In the summer of 1746, the Reverend Zachary MacAulay zealously assisted British forces searching on the island of Lewis for the fugitive Charles Edward Stuart, the Jacobite Prince decried by Whigs as the Young Pretender. Prince Charles escaped from Lewis unscathed, but Reverend MacAulay was forced off the island by parishioners disaffected by his Whig partisanship. A century later, his grandson Thomas Babington Macaulay brought cohesion, clarity and intellectual rigour to the Whig ideological perspective on the Revolution of 1689–91. The removal of James II and VII, the grandfather of Prince Charles, in favour of William of Orange, was resolutely presented as the triumph of Protestantism, property and progress. A historiographical tradition was thus firmly established that endured for most of the twentieth century. Jacobitism was treated dismissively. The principled commitment of the Jacobite supporters of the exiled house of Stuart was also belittled from an Anglocentric perspective. Irish and Scottish Jacobites died in considerable numbers during the Revolution deemed ‘Glorious’ by Whig historiography. Even though many more Scots and a few English died in the major rising of 1715–16 (hereafter the '15) and Scottish Highlanders in particular were brutalized in the aftermath of the last major rising in 1745–6 (hereafter the'45), the impact of Jacobitism was deemed peripheral to British state formation and global aspirations.

Introduction

Understanding family practices in later life raises a number of difficulties for research and the development of social policy. Three main problems can be identified from a survey of the literature provided by historians, sociologists and those working in the field of social policy. First, generalisations are often made about ‘the family’ in previous centuries or in ‘modern times’. These often ignore substantial class, gender and ethnic differences – strikingly apparent in the 21st century but no less real at earlier periods of historical time (Pelling and Smith, 1991; Haber and Gratton, 1994). Second, certain types of data are problematic if we want to draw well-founded assessments of attitudes and practices towards older people within the family. Census material may be admirable for some purposes (for determining the structure of households, to take one illustration) but less adequate for others (for assessing motives behind support for older kin, for example). Diaries, narrative interviews, archival records and policy documents also have merits and limitations for understanding the family as a ‘set of practices’ as opposed to a ‘rule-bound’ social institution (see Chapter One). Third, and probably most importantly, as an area of study, research on the family has been particularly affected by value positions about the nature of social change and its impact on family life and family practices.

Perspectives on the family and older people tend, as Kertzer (1995) has observed, to swing between two extremes: the ‘romantic view’ of the past, which views older people as firmly in control of their lives, treated with respect by all around them, and the ‘revisionist view’, which sees older people shunted into workhouses, ejected by their families at the first sign of frailty and dependency. In social theory, the former approach was illustrated by modernisation theory as developed by Cowgill and Holmes (1972), which associated technological and industrial development with a lowering of the status of older people. In the case of the latter, historians such as Lawrence Stone (1977) viewed the rise of poor relief as a sign of the family transferring responsibility to the community. Referring to the later 18th century he suggested that: ‘The fate of King Lear at the hands of his daughter foreshadowed a century of change and uncertainty in family and societal attitudes to older people’ (Stone, 1977: 403–4).

Introduction

Long-lasting heterosexual marriage is only one manifestation of a diverse range of intimate relationships now occurring in later life. As discussed more fully in Chapter One, the relationships that ageing adults construct are increasingly likely to reflect more fluid forms of attachment that challenge traditional notions of family life. As Huyck (2001) specifies, these include remarriage, cohabitation, living apart together, affairs and absent relationships. Moreover, divorce is increasingly common among those people married for two, three or more decades, a trend that is set to continue (Arber et al, 2003). Consequently, a higher proportion of older adults are likely to experience more than one marriage across the lifecourse, or indeed have a combination of relationship forms, which may or may not include marriage. In the context of these more varied and flexible forms of family practice, negotiating relationships is likely to be undertaken in a more reflexive manner, responding to individualised circumstances and contexts, rather than tightly prescribed traditional frames of reference.

Currently, however, marriage remains the dominant form of heterosexual partnership, especially for those in later old age who have remained in longterm relationships (Askham et al, 2007). Indeed, for men and women who were courting and making decisions to marry in the post-Second World War period, marriage was the only form of committed union accorded legitimacy. In an era that has been described as aggressively heterosexual, marriage conferred authority and supremacy on an exclusive sexual relationship between one man and one woman, making all other forms of intimacy appear, at best, inferior and, at worst, deviant (Holden, 2007). Moreover, while there was greater emphasis placed on the notion of ‘companionate marriage’ than in the first half of the 20th century, this did not reflect an aspiration of equality between spouses. Rather, as Finch and Summerfield (1991: 30) comment, cultural expectations invoked a highly gendered division of labour, with women as wives who ‘were to be more comradely, and might be permitted to have outside interests, but were also to be better mothers of larger families, better sexual partners and better home makers’.

Conversely, the cultural context that informed non-heterosexual older men's and women's experiences of relationship formation at this time was fundamentally influenced by powerful anti-homosexual sentiment.