All rooms are equipped with an overhead projector
Rooms C, D, E, F, G and H (H only on Saturday): slide projector (framed slides, carrousel. There are extra carrousels available to set up your presentation in advance)
Rooms C, D, M, N, O, U and Committee Room 2: beamer to connect your laptop. You have to bring you own laptop. (If you want to use your Apple notebook, please contact us, as it may be incompatible.)
Rooms C, T and U: VCR
Programme
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Master or substitute parent? Household structure and motives for fostering in a 19th century Scandinavian context
| Fostering in other families was a favoured way to take care of poor children that for some reason – usually poverty, destitution or parental death – could not be raised by their parents. The assumption was that children would be better off in families than in institutions, the foster-parents received a desired child as well as a small income, and last but not least the system of boarding out children helped the poor relief administrators to keep their expenses at a reasonably low level. This apparently successful system however, also had a seamy side. The foster homes were not always good, some foster parents were more interested in cheap labour than in providing care and sometimes the administrators’ ambition to keep costs down resulted in a lacking control of the foster homes. Trying to further understand the motives for taking in a foster-child, this study wants analyze the size, structure and social position of foster-parents’ households 19th century Sweden, using a sample of nearly 500 children boarded out in the rural parish Skellefteå between 1830-1896. Welfare sources have been linked to computerised Parish Records in the Demographic Data Base, Umeå University, to make it possible to study both children and foster-parents in a longitudinal perspective. Hypothetically, a small household size and a long duration of the fostering period could suggest that the foster-parents first and foremost wanted a substitute for biological children – and maybe also an heir – while a large household size, a labour-intensive occupation and frequent changes of foster-children rather would indicate a need for cheap labour. Age and gender – for children as well as foster parents – are also important factors that will be considered.
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