Families in Transition: Four Prominent Irish Families Abandon the 'Inward Light'.

FAMILIES; MEMBERSHIP in associations, institutions, etc.; SOCIETY of Friends; SOCIAL status; OCCUPATIONAL prestige; SOCIAL mobility; CHILD mortality

This article follows the association and membership of four families of similar socio-economic status, through seven generations, with Irish Friends over a period of slightly more than 200 years, to around 1900. Using historical data, a model has been presented to explain the key elements of their respective journeys through recruitment, engagement, and eventual abandonment of the Religious Society of Friends. The model had been supplemented with the results of a quantitative analysis of data related to membership and with generation as the principal cohort. Aspects considered included male and female longevity of membership, rates of membership attrition, child mortality and children's contribution to membership, and an attempt to determine whether social mobility and occupational status contributed, in some measure, to declining rates of membership. The results of the quantitative analysis were much in accord with the model; each family, while journeying towards the same destination, progressed slightly differently but with some common characteristics. Child mortality was high in all four families as were rates of membership attrition, and females tended, on average, to have longer longevity of membership than men. And while social mobility was limited, all the families managed to consolidate their positions in middle-class society, many members comfortable with respectable titles in what became known as the Irish 'Squirearchy'. By that time Friends had become a distant memory. It remains to be seen whether the model proposed here is applicable to Quaker families that belonged to other socio-economic denominations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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