The Welsh Mam (mam means "mother" in Welsh) was an archetypal image of Welsh married women, especially popular in 19th-century industrial South Wales, and depictions of that place and era.
The mythologised Welsh Mam was seen as a matriarch ruling her household, "the pivot, around which all family life revolved". In reality many Welsh women were economically dependent on male wage-earners, and suffered poverty and ill health exacerbated by regular childbearing.The Welsh Academy Encyclopedia of Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press 2008.Carradice, Phil. "The role of the 'Welsh Mam' through history" BBC Wales (28 March 2014).
In the news Women described as "Welsh mams" were seen in clashes with police and organizing family relief during the Welsh Miners Strike of 1984.
Examples in popular culture The Welsh mam was described as "hardworking, pious and clean, a mother to her sons and responsible for the home", in Richard Llewellyn's 1939 novel How Green Was My Valley.Images of Welsh Women, 15/06/07 Actress Rachel Thomas often played Welsh mams in the 20th century, including roles in The Proud Valley (1940), How Green Was My Valley, Under Milk Wood, and the soap opera Pobol y Cwm.Ffrancon, Gwenno. "‘The Angel in the Home?: Rachel Thomas, Siân Phillips and the on-screen embodiment of the Welsh Mam’" The Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion 2009, vol. 16 (2010), 110-22. The character Dilys Price from Fireman Sam is considered a Welsh mam.
A 1997 World of Groggs clay figurine titled The Welsh Mam is in the collection of Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales.
See also Culture of Wales Welsh people Welsh literature History of Wales Gender role
References
External links
Rebecca Davies, “Not Just Supporting But Leading”: The Involvement of the Women of the South Wales Coalfield in the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike (PhD thesis, University of Glamorgan 2010). Deirdre Beddoe, Munitionettes, Maids and Mams: Women in Wales, 1914-1939 (1991).