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While we normally think of family as the people who keep us safe, in Coram Boy, families are more often a cause of pain. The first family relationship we see is Otis Gardiner's abuse of his son, Meshak. It does not get much better from there.  Families that cannot afford to have children abandon them. Even apparently well-off families are willing to abandon children to protect their name. The ideal of the loving family is hardly present in the novel. While love marriages were celebrated in literature, in the 18th Century, marriage among all classes was largely a function of practical needs. AristocraticBelonging to the highest levels of society - the top of the upper classes. families mostly arranged the marriages of their children. The gap between the ideal family and the reality is one that Gavin points to throughout. When Meshak saves Aaron, he says to him "'I'll be your mammy now, and your da. I'll be your guardian angel." Gavin shows that sometimes we need to look elsewhere for our true families.

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In the 18th Century, the poorest in society were dependent on charity to survive. But the systems of what was called "poor relief" were often cruel. In 1722, a law was passed which meant that those who claimed poor relief had to be housed in "workhouses", where they would work unpaid in exchange for shelter.  Many people also believed that such charity bred dependency in the people who received it, and the laws were designed to discourage people from asking for help.  A similar view is voiced by Admiral Bailey in the novel. He complains that his parish's way of dealing with orphans is too generous and that their "good works have attracted the riff-raff from all the parishes around". On the other hand, there were people dedicated to helping the poor. Coram's hospital, central to the plot of the novel, was opened in 1745 to help orphans, with money raised by the former sea captain, Thomas Coram. Charity, as the novel points out, is a word that means love in Greek, but the novel shows that, like family love, such an ideal can be warped by an unequal society. The distortion of the idea is most obvious in the character of Otis Gardiner, who exploits the idea of charity. Nevertheless, Gardiner is "admired for this most Christian virtue, charity". Gavin shows the limits of charity in a system that is grossly unequal, where class, race, and gender, can affect people's life chances so dramatically. To be dependent on charity is to be in people's power.

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Coram Boy depicts a country that is starkly divided between rich and poor, and unequal in other ways, too. We see this inequality in the friendships between Thomas and Alexander, marked by "difference in class and status", and also in the relationship between Toby and Aaron. While they are both orphans, Aaron is actually the heir to the Ashbrook estate. Toby, who is Black, is treated worse, in a time when Black people were traffickedWhen people are bought and sold, often to become slaves or forced workers. and enslaved. As a servant in Gaddarn's house, Toby is treated terribly, and forced to dress up and perform to appeal to Gaddarn's racism. Inequality between men and women is also apparent.  Women are expected to behave in certain ways, and never allowed control over their own lives, especially over their own bodies and children. The consequences of this inequality for the people affected are disastrous. Meshak contemplates a country full of people broken by "such strength-sapping poverty that they had lost the will to try to live". In the orphanage run in the parish of Ashbrook, "over ninety per cent of children brought in were dead within twelve months". We see, however, that the rich are not living better or more moral lives than their poor counterparts. When Otis Gardiner describes his reasons for entering the business, he speaks of  "the fine weeping ladies hiding their faces behind Spanish lace veils leaving their illegitimate babies in satin-lined baskets with a pouch of gold coins tucked under their pillows". This view of an unequal society shows us how hard it is for love to take root there, with the abandoned children offering proof of this.

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The counterpoint to the injustice and misery is the loyalty that some of Coram Boy's characters show to each other. They offer a contrast to the pure disloyalty shown by Otis Gardiner, who abandons children that have already been abandoned. Other, more sympathetic characters, refuse to abandon people or values. Alexander and Melissa stay true to one another, in spite of the opposition of their parents. Meshak stays by Aaron. Thomas and Alexander's friendship, like Toby and Aaron's, offer better ways of relating to one another. Across divides of race and class it is still possible to love and be friends, by not giving up on people. All kinds of societal pressures stand in the way of the novel's characters, but they resist them. This willingness to stay by others is the bright light in the darkness of the story.

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In Coram Boy, when characters are the most themselves, they turn to music. Alexander and Thomas become friends through their shared love of music, and it is following his passion for music that leads Alexander away from his family. It becomes clear that he has inherited his love for music from his mother, and the song she taught him. When he sings, it is an attempt to communicate his true feelings. Lady Ashbrook hears this, too, and the novel says that the song's "words pleaded with her". The Silver Swan is also what connects Aaron to his father, Alexander. When Aaron sings it to Sir William and Lady Ashbrook it brings about a reconciliation between Alexander and his parents, and eventually leads to his recognition as their grandson. The love that cannot be expressed in a society that is grossly unequal finds its voice in music. There is even an appearance by Handel, the great 18th Century composer who lived in England and was a patron at Coram's hospital. He helps to set Aaron on his path towards reuniting with his family.  We might see music also as a metaphorWhen a word or phrase is used to describe something, but it is not literally true. for the novel itself, a story that brings order, and a happy ending to a history that was filled with sadness.

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