scholarly journals FAMILY LIFE CRISIS – A COMBINATION OF TRADITIONAL AND POSTMODERN VALUES AND FORMS OF LIFE

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 241-246
Author(s):  
Hermína Mareková

In the recent times, we are witnessing turbulent changes in society which cannot be avoided, even by families. These changes began to manifest themselves most markedly at the end of World War I and became more pronounced in the second half of the 20th century. A diverse range of cohabitation forms has emerged. Discussions about these forms have multiplied, with new questions arising. There is still a debate among experts about what form of cohabitation is called "family". Is the family still considered the foundation of the state, the basic building block of society? Despite these shifts in cohabitation, we still consider the family the most stable institution in society. The older functions that the family has fulfilled so far are gradually changing as a result of the current societal changes, and divisions exist only in theoretical considerations. When examining crisis in the family, the position of women in the family is also an important aspect, especially when regarding gender equality. Few studies address the issue that "women's thinking" about the family depends on the myriad of external and internal conditions that women encounter in childhood and during their upbringing. We later transfer these "inner truths" into our behavior when we are adults. We cannot ignore the importance of mass media, such as TV, the Internet, the various world communication networks, which are regarded by contemporary sociology as the third factor of socialization, alongside the family and school. Unfortunately, these may be regarded as rather as a factor of negative socialization.

1982 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 479-504

Robert Allan Smith, always known as Robin to his close associates, was born on 14 May 1909 in Kelso, Roxburghshire. Professionally, during Robin’s time first names were rarely used except between close friends. Surnames were in common usage except for Smiths, Joneses, etc., who had to be distinguished. Hence, he was often called ‘R.A.’. The combination of charm and determination, characteristic of a Borderer, was always present with Robin. He was the elder brother to (William) Allan, in the family of two, born to George J. T. Smith, tailor, a native of Kelso, and his wife, Elisabeth( née Allan), a ladies’ dressmaker and native of Eccles village, Kelso. The family ancestry was mainly in farming and business. His childhood was spent in the country in and around Kelso together with his primary and secondary schooling. On the outbreak of World War I, his father, who was a member of the Territorial Army, was called up, and his mother, Robin and Allan moved to Heeton Village near Kelso to stay with relations. A strong bond was formed between Robin and his uncle and aunts which endured throughout their life. Robin’s first school was therefore Heeton Village School where he spent a year before the family returned to Kelso. There after schooling continued at Kelso Infant School, Kelso Public School, and a Bursary to Kelso High School gave him the opportunity to go forward to higher education.


1995 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 282-296

A quote that says much about John McMichael comes from his own autobiographical notes: ‘I come from a materially poor branch of a Galloway family’. He was born on 25 July 1904 in Gatehouse of Fleet, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland, son of James and Margaret McMichael. There were two older sisters and two elder brothers, and he was something of an afterthought. His father ran a farm on the edge of the village and was also the local butcher. A ‘God-fearing, generous man’, he was not a good manager of his limited resources. Until he was ten years old John McMichael went to a school run under the patronage of the Lady of the Manor; but in 1914 this school was closed and he transferred to Girthon public school under its headmaster, William Learmonth, who was to have a major influence on the young McMichael. Learmonth’s son, eight years McMichael’s senior, became Sir James Learmonth, the well-known surgeon. Learmonth was an exceedingly capable teacher to find in a small village school and his pupils clearly felt the benefit. At the age of 14 there was a debate in the McMichael household about the next stage in John’s education. His mother, supported by Learmonth, decided he must continue and he moved to Kirkcudbright Academy, eight miles away, a hard and hilly bicycle ride. Here he blossomed, taking first place in most subjects, and ending up as Dux of the school. His decision to read medicine was influenced by two chance factors. He often spent his holidays with a fisherman on an island in the Fleet Bay where the solitary house was occupied by a doctor from the Indian Medical Service during his leaves. On wet days his medical books opened up exciting prospects in the schoolboy’s enquiring mind. During World War I a maternal cousin, Col. George Home, C.B.E., M.D., of the New Zealand Army Medical Corps, spent his leaves with the family and kindled a broad interest in science and medicine.


