Family Secrets: Living with Shame from the Victorians to the Present Day

by Deborah Cohen

We live today in a culture of full disclosure, where tell-all memoirs top the best-seller lists, transparency is lauded, and privacy seems imperiled. But how did we get here?
Exploring scores of previously sealed records, Family Secrets offers a sweeping account of how shame--and the relationship between secrecy and openness--has changed over the last two centuries in Britain. Deborah Cohen uses detailed sketches of individual families as the basis for comparing different sorts of social stigma. She takes readers inside an Edinburgh town house, where a genteel maiden frets with her brother over their niece's downy upper lip, a darkening shadow that might betray the girl's Eurasian heritage; to a Liverpool railway platform, where a heartbroken mother hands over her eight-year old illegitimate son for adoption; to a town in the Cotswolds, where a queer vicar brings to his bank vault a diary--sewed up in calico, wrapped in parchment--that chronicles his sexual longings. Cohen explores what families in the past chose to keep secret and why. She excavates the tangled history of privacy and secrecy to explain why privacy is now viewed as a hallowed right while secrets are condemned as destructive.
In delving into the dynamics of shame and guilt, Family Secrets explores the part that families, so often regarded as the agents of repression, have played in the transformation of social mores from the Victorian era to the present day. Written with compassion and keen insight, this is a bold new argument about the sea-changes that took place behind closed doors.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Grad School, Historical, Read For School, Biography, Sociology

372 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

I was raised in Louisville, Kentucky and now live in Chicago, where I teach history at Northwestern University. Last Call at the Hotel Imperial is my fourth book.

I write regularly for the Atlantic about subjects ranging from private lives to war photography to punk rock. https://www.theatlantic.com/author/de...

Reviews

[Dasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is incredibly useful for uncovering the layers of complexity that marked the evolving idea of the family over two centuries as defined by secrecy and privacy. Cohen's focus on family members with disabilities and ideas of race was thoughtful and interesting. It ties nicely into the formation, or at least the idea of it, of the mid-century nuclear family and the privacy of that family unit.

[Britt, Book Habitue · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Copy received for review)

Possibly the most fascinating and compelling work of nonfiction I have read. Combining history and psychology, this is definitely a most interesting read.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Family Secrets’ is an interesting effort to uncover the evolving history of privacy and its relations to secrets in British families, from the Victorian era to roughly the 1960s. Deborah Cohen has uncovered some rich sets of sources including adoption records, Mass-Observation data, court records, and personal diaries. She uses these to explore areas of shame in family life: illegitimate and mixed race children as a result of colonialism; adoption; mentally disabled children and the institutions that cared for them; divorce; and homosexuality. The result is a telling portrait of the shifting line between what can be shared widely, what less widely, and what never spoken about. The book also, not incidentally, is a description of how painful it is when we cannot meet our own or others’ expectations. Cohen’s book does demonstrate that much of the shame created by secrecy exposed came from well-meaning notions about the social interest of providing abject examples of behavior people should avoid and the cost of making mistakes. Not so now. “To have privacy, as we now define it,” Cohen writes in the Epilogue, “is to be able to conduct one’s affairs and develop one’s personality without significant social detriment.... In the twenty-first century, privacy is not the ability to hide but the right to tell without cost” (268).

[Wealhtheow]

Described to me as "white bourgeois British families' attitudes towards biracial, illegitimate/adopted, divorced, disabled, and homosexual relatives during the nineteenth century."

[Ken Sampson · Rating 4 out of 5]

[2014] This is a well written, interesting and informative book and overall is a enjoyable read. Written by an American, who appears to have developed a remarkable insight into British cultural history and writes like a genuine Briton. The book covers some really interesting, largely previous uncovered new ground. It begins with stories from the day of the British Empire in India, then covers divorce, illegitimacy, learning disabled children and homosexuality. They are all written well, but regrettably the premise of each chapter changes - so what you start with on commencing the book is not necessarily what you get as you finish it.

The days when single Britons went to create empire and ended up with mixed-race illegitimate children is exceptionally well told. Beginning in the 18th century and covering the Victorian era in some detail was very well done. Diaries, letters and family research brings real human stories to life with sensitivity and engages you straight away. This style is largely maintained, but moves to almost exclusively the nineteenth century - which is disappointing. Stories of divorce, shamed parents grieving for incarcerated disabled children, illegitimate children placed for adoption and the struggle of homosexual men for self expression in a world of hostile repression is well done. On one occasion, I thought she sailed too close to the muddle that homosexuality and Paedophilia are the same, which was a real pity.

She then seems to move from the specific to the general without any warning and describes in detail the political develop of divorce and the psychoanalytic approach to family and individual psychotherapy. She also became focused on celebrity and the famous. This wasn't what I was looking for and is done better elsewhere. The details of ordinary people leading ordinary lives got lost. For me to have award a 5-star review I would have wanted more consistent individual family stories and an historical depth back beyond the Victorian era. However, having said, that I still enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone with a history in family or social history, particularly those looking for background context to their own stories.

