Charlotte Greenhalgh

University of Waikato, Te Kura Toi | School of Arts, Faculty Member

University of Oxford, History, Graduate Student

Monash University, School of Historical, Philosophical, and International Studies, Post-Doc

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Charlotte Greenhalgh is the Program Convenor and Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Waikato. Her research focuses on histories of gender, pregnancy, parenthood, ageing and old age, and social research.

Charlotte’s book Aging in Twentieth-Century Britain (University of California Press, 2018) charts personal experiences of growing older and the efforts of ageing Britons to shape public understandings of old age. Please use the links to the left to learn more.

Charlotte’s current project examines the history of pregnancy in Aotearoa New Zealand since 1940 using women’s letters, diaries, contributions to social science and medical research, and archived oral history interviews. This project is supported by a Marsden Fast-start Grant.

Charlotte is also working on collaborative research projects on the international histories of social surveys, perinatal medicine, and hormonal pregnancy tests. She co-convenes the Aotearoa Gender History Network.
Address: Te Kura Toi | School of Arts
Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato | University of Waikato
Private Bag 3105, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand

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Papers by Charlotte Greenhalgh

Labour after Labour: Negotiating Caring for Children and Paid Work

Paths to Parenthood: Emotions on the Journey through Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Early Parenting, 2018

The lives of working parents are shaped by international and national trends including women’s in... more The lives of working parents are shaped by international and national trends including women’s increased participation in the workforce, unrealistic expectations about parenting, especially mothering, and the stripping away of state support from families. Yet Australian parents are likely to view the predicament of combining childcare and paid work as an individual choice rather than a collective responsibility. This chapter examines the history and politics of working parenthood and how these inform parenthood in
twenty-first-century Australia. It considers the responses of individual mothers and fathers to their obligations and asks how they fit with history, generation, and the incomplete achievements of feminism. The chapter concludes that an individualised ethos of parenting exacts high costs from the mental health and relationships of parents in contemporary Australia.

The Travelling Social Survey: Social Research and its Subjects in Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, 1930s-1970s

This article explores the connected history of the social survey inBritain, Australia and New Zea... more This article explores the connected history of the social survey inBritain, Australia and New Zealand in the twentieth century. I describe the movements and international influence of social scientists, ideas and research subjects, which fit with James Vernon’s call for a global history of modern Britain and other nations. I argue that the participation of local populations in social surveys helped to shape twentieth-century conceptions of citizenship, social knowledge, and the significance of everyday life around the globe. Further comparison of raw social scientific data will enable a discussion of cultural divergence in the British world due to the local politics of social class and race.

Researching Ourselves: Social Surveys in Twentieth-Century New Zealand

New Zealand Sociology, 28, 2, pp.187-191., 2013

In 1940 one of New Zealand’s earliest social surveys made calculations about its subjects’ standa... more In 1940 one of New Zealand’s earliest social surveys made calculations about its subjects’ standards of living that were controversial enough to close down a governmental social research unit. An act of ‘academic blackmail’ secured publication, but the urban survey that would have been its sequel was abandoned. The Social Science Bureau disbanded. Yet by the 1970s social scientific facts and theories were common currency in the public life of the nation. Research projects routinely focused on the hidden problems that surveying and statistics could reveal. Between 1965 and 1980 local populations requested surveys of their hometowns of Hamilton, Porirua, Aranui, Tokoroa, Petone, Kawerau, and Kelburn. The authors of this research—the residents, their local councils, and academics—agreed that social problems would be ‘overcome’ when their ‘accurate data’ were known.

Today the New Zealand government appoints a scientific advisor to foster evidenced-based policymaking. The revamped National Library’s inaugural programme of exhibitions, seminars, and workshops celebrates our use of ‘Big Data’. Yet the events of 1940 remind us that current attitudes to social scientific knowledge have a history of resistance, scandal, and negotiation. This project uses the archival records of twentieth-century social surveys to follow the story of social research beyond its published pages. It aims to discover how New Zealanders responded to social scientific research on the ground and what social scientific encounters taught them about their communities, their nation, and their own lives.

Love in Later Life: Old Age, Marriage and Social Research in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain

Alana Harris and Timothy Jones, eds, Love and Romance in Britain, 1918 - 1970, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

Historians have made youthful rites of passage central to the story of twentieth-century companio... more Historians have made youthful rites of passage central to the story of twentieth-century companionate marriage, which was apparently pioneered by young men and women who attended youth clubs and engaged with the path-breaking cultural projects of marriage counsellors, pornographers, and second-wave feminists. Yet this chapter suggests that mid-century changes to married life had as much to do with pensions policy as they did with popular entertainment, and probably hinged on ill health more often than on radial gender politics. This is not to discredit the mechanisms for change that influenced youth—large numbers of Britons went to the movies, went dancing, drove in motorcars, and consulted marriage counsellors—but rather to suggest that the bright lights of mid-century affluence, and consumer culture in particular, may have blinded us to less glamorous facets of mid-century experience that were equally significant.