2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
JULIA ROOS

AbstractThis essay revisits 1920s German debates over the illegitimate children of the Rhineland occupation to examine hitherto neglected fluctuations in the relationship between nationalism and racism in Weimar Germany. During the early 1920s, nationalist anxieties focused on the alleged racial ‘threats’ emanating from the mixed-race children of colonial French soldiers. After 1927, plans for the forced sterilisation and deportation of the mixed-race children were dropped; simultaneously, officials began to support German mothers’ paternity suits against French soldiers. This hitherto neglected shift in German attitudes towards the ‘Rhineland bastards’ sheds new light on the role of debates over gender and the family in the process of Franco–German rapprochement. It also enhances our understanding of the contradictory political potentials of popularised foreign policy discourses about women's and children's victimisation emerging from World War I.


1991 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 341-364 ◽  

William Valentine Mayneord was born 14 February 1902, the last child of Walter and Elizabeth Mayneord, in Redditch, Worcestershire. Walter Mayneord, who worked first in a fishing-tackle factory in Redditch and later as agent for the Pearl Assurance Company, was clearly a man of many parts. As a youth he was an enthusiastic amateur runner, a very able chess player, playing for Worcestershire, and a well-known figure riding his bicycle aged over 80 and singing in the choir at 90, the year of his death. He was a devoted Gladstonian Liberal and a founder of the Liberal Club in Redditch. Walter and Elizabeth had two older children, Ewart and Gilbert. Ewart the eldest, though largely self-educated, had a great facility for languages and served as an interpreter on the Western Front in World War I. After the war he taught himself Russian and became foreign correspondent for a firm trading with Russia, which he visited on business. Unfortunately Ewart died from a brain tumour at about the age of 34. The other brother, Gilbert, was to some degree mentally deficient and worked as a labourer. But clearly, despite the meagre educational opportunities of the time, the Mayneord family had talent and ability: still earlier, grandfather William Mayneord had been a well-known local preacher. The family books also showed that they were surprisingly well read.


1980 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 304-326

Dietrich Küchemann was bom in Gottingen on 11 September 1911; he died, a naturalized British subject, on 23 February 1976. His family on his mother’s side had a history that could be traced back to the beginning of the 12th century, when the Archbishop of Bremen made over part of his estate, Stedingerland, giving rise to the family name of Steding, to those willing to drain and cultivate it, presenting him, in return, with one-tenth of their harvests. Later, many generations of Stedings became schoolteachers, or married schoolteachers, a tradition that was continued when Dietrich’s mother, Martha Egener, married Rudolf Küchemann in 1910. The maternal lineage also contained considerable musical talent and included accomplished organists and ’cellists. Indeed, from one of his ancestors, Johann Friedrich Steding, Dietrich inherited a clavichord built in 1791. As a schoolboy, he repaired the instrument, after having discovered that the strings had been removed by somebody who wished to make a zither with them. Proud of his success, he showed it many years later in England to a professional restorer, who declared the repairs to have been imperfect and undertook the work himself: only, in Dietrich’s words, ‘to make the instrument more difficult to play; His father, Rudolf, was a descendant of another line of schoolteachers. He was a forthright man, dedicated to teaching, outspoken in his radicalism: a characteristic that was to have a profound effect on Dietrich’s life. During World War I, Rudolf Kuchemann served as an infantry captain in the German army and took part in many engagements on the Western Front, including Verdun.


1983 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 268-296

Derek Ainslie Jackson was born in Hampstead, London, on 23 June 1906. His father, Sir Charles James Jackson, F.S.A., was a barrister, also a landowner and art collector. He was well known as an authority on English silver and author of books on this subject: English goldsmiths and their marks (1905) and Illustrated history of the English plate (1911). His collection of silver is now at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. Derek and his twin brother Vivian greatly admired their father; although they were only 14 when he died, Derek’s life-long interest in art probably owed much to his father’s influence. The mother, Ada Elisabeth, daughter of Samuel Owen Williams, appears to have taken little part in the education of the twins; she died when they were only 18. The only other child was their sister Daphne who was 10 years older than the twins and had little contact with them; she died during World War I. The twins thus grew up almost like orphans, in conditions of material wealth and in surroundings of culture and select taste, but apparently with little parental guidance. After their father’s death a guardian was in charge of the family finances, and up to the age of 30 Derek and Vivian Jackson depended on him for the income from the trusts established by their father.


