History of the family

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An Eskimo family

The history of the

economical perspectives are used to view the interrelationships between the individual, their relatives, and the historical time.[1] The study of family history has shown that family systems are flexible, culturally diverse and adaptive to ecological and economical conditions.[3]

Definition of family

Co-residence and organization by kinship are both important in the development of the concept of the family. A co-residential group that makes up a

English-language word "family"[4] – meant "household" or "slave staff". The Latin word domus
meant both "family" and "household".)

Historiography

The history of the family emerged as a separate field of history in the 1970s, with close ties to anthropology and sociology.

Joan W. Scott, broke new ground with their broad interpretive framework and emphasis on the variable factors shaping women's place in the family and economy in France and England. It considered the interaction of production and reproduction in an analysis of women's wage labor and thus helped to bring together labor and family history.[8] Much work has been done on the dichotomy in women's lives between the private sphere and the public.[9] For a recent worldwide overview covering 7000 years, see Maynes and Waltner (2012).[10]

History of childhood

The history of childhood is a growing subfield.[11][12]

Family history methods

History of the family
  • What is the proper unit for the study of the history of the family — the individual? Group? The civilization? The culture?
  • Are there broad patterns and progress? How to present a universal family history?
Family in Los Angeles
Historical perspectives of family studies

These are some approaches through which family history can be viewed:

  • Ancient history : the family in ancient times until the Early Middle Ages.
  • Anthropology: the family in cultural context.
  • Archaeology: the study of the family culture.
  • Art history: the family representation in visual art.
  • Chronology: the science of localizing family/events in time.
  • Comparative history: the historical analysis of the family not confined to national boundaries.
  • Contemporary history: the study of historical/social events that are immediately relevant to the present time.
  • Cultural history: the study of the family in the cultural context.
  • Ethnography: the study of family customs.
  • Genealogy: names of people in lines of descent.
  • Gender history: the family in the perspective of gender.
  • Immigration: the study of the family and nationalities.
  • Legal history: the study of the law of the family.
  • Modern history
    : the study of the modern family.
  • Migration: the study of the family pattern of global movement.
  • People's history: the family from the perspective of common people.
  • Psychohistory: the study of the psychological motivations of family events.
  • Social history: the study of processes of social change.
  • Theater history
    : the family representation in the theater arts.
  • Women's history: the study of females and the family.
  • World history: the study of the family from a global perspective.

Early scholars of family history applied

savagery through barbarism, to civilization.[14] Morgan's book was the "inspiration for Friedrich Engels' book", The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, published in 1884.[15] Engels expanded Morgan's hypothesis that economic factors caused the transformation of primitive community into a class-divided society.[16] Engels' theory of resource control and later that of Karl Marx was used to explain the cause and effect of change in family structure and function. The popularity of this theory was largely unmatched until the 1980s, when other sociological theories, particularly structural functionalism, gained acceptance.[13]

The book,

nuclear families.[1]

Research methodology

Since the early 20th century, scholars have begun to unify methods of gathering data.[13] One notable book by W.I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918), was influential in establishing the precedence of systematic longitudinal data analysis.[13] Gathering church files, court records, letters, architectural and archeological evidence, art and iconography, and food and material culture increased the objectivity and reproducibility of family reconstruction studies.[17] Studies of current family systems additionally employ qualitative observations, interviews, focus groups, and quantitative surveys.[18][19]

Family of origin

In most cultures of the world, the beginning of family history is set in creation myths.[20] In Works and Days, the ancient Greek poet Hesiod describes the epic destruction of four previous Ages of Man.[21] The utopia that was the Golden Age was eventually replaced by the current Iron Age; a time when gods made man live in "hopeless misery and toil."[21] Hesiod's second poem Theogony, described the Greek gods' relationships and family ties.[22] Ancient Greeks believed that among them, were descendants of gods who qualified for priesthood or other privileged social status.[23]

