Representing family troubles through the 20th century

This chapter gives an overview regarding the historiography of work on family troubles, before embarking on an exploration of the specific historical contexts of children’s family troubles as represented in popular culture across the 20th century in Britain. The author pursues this exploration through two films and one television series that spoke strongly to concerns of their audiences at the time. By placing these sources firmly in their temporal contexts - including contemporary welfare policies and economic circumstances - Fink is able to show how the meanings of family troubles get worked through, and sometimes reframed, at different points in time. In turn, Fink argues that an underpinning emphasis in the defining of family troubles in Britain throughout the 20th century has been the normative persistence of a particular version of family and the stigmatization of those outside it, along with the prevalence of troubles, even though these may be silenced in some historical circumstances.