[Amber Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part psychology, part history, this book dealt with what people from the Victorian era to about the sixties found shameful and how that changed.
The Victorians kept children with mental and physical difficulties at home, but Edwardians and later heavily institutionalized them, even denied their existences sometimes. I found this section about the most interesting--how these children were treated in their homes and medically changed, though not always for the better. In earlier eras, the hope of a "cure" for mental retardation and other issues was held out....only to give way to long term institutionalizing.
Homosexuality went from basically being winked at and moderately ignored to illegal in the Victorian/Edwardian eras. This book discusses how the roles of bachelor uncles and to a lesser degree, spinster aunts changed.
I also found the section dealing with how people dealt with being stuck in failed marriages interesting. In eras where divorce was basically impossible for middle class and poor people, they just sort of informally divorced or bigamously set up homes with new partners where everyone "agreed" they were married if they presented themselves as husband and wife.
I didn't find the section "the repressive family" that interesting. Too clinical and impersonal to my thinking. I didn't have as much of an intimate sense of how families worked and changed in that era affected real people, just how it was agreed to have changed in studies.
Basically, this book interested me most when it talked about actual families and how they went about their lives in an era of massive change.

[Angela Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting conclusions to the ways in which Britain's household secrets were kept in the recent past: tabloid reactions, the emergence of institutions, orphanages and subsequent adoption agencies, registers of birth as well as the unmentionable homosexuals.

[Margery Osborne · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting although not the greatest read

[Annette Kane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good

[Cleopatra Pullen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book against the backdrop of my adult daughter and her close friend trawling through Facebook to find out whether a rumour they'd heard about a school friend was true or not - it wasn't, but it certainly leant weight to Deborah Cohen's affirmation that there is a difference between privacy and secrecy. As an amateur genealogist I have delved into the papers of the late 19th century and wondered how some of those whose actions were written about continued to live in their tight-knit communities with little opportunity of escaping their past misdemeanours, but of course they just had to, particularly if they were poor.

The subjects of this book tend to be the middle-classes, those who had the money and the means to hide their secrets or at least have some measure of control over how much of their secrets were exposed. The book starts in the late 18th century detailing the ways that men who had relations with women in India integrated their sons and daughters into society. Deborah Cohen then moves through the decades detailing those secrets that were important to their times; divorce, mental disabilities, adoption and homosexuality alongside careful explanation of popular views of the times, laws and the importance to the family that these were either kept secret or not.

The last section deals with the views of RD Laing and how his views helped to change society's view of the family to the re-drawing of boundaries about what today is viewed to be privacy and an individual's right to keep secrets which is not the same as the requirement to keep the family secrets.

This is a fascinating and accessible way of presenting social history, well researched using some previously closed records it is well written has enlightened me about each of the areas covered.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Doesn't so much present an argument as give a descriptive summary of societal attitudes to shame, secrecy and privacy and the shifts in these over time, using several real-life examples to illustrate changes between generations. Looks at the way families and societies addressed embarrassing or potentially ruinous secrets like illegitimate, biracial or mentally handicapped children, adultery, divorce, adoption and homosexuality. Interesting and unexpected revelations in some cases--like the shift from Victorians' fairly open treatment of handicapped kids as merely 'unfortunate' to the early 20th century's hiding them away as 'shameful' after the rise of eugenics--but I found the chapter on homosexuality seemed fairly weak in comparison to earlier chapters (seeming to concentrate specifically on middle- and upper-class 'discreet' gays and ignore more 'flamboyant' gays or relegate them strictly to the poorer working class--as if there were no flamboyant well-to-do homosexuals--and only giving the most glancing mention of lesbians). The final chapter gives an interesting, if less organized-feeling, look at the increasing difference between ideas of secrecy and privacy from the days of Victorian silence to the days of marriage counsellors and advice columns, and later to open blogging and reality TV.
Overall, interesting to hear some of the real-life stories described and the very different ways that similarly-circumstanced lives played out depending on certain variables. It took a little work to get through, but brought up some interesting historical points to argue over, but if you're looking for a clear argument of a specific point, you might be disappointed here.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engaging and incredibly timely work of social history, tracing changing conceptions of privacy and secrecy in British families from the late 18th to the early 21st centuries. Viewing these abstract notions through the lens of various topics - mixed-race children, divorce, developmentally delayed children, illegitimate birth, homosexuality - Cohen shows how dramatically things we now see as "basic rights" have shifted over the generations.

For example, "Skeletons, the Victorians recognized, were inevitable and as a sign of family unity, even laudable." They perceived "transgressions" as being "of communal interest, to be protected by family secrets" and felt that "a person's past was most emphatically not their own private business."

