LGBT+ History Month: Professor Margaret ‘Meg’ Stacey: Trailblazer in sociology
Claire Choong
897
One aspect of this year’s LGBT+ History Month is to highlight the lives and work of LGBT+ people in the history of medicine and healthcare. This blog post focuses on Professor Margaret ‘Meg’ Stacey, a British sociologist who left an indelible mark on the field. Her contributions spanned groundbreaking research, impactful teaching, and dedication to institutional development. The first draft of this post was generated using Bard AI software.
Born in London in 1922, Margaret’s intellectual spark ignited early. Thriving in the nurturing environment of the City of London School for Girls, she excelled in her studies. Defying societal expectations for women at the time, Stacey pursued higher education, graduating with a degree in sociology from the London School of Economics (Murcott, 2004), where she was Vice-President of the Students’ Union.
Margaret Petrie, Vice-President of LSE Students’ Union, 1942-1943 Image from Wikimedia Commons
In 1945, Stacey married political scientist Frank Stacey (Finch, 2004). Over the years, the couple had five children, including one foster child. Margaret’s experiences as a parent would come to influence the focus of her research.
Margaret’s research tackled critical social issues of the time. Her in-depth studies on postwar families, particularly those navigating poverty and hardship, challenged existing assumptions and offered valuable insights into the complex dynamics of family life. Her seminal book, Tradition and Change (1960) was a study of social change in Banbury, Oxfordshire, during the late 1940s. It is considered a pioneering project, as it was based on team research, as was the follow-up study (Murcott, 2004). Her biographer, Janet Finch (2004), describes Stacey’s work on this study:
“…her work […] stood out for its attention to detail, for her willingness to approach the data with an open mind and for the sharpness of intellect which produced a creative, rich and wholly convincing analysis.”
She also had a great interest in the sociology of healthcare, particularly relating to children in hospital and the adverse effects this had on them and their families. She was inspired to do this because of her experiences of her own children having to stay in hospital (Murcott, 2004, Finch, 2004).
“[H]ers was a strong voice calling for [medical sociology’s] redesignation as a sociology of health and illness, to which she added “healing” and “suffering” to its more familiar vocabulary of “doctors”, “patients” and “diseases” (Murcott, 2004).
Margaret was very much in favour of the implementation of the 1959 report of the Platt Committee on the Welfare of Children in Hospital. The results of this report recommended the ‘opening up’ of children’s wards so that parents (noticeably mothers at this time) could spend more time or even stay in the hospital with their children. She was part of a group of researchers who conducted a pilot study on the implementation of these recommendations, and the editor and co-author of the resulting book, Hospitals, Children and Their Families: The Report of a Pilot Study (1970). Her chapter on the practical recommendations of this study shows her care and concern for the children and families she observed as well as her desire for the improvement of conditions in children’s wards. For example:
“We concur with the Ministry’s view that the Platt recommendations should be implemented as fully as possible […] on the grounds of common humanity.” (Stacey, 1970)
She also recognised the need for fathers to be part of their child’s care, which was still fairly unsual in 1970:
” [T]he willingness of the men to rise to the crisis of children’s illness is as important as that of the women” (Stacey, 1970)
Beyond her own research, Margaret played a pivotal role in developing sociology into a respected academic discipline. She co-founded the British Sociological Association, becoming its first president. She also held prestigious positions at universities like the University of Keele and the University of Warwick, where she established the renowned Centre for Mass Communication Research and in 1974 was the first woman ever to be appointed to a professorship at that university (Finch, 2004).
After her husband’s death, Margaret formed a long-term partnership with fellow academic, Jennifer Lorch. In retirement, she embraced diverse interests, from gardening to Buddhism. She was a feminist throughout her life but, at times, felt slighted by the younger generation of feminists (in the 1970s), as she described in an article for The Feminist Review (Stacey, 1989):
“[It] was made clear to me that I was one of the ‘traitor generation’ who had retreated after the Second World War to marriage and family.”
She finally retired in 1989 (Murcott, 2004), spending her time more restfully, including a holiday to Tuscany with Jennifer – although even on this holiday she was still writing articles!
Photo by Moira Nazzari on Unsplash
“The sun has just risen from behind a Tuscan hill; sitting on the terrace of a crumbling farmhouse where I watched it rise, I finished the last three pages of May Sarton’s A Reckoning. My lover is still asleep indoors; she arranged this beautiful place for our holiday.” (Stacey, 1989)
Margaret’s pioneering research, influential teaching, and unwavering dedication to institutional development laid the groundwork for an entire generation of social scientists. Her work remains relevant in addressing contemporary social challenges, such as class inequality and holistic care of people in hospital. As someone who spent a lot of time in hospital as a child, I feel a personal debt of thanks to ‘Meg’ for using her talents as an academic to examine and raise awareness of the effects of hospital stays on children and their families. I hope she would be pleased by how much better things are now than when I was a small child (in the 1980s), but I suspect she would also feel that there is a lot of work still to be done.
Stacey, M. (1989) ‘Older women and feminism: A note about my experience of the WLM’, Feminist Review, 31, pp. 140-142. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1395098 (Accessed: 15th January 2024)
Stacey, M., Dearden, R., Pill, R., Robinson, D. (1970) Hospitals, Children and Their Families: The Report of a Pilot Study. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Medicine, Illnesss and Society.
Thompson, P. (2008) ‘‘Tradition and change in an English town’, Margaret Stacey interviewed by Paul Thompson’, Urban Community Studies, 11(2), pp. 109-112. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080%2F13645570801940780 (Accessed: 15th January 2024)
Further reading:
Bradby, H. (2015) ‘Margaret Stacey: The Sociology of Health and Healing’, in Collyer, F. (ed.) The Palgrave Handbook of Social Theory in Health, Illness and Medicine.
Earthrowl, B. and Stacey, M. (1977) ‘Social class and children in hospital’, Social Science & Medicine, 11(2), pp. 83-88. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/0037-7856(77)90003-8 (Accessed: 15th January 2024.
Stacey, M. (1980) ‘Realities for change in child health care: existing patterns and future possibilities’, BMJ, 280(6230), pp.1512-1515. Available at: http://doi.10.1136/bmj.280.6230.1512 (Accessed: 15th January 2024)
Stacey, M. (1967) ‘Consumer complaints procedures in the British National Health Service’, Social Science & Medicine, 8(8), pp. 428-435. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/0037-7856(74)90132-2 (Accessed 15th January 2024)
Stacey, M. and Homans, H. (1978) ‘The sociology of health and illness’, Sociology, 12(2), pp. 281-307. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038578012002 (Accessed 15th January 2024)
Thompson, P. (2008) ”Tradition and change in an English town’, Margaret Stacey interviewed by Paul Thompson’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 11(2), pp. 109-112. Available at: http://doi.10.1080/13645570801940780 Accessed: 15th January 2024.
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Claire Choong
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