1979 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 534-553 ◽  

Percival Albert Sheppard, Peter to his family and all who knew him well, was a leading academic figure in world meteorology through the 1950s until his death. He was the only son of Albert Edward Sheppard of Box Hill, Wiltshire, who had left school at the age of 12, not of course being exceptional in that, and had become an ornamental and monumental mason. He was a sober-living and serious craftsman who in 1913 or thereabouts set up on his own account, although after initial successes was unable to overcome the difficulties arising in World War I. Accordingly in 1916 he took up munitions work and moved to Bath, seven miles away, so securing better housing and better educational opportunities for his children. Albert Edward had known unemployment and his material resources were limited but he and his wife found enrichment through their church. They were pillars of the United Methodist Chapel, he as superintendent of Sunday School, his wife as organist and choir master, and the family were aware of wider horizons. In Sheppard’s words: ‘Names like Ruskin, Carlyle, Emerson became familiar.’ Home life with two sisters seems to have been happy enough, and the family attachments endured through life, but up to the age of 10 Peter’s life at Box Hill had little excitement in modern terms: ‘An occasional visit to Bath (seven miles), perhaps including a Mary Pickford film, was a highlight.’ He remembered that once when about seven years old he had ‘been walked’ all the way to Bath and back by his maternal grandmother, ‘a great walker for her age’.


1976 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 104-118

Francis Arthur Freeth died on 15 July 1970 in his eighty-seventh year, having been a Fellow of the Royal Society for 45 years. He was born on 2 January 1884 in Birkenhead and, as he was fond of telling, ‘The Irish doctor who was assisting at my birth and celebrating the New Year—to put it mildly—held me out of the window on the frosty night for luck’. Freeth’s father was a well-known Liverpool master mariner with a Commission in the Royal Naval Reserve who took his son five times across the Atlantic before he was 6 years old. There was a strong military tradition in the family; his great-grandfather was a Peninsular War veteran, General Sir James Freeth, who became Quartermaster General from 1851 to 1854; three of his sons became Major-Generals, including F. A. Freeth’s grandfather. Freeth, who sometimes liked to say that he ‘was descended from a long line of Major-Generals’, was in the Territorial Army, was mobilized on 4 August 1914 and remained on active service until summoned home in March 1915 to solve some grave problems in the supply of munitions. In the years after World War I Freeth was well pleased to be known as Major Freeth, only becoming known as Doctor Freeth 20 years later. To complete the military story, Freeth’s son became a naval officer and it was always his cherished wish that he would live to see his grandson commissioned. On his mother’s side his descent was from a Lancashire family called Hinde which died out at the beginning of this century.


2021 ◽  
pp. 036319902098832
Author(s):  
Nadja Durbach

In 1921, Britain legalized marriage between a widow and her deceased husband’s brother. The Deceased Brother’s Widow Act was not, however, an addendum to the 1907 Deceased Wife’s Sister Act. It was passed in the aftermath of World War I to address administrative problems regarding war widows’ pensions. Its significance lies in its role as a microcosm of a range of postwar debates around sex discrimination, women’s access to state welfare, sexual morality, the family, and the declining birthrate, which provoked the British government to reinforce a family model predicated on a male breadwinner and his dependent wife and children.


Author(s):  
Carol Boggess

This chapter recounts Jim Still’s adolescent and high school experiences. As World War I ended, the family moved from the country to town and young Still began playing baseball and visiting the library. He became actively involved in the recently formed Chattahoochee Valley Boy Scout program, eventually becoming an Eagle scout. He wrote a diary, newspaper reports, songs and poems about his scouting experiences. As high school ended he looked forward to college in some place other than Alabama.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document