In his 1978 Presidential Address to this Association, Allan Bogue urged us to direct our attention to problems associated with the use and development of computer-readable source material (Bogue, 1979). My remarks are in a similar vein. They are limited, however, to only one of the categories of source material that Bogue discussed: information that is originally recorded and stored in computer-readable form. In this area problems have become substantially larger and more pressing than they seemed in 1978, although possible means to their amelioration are now also becoming more apparent. The problems concern, in the first place, the rapidly growing volume of potential source material that is recorded and stored in computer-readable form; and, in the second place, the danger that much of this material will not be preserved or that it will be preserved only in forms that sacrifice its central and crucial advantage of manipulability.

The historical study of imprisonment touches on various issues of a wider, theoretical significance. A major and ongoing discussion in social science concerns the nature of historical change. Authors writing from a structuralist or systems approach tend to emphasize rapid change followed by long periods of continuity. Opposed to this is a more developmental or longitudinal approach stressing long-term processes. Both approaches are represented in the historiography about imprisonment. They may be identified as modernization-oriented and process-oriented, respectively.

Several recent studies of the emergence of prisons in Europe and America dealt with the first half of the nineteenth century (see especially Rothman, 1971; Foucault, 1975; Ignatieff, 1978). These studies suggested that confinement was a relatively new phenomenon in that period.

In recent years, American society has engaged in what is frequently described as a “sexual revolution” involving significant changes in relationships between men and women. As a result of extensive social surveys, we know that both specific behaviors and the prevailing ideology regarding appropriate standards of behavior have been subject to rapid change. In the past two decades, rates of sexual intercourse and intimacy have increased (Hunt, 1974; Westoff, 1974), use of effective contraception has become widespread, and it is increasingly accepted that a physical and emotional attraction between members of the opposite sex might lead to a sexual relationship. In short, participation in sexual activity has come to be seen as a natural outgrowth of the enjoyment of sex.

This paper examines the changing nature of the female labor force in Ireland and the United States. Data from the two countries are used to illustrate both similarities and variations in the Western experience of women during the period of rapid change in work and family life since the late nineteenth century.

A central facet of how Western families have been transformed during the past century has involved the increased participation of women in the paid labor force, and in the most recent decades, a dramatic rise in the labor force participation of married women. In his classic work, World Revolution and Family Patterns, Goode suggests that the increase in female participation in the non-agricultural labor force was clearly evident in Western countries but was not dramatic during the first half of this century (1963: 59-60). Since 1950, however, increases in the economic activity of women have occurred throughout the West. For example, using data from Scandinavian countries, Haavio-Mannila and Kari (1980) document the increased economic activity of women throughout this century, the transformation of the economies of Scandinavia from an agricultural to an industrial base, and the rapid increase in labor force participation of married women since 1950.

Recent studies in social history suggest that the practice of female infanticide was widespread in early medieval society. While much of the work on female infanticide is sound, particularly the anthropological studies which observed the practice first hand, the interpretations of historical data are much less certain. In particular, data from the ninth-century French monastic tax rolls known as the Carolingian polyptychs are assumed to reflect female infanticide (Coleman, 1971; 1974; 1976; de Mause, 1974; Guttentag and Secord, 1983). The data recorded on the Polyptychs are biased in a manner reflecting the Church’s teachings and social functions, giving the impression of a skewed sex ratio favoring males in this population. Anthropological studies lead us to doubt that female infanticide was practiced to the extent suggested by the sex ratio on the polyptychs.