Shares of suffering: Transnational mothering in Irish Famine-era letters

By Cara Delay, and E. Moore Quinn
Published in Women's History Review, January 2026.
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Abstract

This article examines transnational mothering during the Great Famine (1845–1852) and the emigrations of the era. It analyses epistolary sources to ask how women in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland used their roles as mothers to claim agency and demonstrate authority. It complicates contemporary descriptions of the suffering mother and the sacrificing mother, asking how and why mothers attempted to continue parenting their absent children by displaying agency and constructing themselves as committed mothers in an age of crisis. Missives sent from Ireland to emigrant children reveal how some mothers employed tropes of suffering and martyrdom for particular purposes. Most not surprisingly sought to secure financial support. They also laid claim to authority and influence within their families and communities, constructing themselves as agents and actors rather than solely victims or sufferers.