ABSTRACT
Roughly between the McGee judgment on contraception handed down by the Supreme Court in 1973 and the divorce referendum held in 1995, family life in Ireland experienced much upheaval. Change was both normative, in regard to what people thought was right and wrong in the conduct of family life, and behavioural, as expressed in what they did in their own lives. Some normative change was highly contentious, as the political battles about contraception, divorce and abortion of this period showed (for a detailed account, see Hug 1999). However, some seismic shifts, such as the new social acceptance extended to unmarried mothers and their children, happened relatively quietly and with little or no resistance.
