The Salley Gardens: Women, Sex, and Motherhood in Ireland

This title is printed to order. This book may have been self-published. If so, we cannot guarantee the quality of the content. In the main most books will have gone through the editing process however some may not. We therefore suggest that you be aware of this before ordering this book. If in doubt check either the author or publisher’s details as we are unable to accept any returns unless they are faulty. Please contact us if you have any questions.

By the early 2000s, women in Ireland were arguably freer than any past generation to shape their sexual lives amidst the social freedoms of a globalised society. The Salley Gardens presents reflections from seventy-three heterosexual young women on growing up, forming sexual relationships and some becoming mothers in the last years of the Celtic Tiger . The authors explore their hope and despair about what it means to be a woman, to use their agency, within the inescapable tensions of newly wealthy Ireland. Their efforts to build their sexual lives are complex and the significant problems they encountered remain unresolved.

Women’s search for agency is woven into our complex history and continues to reverberate. The bewildering juxtapositions young women faced fifteen years ago have intensified in the present. Then and now, we face conflicts with social expectations of our lives as sexual women, caring women, partners, wives, and mothers.

Turning our older history in Ireland towards an exuberant resistance enables us to illuminate the limitations of the female identities imposed by contemporary Ireland. The Salley Gardens helps us rethink what we mean by agency and resistance, revaluing women’s actions as we endeavour to value our own lives.