Family experiments : middle-class, professional families in Australia and New Zealand c. 1880- 1920 / Shelley Richardson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Richardson, Shelley, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Middle class families--Australia--Biography.

Middle class families.

Middle class families--New Zealand--Biography.

Immigrant families--Australia--Biography.

Immigrant families.

New Zealand.

Australia.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (398 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Acton, Australia : Australian National University Press, 2016.

Summary:

"Family Experiments explores the forms and undertakings of "family" that prevailed among British professionals who migrated to Australia and New Zealand in the late nineteenth century. Their attempts to establish and define "family" in Australasian, suburban environments reveal how the Victorian theory of "separate spheres" could take a variety of forms in the new world setting.The attitudes and assumptions that shaped these family experiments may be placed on a continuum that extends from John Ruskin's concept of evangelical motherhood to John Stuart Mill's rational secularism. Central to their thinking was a belief in the power of education to produce civilised and humane individuals who, as useful citizens, would individually and in concert nurture a better society. Such ideas pushed them to the forefront of colonial liberalism. The pursuit of higher education for their daughters merged with and, in some respects, influenced first-wave colonial feminism. They became the first generation of colonial, middle-class parents to grapple not only with the problem of shaping careers for their sons, but also and more frustratingly, what graduate daughters might do next." -- Back cover.

Contents:

Section one: departures

The family and mid-Victorian idealism

The family and mid-Victorian realities

Section two: arrival and establishment

The academic evangelists

The lawyers

Section three: marriage and aspiriations: colonial families

Marriage

Educating daughters: the Christchurch girls

Educating daughters: the Melbourne girls

Boys.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

CC BY-NC-ND

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed March 2, 2017).

ISBN:

9781760460594

1760460591

OCLC:

952931780

Publisher Number:

10.22459/FE.11.2016