In particular retirement, which became a common experience for manual workers in the 1950s, allowed men to spend more time in the home with their wives and changed older couples’ routines of housework, socialising, and communication. The ill health and poverty that frequently accompanied this experience forced older men and women to rearrange their habits of work and social life, sometimes overturning gendered expectations that had been honoured for almost a lifetime. At the same time, older men and women’s support of one another through physical care and story telling revealed the depth of feeling that characterised many marriages in their closing years. While old age was not always a happy experience, love in later life has certainly more intense, complex, and bittersweet than historians, or mid-century social and psychological theorists, have managed to describe.

The church as a site of romance

Geoffrey Troughton and Hugh Morrison, eds, The Spirit of the Past: Essays on Christianity in New Zealand History, Wellington, Victoria University Press, 2011

Studying interwar churches as sites of romance highlights patterns of courtship and functions of ... more Studying interwar churches as sites of romance highlights patterns of courtship and functions of religious belief that do not often emerge in New Zealand or international histories. In particular, an intertwined interest in romance and religion reveals strong continuities between nineteenth- and twentieth-century courtship practices, further emphasises how deeply faith was implicated in people’s lives and decisions beyond the church doors, and re-establishes churches as vibrant and attractive communities.

Historians often assume that twentieth-century fashions and consumptive delights rendered older models of love redundant. However, the ideal of ‘spiritual love’ that has been located deep in the heart of nineteenth-century culture also shaped the rhythm and meaning of interwar courtships. In interwar New Zealand, many young people believed that shared religious faith was essential to a harmonious and loving marriage, appreciated that love was God-give, and shared nineteenth-century understandings of sex as a ‘sacrament of love’. Religious metaphors resonated with the emotional experience of being in a romantic relationship and young couples used this language of worship to assure each other of the depth of their feelings.

Historians’ focus on puritanism and their disassociation of religion and modern or ‘secular’ New Zealand has missed the popularity and power of religion in our past. In contrast, churchgoers’ keen interest in matchmaking, romantic stories, and racy jokes draws our attention to their sociability, frivolity and fun. The social attractions of churchgoing and the salience of faith in young people’s love lives go some way to explaining how religion has ‘knitted together marriages, families, communities, churches and the nation’.

Bush Cinderellas: Young New Zealanders and romance at the movies, 1919-1939

New Zealand Journal of History, 44, 1, pp.1-21, 2010

Young men and women flocked to New Zealand’s interwar cinemas, where they learnt how to understan... more Young men and women flocked to New Zealand’s interwar cinemas, where they learnt how to understand romantic love and how to win over the one who caught their eye. This article charts how going to the movies was constructed as glamorous and romantic — the perfect setting for love — and explores why and how young people embraced this experience. Film audiences were encouraged to view many Hollywood stars and some local actors as romantic idols who could impart important knowledge about courtship. Such ideals meant that young men did not only aim to emulate staunch soldiers or rugby players and young women’s daydreams were not always restricted to the domestic sphere. Turning the spotlight on the cinema as a site of romance illuminates a space where young people could act outside the narrow gender roles that have dominated many New Zealand histories. It also suggests how men and women acquired a shared language of romance that enabled them to communicate about their feelings, enjoy each other’s company, and build their futures together. Young people experienced intimate moments in the pubic spaces of popular culture and modern entertainments, looking at these sites can indicate how personal experiences were framed by cultural understandings and thus provide a window onto inner experiences.

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Becoming ‘Completely One’: Love Letters and New Zealand’s Culture of Romance

New Zealand Journal of History, Apr 2017

Just as nineteenth-century sweethearts believed that ‘free and open communication of the self to ... more Just as nineteenth-century sweethearts believed that ‘free and open communication of the self to another’ was the ‘essential act of romantic love’ in the early-twentieth century couples used epistolary self-revelation to interleave their lives and identities. By comparing the words of colonial couples with those of interwar men and women we see great continuities of feeling and behaviour. Far from being stuck in the past, the letters that were mailed between interwar New Zealanders evidence their eager engagement with new technologies and global trends in entertainment and popular culture. Yet their twentieth-century activities frequently served pre-existing emotional priorities, most often by establishing affective connections between physically distant lovers. If New Zealand marriages were the unequal and divided partnerships that historians have described, the same was not true for courting couples. The co-operation and emotional closeness of courting men and women casts doubt on their ostensible marital indifferences and raises questions about what caused attitudes to change during marriage.