By the end of the Second World War, however, came from "a new democratic language of a right to non-interference." Still, they could hardly imagine that by the early 21st century, "privacy is not the ability to hide but the right to tell without cost."

Cohen's work is interesting in its own right, for the insight it offers into the Victorian era, much scorned by later generations - and, she argues persuasively, not always justifiably so - but also for the way it could help us frame urgent questions we now face regarding these subjects. There is a lot of value that we could learn from the Victorians. My only quibble is that women are entirely absent from her chapter on early- to mid-20th century homosexuality. Where are Radclyffe Hall, Violet Trefusis, Vita Sackville-West and the rest?

[Corrie Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

An utterly fascinating and well researched look at privacy and shame in modern Britain. The topics covered include race, divorce/adultery, illegitimacy/adoption, the mentally disabled, and homosexuality, all in relation to shame and privacy within both the family and society. Cohen moves through Victorian times into the Edwardian Era, the interwar years and then into what we would consider 'modern' times (post WWII). She also covers how the definition of privacy changes after WWII with the onset of psychoanalysis, the feminist and gay liberation movements, and society's new desire for openness and truth telling. It was so interesting to see how different time periods dealt with a variety of 'secret' issues and how this related to propriety and familial respectability. In some instances, the earlier years (surprisingly) proved to be more progressive and compassionate (mental disability). Although this book is non-fiction it reads like a novel and I did not want to put it down. Cohen does an incredible job at engaging the reader. A definite 5 stars!

[Wanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Family Secrets: Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain

Author Deborah Cohen takes us on a journey through family circumstances that were held as taboo in Britain’s not too distant history (19th & 20th centuries); Mistresses; Illegitimate children; Shocking marital problems; Mongol children; Adopting other’s illegitimate children; And the homosexual in the family. In British history’s upper and upper middle class these things were hidden away and hushed up. I think I felt sorrier for the kids that were innocent victims of the times.

Then the author goes on to describe how things have changed in British society.

It is an interesting book. I received this book through Goodreads First Reads with many thanks.

[Lynnee Argabright · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first four chapters and was disappointed throughout the remaining three chapters. The book had some really interesting topics in it regarding family secrets, shame, and privacy in Victorian and Modern England, such as empire, divorce, mental institutions, adoption, and homosexuality. However, as in the last two chapters (Part Three), I was disappointed that these topics turned into a general purview of the shape of the family in modern England. As an American reading this book, these chapters seemed like they didn't apply to my understanding of the family.

[!Tæmbuŝu]

KOBOBOOKS

Reviewed by The Guardian (26 Jan 2013), The Independent (17 Apr 2013)

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the book, which was more anecdotal and personal than the last part. Sometimes the process of discovery can be more interesting than what is actually discovered. The last one-third of the book was rather drier, and more like a sociology text - it seemed to lack the vitality of the first part of the book, Still, I found it worth reading, and it is very well researched.

[Vanessa Meachen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic read - detailed, thoughtful, and beautifully illustrated with real examples from archives and primary sources. Explores the prevailing attitudes of families to "secrets" like illegitimacy, physical and intellectual disability, divorce and family breakdown, homosexuality and mixed-race children and how attitudes have changed - or not - from Victorian times to the present day. I found some of the examples here surprising and nearly all of them moving.

[Jane Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Living with Shame from the Victorians to the Present Day" is the sub-title. But we get little on the Victorians, and not a lot about shame. There is some fascinating stuff here, based on impeccable research, but it doesn't entirely hang together. The epilogue on the current fashion for family history misses the mark. Altogether, the book left me a little disappointed.

[Kazimiera pendrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

some of the topics within this book are very shocking some of the things that the general public do not like to face .Although interesting the writing style and indeed the chapters wera bit long winded still worth a read

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for my historians craft seminar. Very interesting history of family secrets from the Victorian age to circa 1980. It was fascinating to read about how the secrecy of certain things changed over time--oftentimes in ways one wouldn't have expected.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aspects of the social history of Britain told through various stigmatising secrets e.g. mixed race "Empire" children, divorce, adoption, disabled children and homosexuality leading to a discussion about secrecy versus privacy. Really interesting.

[Penny · Rating 3 out of 5]

3½
I enjoyed this but maybe not quite as much as I thought I would.
Interesting idea for a book, and well done although I thought some chapters were much more interesting than others.

[Lesley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good, but not sure if it was trying to do too much in the space available.

[Trinity School Summer Reading]

A wonderful book about the history of what we keep private and why.

[Alyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating. See http://www.eatreadandbemommy.com/2014... for why!

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Only by refusing the ‘self-oppression’ of silence could a person live authentically and honestly."

- Deborah Cohen, Family Secrets: Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain.

[Jane Housham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

[David Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

see my review at: http://davidmallenmd.blogspot.com/201...

[David]

A fantastic read.