional conditions, sexual abuse, violent teachers and deep levels of urban and rural poverty. Of course, not all Irish childhoods were unhappy. While the contributions offered by historians paint a somewhat gloomy picture, other essays focus on more positive themes such as the pleasures children obtained by reading as the early-twentieth-century library system expanded. Indeed, Children, childhood and Irish society portrays highly diverse experiences and representations of Irish childhood that add complexity to currently predominant negative perceptions of what Irish childhood was once like. Luddy and Smith explore the multifaceted nature of Irish childhood through a broad range of geographical and thematic analyses. They also assess childhood experiences among different social classes in both rural and urban contexts.

Children, childhood and Irish society is split into five sections. The first, entitled ‘the child in history’, contains essays on early modern childhood, child street-trading in Edwardian Ireland, and the role of parents in the twentieth-century Irish education system. A subsequent section examines welfare in Irish history, with an emphasis on the N.S.P.C.C., workhouse provision for the young and the complex relationship between the twentieth-century state and the child. A third section explores the shaping of Irish childhood cultures, investigating themes such as the Irish Fireside Club, schoolboy novels and autobiographical literature that have provided insight into growing up in Ireland. A fourth section focuses on literary representations (with reference to literary luminaries such as Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde) while a concluding section examines cultural representations of childhood in mediums such as journalism and cinema. Combined, the essays contained in this collection, while focusing on childhood, sheds light on far broader historical issues such as welfare provision, poverty, education, class relations, abuse and power relations in pre- and post-independence Ireland. The collection will appeal to a broad range of academic scholars working in diverse disciplines, as well as a general public nationally and internationally.

As with all edited collections, Children, childhood and Irish Ssciety is not without its structural problems. The vast majority of the contributions focus on the narrow time period 1850 to 1950. Despite the title claiming to offer an overview of Irish childhood from 1500 to the present, a bare minimum of essays assess pre-1800 childhoods. Moreover, one might expect a volume that purportedly covers ‘the present’ to contain non-historical essays penned by academics researching twenty-first century Irish childhoods. The introduction points towards issues in present-day Irish childhood yet most of the contributors refrain from considering how their historical assessments could potentially speak to modern policy debates. For instance, essays on institutionalisation do not consider some of the ways in which the debates under discussion precede current concerns about the trajectory of modern Irish childhood or attempt to speak directly to ongoing, and highly controversial, inquiries, despite the reference to ‘the present’ made in the title. In addition, the structure of the volume is somewhat confusing at times. Notably, the opening section is sparse and covers disparate themes and time periods. Nonetheless, Children, childhood and Irish society provides a remarkably in-depth account of the diversity and complexity of Irish childhood that will undoubtedly prove essential to scholars of history, literature, sociology and Irish society. The editors provide a well-written, well-edited and highly original collection of essays that will prove immensely valuable to academics working in diverse disciplines.