“Think Wot a Mother Must Feel”: Parenting in English Pauper Letters C. 1760–1834

This article examines the representation of parenting in a series of pauper letters received by parishes in Berkshire, Hampshire, Lancashire, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, Shropshire, and Staffordshire. It shows that labouring parents saw themselves as thwarted providers for their children and argues that this was not a gender-specific role, but one shared by fathers and mothers. Through a close reading of the descriptive terms used to illustrate the paupers' needs as parents and their sufferings in failing to support their children, it proposes that writers called upon a rhetoric of family and benevolence that originated in the wider cultural discourse of sensibility.