Customer Reviews

Erin's Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century (The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science)

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Although at first glance Diner's exhaustive study appears to be fraught with the political correctness and feminist biases that plague so many American academics, in reality _Erin's Daughters_ portrays the story of a gallant group that was able to overcome barriers of poverty, ignorance, and disease to succeed in a New World. The Irish women received no help from the government, from existing charities, or from the Catholic Church, but they were still able to reach the promised land of middle-class America due to their focus on economic goals. The women of Ireland carried their cultural values to America with them, playing a key role in the development of the greatest nation on earth. In order to understand this role, I urge you to read this book.

The second half of the book is clearly superior to the first half. The lack of hard data from prior to and immediately after the Famine seems to lead the author to some curious and questionable conclusions regarding the economic motivation of the Irish women in America. She repeatedly attributes late marriage and spinsterhood to the "traditional" cultural separation of Irish women and men along with the general lack of character of the Irish male. She fails to examine the profound impact of the Famine on women--watching their families and friends starve to death along with forced immigration--and their determination to prevent this from happening again. I found her theories rather determindly sexist.

I loved this book. If you are born from Irish immigrant lineage, it will explain a lot of your family history and why the maternal Irish side of the family had such dominance. The book also explains the love and solidarity of many large Irish families..As my County Sligo born grandmother used to say of the six siblings who immingrated to the NYC area in the early 1900's, "When one was in trouble, we were all in trouble!!"

While I don't agree with everything Ms. Dinar has to say, this is a very solid book and far from being a feminist interpretation, I found it as willing to blame Irish women as to excuse them.

As another reviewer pointed out, the second half is much stronger and it is fairly obvious that the writer is most comfortable once she has real numbers to theorize from.

The one quibble - due to when she wrote this book (1983), Ms. Dinar feels that schizophrenia is a reaction to upbringing and blames the high rate of schizophrenia in Irish males on their mothers. Since I'm fairly certain that the new research leads to a biological & inherited basis, this would be like blaming Tay Sachs on the fact that Jewish mothers made chicken soup. I think if she had the time a new look at this would update the book wonderfully and certainly make my review more positive.