The Judeo-Christian tradition originates in the Bible's Book of Genesis. The first man and woman created by God gave rise to all of the humanity. The Bible reflects the patriarchal worldview and often refers to the practice of polygamy. In biblical times, men sought to prove their descent from the family of the prophet Moses in order to be accepted into the priesthood.[23]

Roman families would include everyone within a household under the authoritarian role of the father, the pater familias; this included grown children and the slaves of the household.[24] Children born outside of marriage, from common and legal concubinage, could not inherit the father's property or name; instead, they belong to the social group and family of their mothers'.[25]

Most ancient cultures like those of

British Civil War, monarchs in England were considered second only to God and as God's representative on earth.[26] Many other cultures, such as the Inca of South America, the Kinte of Africa, and the Māori of New Zealand, did not have a written language and kept the history of their descent as an oral tradition.[23]

Many cultures used other symbols to document their history of descent.

ancestors and the family identity, in addition to being tied with the spiritual world.[23]

European

Henry VIII of England mandated that churches begin the record-keeping practice that soon spread throughout Europe.[23] Britain's Domesday Book from 1086, is one of the oldest European genealogy records. In ancient and medieval times, the history of one's ancestors guaranteed religious and secular prestige.[23]

countries.[29]

In 1632, Virginia was the first state in the New World mandating a civil law that christenings, marriages, and burials were to be recorded.[23] Historians of the family have made extensive use of genealogical data of the sort collected by organizations of descendants such as the National Society of Old Plymouth Colony Descendants, The Society of Mayflower Descendants, Daughters of the American Revolution, National Society Sons of the American Revolution, and Society of the Descendants of the Founding Fathers of New England.[30][31] The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, a major scholarly organization in England founded in 1964, regularly consulted genealogists in developing their database for the history of the English family and statistical analysis of long-term demographic trends.[32]

Evolution of household

The organization of the pre-industrial family is now believed to be similar to modern types of family.

industrialization, but evidence highlighted by historian Peter Laslett suggests that the causality is reversed and that industrialization was so effective in North-western Europe specifically because the pre-existence of the nuclear family fostered its development.[34]

Family types of pre-industrial Europe belonged into two basic groups, the "simple household system" (the

apprentices residing for periods of years, and at that time, belonging to the family.[33] Due to shorter life expectancy and high mortality rates in the pre-industrialized world, much of the structure of a family depended on the average age of the marriage of women. Late marriages, as occurred in the simple household system, left little time for three-generation families to form. Conversely, in the joint family household system, early marriages allowed for multi-generational families to form.[34]

The pre-industrial family had many functions including food production,

landholding, regulation of inheritance, reproduction, socialization and education of its members. External roles allowed for participation in religion and politics.[35] Social status was also strictly connected to one's family.[36]

Additionally, in the absence of government institutions, the family was the only resource to cope with sickness and aging.[35] Because of the industrial revolution and new work and living conditions, families changed, transferring to public institutions responsibility for food production and the education and welfare of its aging and sick members.[37] Post-industrial families became more private, nuclear, domestic and based on the emotional bonding between husband and wife, and between parents and children.[37]

Historian Lawrence Stone identifies three major types of family structure in England: in about 1450–1630, the open lineage family dominated. The Renaissance era, 1550–1700, brought the restricted patriarchal nuclear family. The early modern world 1640-1800 emphasized the closed domesticated nuclear family.[38] Stone's conclusions have been disputed by other historians;[39] Peter Laslett and Alan MacFarlane believe the nuclear family became common in England beginning in the thirteenth century.[40]

