Author's response
The author of an unusual book with a controversial thesis can only be grateful for such an open-minded, perceptive reviewer. And it seems somehow appropriate that the first review of my book should be published under the auspices of the Institute of Historical Research, where many years ago I began my research for the project that was eventually to become Hard and Unreal Advice.
It may appear almost perverse for a female historian to choose a topic like motherhood and not apply the perspective of gender studies. To me, however, it seemed that this particular tradition in social science was best elucidated by consideration of religious ideas, class differences, and Social Darwinism. To none of these, of course, is gender irrelevant. Social Darwinists, for example, considered women less ‘evolved‘ than men in their mental capacities and their ability to exercise self-control. In their view the only person likely to make even worse choices than a male slum-dweller would be his sister or his wife. After due consideration, however, I still believe that this strain of poverty theory owes less to gender than to the factors I have chosen to study. This is not to say, of course, that observation through a different lens might not yield interesting results.
Likewise, I intend to look into the work on ’communitarian‘ aspects of 19th-century social thought. Probably because my middle-class poverty experts were all too ready to speak for the ‘community‘ as if class differences did not exist, I have so far not pursued this line of inquiry. The issue, as I saw it, was not whether poverty researchers felt an obligation toward the poor, but whether they had an accurate view of why the poor were poor. Members of the Charity Organisation Society exemplify this dilemma perfectly; they felt a strong social duty to help the poor, yet on a customary basis they regarded poverty as the predictable outcome of a series of bad choices they assumed the poor had made. It is difficult to conduct sound research on a problem for which you believe that you already have all the answers; it is difficult to invent a good solution to a problem that you do not understand. Clearly this is just as true for me as for Edwin Chadwick or Helen Bosanquet, so these leads are accepted with appreciation.