This article uses Raewyn Dalziel’s reading of a set of colonial love letters to suggest that such a shift in attitudes was not simply the result of generational change. Instead, the pairing of these two pieces of New Zealand history highlights the on-going significance of emotional connections between men and women to the social history of New Zealand and the personal lives of its inhabitants.

Talks by Charlotte Greenhalgh

Researching ourselves and changing society: The Society for Research on Women

In 1940 one of New Zealand’s earliest social surveys made calculations about its subjects’ standa... more In 1940 one of New Zealand’s earliest social surveys made calculations about its subjects’ standards of living that were controversial enough to close down a governmental social research unit. The project that would have been its sequel was abandoned. Yet by the 1970s such social scientific facts and theories were common currency in the public life of the nation. By this time, research projects routinely focused on the hidden problems that surveying and statistics could reveal. These vignettes highlight the radical nature of social researchers’ collation of information about everyday life in New Zealand—at first—and its marked success in reforming governmental and intellectual practice afterwards. Through a case study of the Society for Research on Women in New Zealand, established in 1966, this paper considers when, why and how New Zealanders adopted a social scientific view of their world. I argue that we have given too much credence to the claim that social researchers were objective observers of modern life. The time has come to explore their contribution to—as well as recording of—twentieth-century social and cultural change.

An age of emotion: expertise and subjectivity in old age in Britain, 1937-1970

During the twentieth century, the emotional lives of older Britons became valid points of social ... more During the twentieth century, the emotional lives of older Britons became valid points of social and intellectual inquiry, motivation for state action, and the focus of contestation between experts. In this paper I present fresh readings of social scientific interviews in residential homes in order to understand the significance of these developments for welfare institutions and their workers, as well as for older individuals. I argue that historians should pay more attention to age as a category of experience and consider welfare services at their front lines in order to understand their meaning for individuals. I also explore social researchers’ contribution to—as well as recording of—twentieth-century social and cultural change.

There, and back again: From Auckland to Oxford with Dr Charlotte Greenhalgh

A discussion of academic life with postgraduate students at the University of Auckland.

Interwar love letters and patterns of romance

Inhabiting an ageing body: old age, emotion, and fashion and beauty culture in Britain, 1937-1970

Histories of old age in twentieth-century Britain typically describe the introduction of pensions... more Histories of old age in twentieth-century Britain typically describe the introduction of pensions, the expansion of the welfare state, and advances in geriatric medicine. Yet old age is more than the sum of its welfare entitlements and physical impairments. This paper analyses older women’s use of make-up, the place of age in the high fashion magazine British Vogue, and the grooming habits of men and women aged over 60 in order to reinstate some of the pleasure that has been found in ageing bodies and to suggest how mid-century fashion and beauty culture operated in the lives of older consumers. By exploring the changing relationship between older people and this aspect of British popular culture, I assert the historical specificity and cultural construction of the marginality of the elderly and the abjection of the ageing body. I argue that we should ask questions about the emotional experience of ageing more often: in order to complicate the portrayal of old age in political policy and public life and to push at the boundaries of our historical practice. Having described vital connections between self-fashioning and identity, I ask how historians might account for the full spectrum of physiological ageing within affective life. How often does the loss of self-expression and self-control appear in the written archive and how might we interpret the experience?

Ageing, identity and the welfare state in mid twentieth-century Britain

Understanding ageing, identity and emotion in Britain, 1937-1970

Ageing as an emotional process in mid twentieth-century Britain

Inhabiting an ageing body: physical and subjective experiences of old age in Britain, 1937-1970

Books by Charlotte Greenhalgh

Aging in Twentieth-Century Britain

University of California Press, 2018

Aging in Twentieth-century Britain charts the determined efforts of ageing Britons to shape publi... more Aging in Twentieth-century Britain charts the determined efforts of ageing Britons to shape public understandings of old age in the modern era. Her current project uncovers popular responses to social science and investigates the intellectual contributions of everyday people to social surveys in the twentieth century.

Book Reviews by Charlotte Greenhalgh

Oral History ‘Parenting’ Special Issue, Carla Pascoe Leahy and Alistair Thomson (eds)

by Cheryl Ware and Charlotte Greenhalgh

Studies in Oral History , 2021