Social attitudes to Illegitimacy in the early 20th centuary.

[BML]

I am writing a few words about my life just in case my children want to find out a little about their family as they grow older and I identified a member of the family who was born illegitimate in Skibbereen in 1911. I have been told that his mother had more than one illegitimate child. The family member, now dead, was not an easy person to communicate with and although I wish to avoid amateur psychological analysis I do wonder if being bought up under the circumstances I explained above had an effect on him.
I do not have the faintest idea how to set about discovering the accepted conventions of Irish Society and what the general attitude towards those sorts of circumstances would have been in 1911.
Is it possible for anyone to point me in the direction of where I could find information or comment on the questions that I raise above?

[Jd66]

Hi, a good place to start would be Diarmuid Ferriter's 'Occasions of Sin' a social history of Irish attitudes to sex in the 20th century.

http://www.amazon.com/Occasions-Sin-Soc ... 1861979185

Reviewed here http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/se ... sin-review