Maternal strategies: Irish women's headship of families in Gilded Age Chicago

Conventional interpretations explain the prevalence of female-headed famili es among nineteenth-century Irish immigrants in the United States as a sign of social failure attributable to Irish men's high mortality rates and pro pensity to desert their wives. This article argues that women's different m aternal strategies and styles of mothering better explain ethnic patterns o f female family headship. This exploration of the Irish pattern points to b roader generalizations about all women's lives during the Gilded Age. This study challenges two common assumptions about Victorian social realities: t hat there was a simple and direct relationship between marital disruption a nd female headship of families, and that female-headed families betokened s ocial failure.