Post-materialist and postmodern values have become research topics related to the family.[41] According to Judith Stacy in 1990, "We are living, I believe, through a transitional and contested period of family history, a period 'after' the modern family order."[42] As of 2019, there are more than 110 million single people in the United States. More than 50% of the American adult population is single compared to 22% in 1950. Jeremy Greenwood, Professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania has explored how technological progress has affected the family. In particular, he discusses how technological advance has led to more married women working, a decline in fertility, an increase in the number of single households, social change, longer lifespans, and a rise in the fraction of life spent in retirement.[43] Sociologist Elyakim Kislev lists some of the major drivers for the decline in the family institution: women’s growing independence, risk aversion in an age of divorce, demanding careers, rising levels of education, individualism, secularization, popular media, growing transnational mobility, and urbanization processes.[44]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d Hareven 1991, p. 95.
  2. ^ van den Berghe 1979, p. 16.
  3. ^ van den Berghe 1979, p. 50.
  4. ^ "family". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  5. ^ Tamara K. Hareven, "The history of the family and the complexity of social change," American Historical Review, Feb 1991, Vol. 96 Issue 1, pp. 95–124
  6. ^ Cynthia Comacchio, "'The History of Us': Social Science, History, and the Relations of Family in Canada," Labour / Le Travail, Fall 2000, Vol. 46, pp. 167–220, with very thorough coverage.
  7. ^ see Journal of Family History, quarterly since 1976
  8. ^ Thomas Dublin, "Women, Work, and Family: The View from the United States," Journal of Women's History, Autumn 99, Vol. 11 Issue 3, pp. 17–21.
  9. ^ D'Ann Campbell, Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era (1984) online
  10. ^ Mary Jo Maynes and Ann Beth Waltner, The Family: A World History (Oxford University Press, 2012) online review
  11. Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood
     (2006).
  12. ^ Joseph M. Hawes and N. Ray Hiner, "Hidden in Plain View: The History of Children (and Childhood) in the Twenty-First Century," Journal of the History of Childhood & Youth, Jan 2008, Vol. 1 Issue 1, pp. 43–49.
  13. ^ a b c d "Sociology/Founding the discipline". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2009-07-26.
  14. ^ Morgan 1877
  15. ^ Encyclopedia, Britannica. "Cultural Anthropology". Retrieved 2009-07-22.
  16. ^ "The Marxists Internet Archive". Retrieved 2009-07-17.
  17. ^ Wrigley 1977, p. 74.
  18. ^ Daly 2007.
  19. ^ Bengston 2006.
  20. ^ Rosenberg 1986
  21. ^ a b Hesiod 1985.
  22. ^ Hesiod 1997
  23. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Potter-Phillips, Donna. "History of Genealogy". Family Chronicle. Archived from the original on 2010-05-28. Retrieved 2009-07-26.
  24. ^ "The Illustrated History of the Roman Empire". Archived from the original on 2015-11-01. Retrieved 2009-07-17.
  25. ^ Letourneau 1904.
  26. ^ Phillip, Walter Alison. "King § Divine Right of Kings". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 806.
  27. ISBN 9781444390759
    . Christianity placed great emphasis on the family and on all members from children to the aged
  28. ^ Wiesner, Merry E. “The Family.” Gender in History: Global Perspectives, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, p. 38.
  29. ISBN 9781134365449
    . in cultures with stronger 'extended family traditions', such as Asian and Catholic countries
  30. ^ John W. Adams and Alice Bee Kasakoff, "Migration and the family in colonial New England: The view from genealogies." Journal of Family History 9.1 (1984): 24-43.
  31. ^ Lloyd DeWitt Bockstruck, "Four Centuries of Genealogy: A Historical Overview." RQ 23#2 (1983): 162-70. online.
  32. ISBN 9780865541689
    .
  33. ^ a b Hareven 1991.
  34. ^ a b c d Kretzer 2002.
  35. ^ a b Hareven 1991, p. 96.
  36. ^ Wrigley 1977, p. 72.
  37. ^ a b Hareven 1991, p. 120.
  38. ^ Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England 1500-1800 (1977)
  39. ^ Review by of Stone's book by Alan Macfarlane, 2002
  40. ^ The Real Roots of the Nuclear Family
  41. S2CID 148812711
    .
  42. ISBN 9781475753677
    .
  43. ISBN 9780262039239
    .
  44. ^ Kislev, Elyakim (2019). Happy Singlehood: The Rising Acceptance and Celebration of Solo Living. University of California Press.

Further reading

Further information: Family in the United States § Further reading
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