Last updated Angharad Jones Williams (1876–1932), seated second from left, with her family arranged around her for a portrait photograph from 1892. She was mother of Waldo Williams, Welsh poet.
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[1] ruling her household,[2] "the pivot, around which all family life revolved".[3] In reality many Welsh women were economically dependent on male wage-earners, and suffered poverty and ill health exacerbated by regular childbearing.[4][5]
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Women described as "Welsh mams" were seen in clashes with police and organizing family relief during the Welsh Miners Strike of 1984.[6][7]
↑ 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.
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