Love in families

This essay traces the history of love in families over the course of the twentieth century, with a particular focus on love between parents and children. It pays attention to the ways in which authorities (religious, political, state, medical, media) used ideas about love to shape politics, norms and values for example in the sentimental notion of the self-sacrificing mother of Catholic and Victorian culture, the harnessing of maternal grief to patriotism during and after the First World War and in the Cold War. It also explores the interplay between norms and experiences, through diaries, memoirs and literary texts. It charts how the Second World War and the affluent society of the 1960s gave rise to the notion of the affective family, with new stress placed on the mother-child bond and fathers expected to be more involved in childrearing and family leisure; a model called into question in the 1970s by both the feminist and gay liberation movements.