Lecture 3 - 9/19/01
Studying families from a historical perspective - Pre-Industrial Families and the Emergence of a Modern Family Form
Information from Newman, Gillis, and Bacca Zinn
Myths of Family Past-
Some myths -traditional American families were stable, wholesome settings of much kinship living together in a large household. Family members all worked together on grandma's farm. Life was hard but happy because family members knew their roles and had strong family values. This is what William J. Goode termed "the classical family of Western Nostalgia."
Another myth - Industrialization and modernization replaced the extended family of early America with the nuclear family form.
Where do ideas regarding family come from? Newman says the media is critical in our unconscious beliefs of the family. Even though we intellectually understand that TV is not real, it seeps into our unconsciousness.
Secondly, historical research on families has radically changed only during the last 25 years
"Myths of Family Past" John Gillis
Much about modern family life is changing, but one thing that never seems to change is the notion that family is not what it used to be. Families past are presented to us not only as more stable but also as more authentic than families present.
It was the European and American Protestant middle classes, the Victorians, who were the first to value the old as such. When we talk about family in terms of tradition, the result is the same. In projecting a static image of family onto a particular past time and place, we immediately begin to describe change in terms of "decline" or "loss." Ironically we are also in the habit of updating the traditional community and family periodically so that the location of the golden age is constantly changing. For the Victorians, the traditional family, imagined to be rooted and extended, was located sometime before industrialization and urbanization, but for those who came of age during the First World War, tradition was associated with the Victorians themselves.
Today we think of the 1950s and early 1960s as the location of the family and community life we imagine we have lost.
Stephanie Coontz refers to this 50s idealized family as the "way we never were." Certainly, the divorce rate did decline steeply. Half of all women in the 1950s were married while they were still teenagers. The birth rate soared; births rose from 18.4 per 1,000 women during the Depression to 25.3 per 1,000 in 1957. Economic propsperity rose.
However, the 1950s had it difficulties - 25% of all Americans were officially poor , and there were no social welfare programs to speak of. Discrimination against minorities, particularly African-Americans, was harsh. There were high levels of marital unhappiness even though divorce was low.
All visions of family past emphasize stability and unity, rootedness and continuity.
The purpose of a myth: a reassuring myth of family past that can serve our present needs and future aspirations.
But we must be careful not to confuse the family past we live by with the families that previous generations actually lived with.
Some facts - beginning in the Middle Ages - single-family household established by monogamous marriage. Contrary to myth the three-generation household was relatively rare.
Our myths of family past tell us that people used to be more monogamous and that sex was always continued within marriage. It took a very long time for the church to assert its control over marriage and divorce, and, even as late as the nineteenth century, common-law nuptials and folk customs of divorce were common in both Europe and North America. Until then, the line between married and unmarried persons was often somewhat indistinct. While illegitimacy rates remained moderate in most places throughout the centuries, premarital pregnancy rates were somewhat higher, never falling below 10 percent and sometimes rising to 30%.
Before the 19th century, no great fuss was made about premarital pregnancy or
Even illegitimate birth as long as the community was assured that it would not b unduly burdened by the child.
The various tasks of mothering were shareable and separable from childbearing.
Fatherhood, like motherhood, was defined socially rather than biologically.
The social father, the pater, took precedence over the natural father, the genitor, just as natural mothers gave pride of place to social mothers in a world where a child's survival often depended ion having a variety of nurturers, male as well as female.
The economic necessity that compelled young people to postpone and even forgo marriage and forced parents to give up their children was made palatable by a contemporary understanding of family flexible and capacious enough to provide everyone with surrogate family relations of one kind or another.
Prior to the nineteenth century, families on both sides of the Atlantic had little of the stability and continuity we now want to attribute to them.
Only a small number of families could claim a past and a future.
Family reunions were rare before the 19th century
In the language of preindustrial Europe and colonial America, the distinctions between kin, and kin and nonkin, were much more ambiguous than they are today. The language of family was kept open and fluid for good reason. Parents taught their children not to be too reliant on blood ties alone.
Families usually gathered to work or to pursue communally organized leisure, not to have family occasions as such.
We want to believe that families were less fragmented, discontinuous, and divided than families now, but historical reality is anything but reassuring on this point. Lawrence Stone has calculated that the proportion of marriages broken up by death in earlier centuries is just about the same as the proportion broken up by divorce today.
Family Life in Colonial America
Family-based economy - In the early colonial period, white families were the central units of the larger agriculturally based economic system. Each family provides the market with a commodity. The family-based economy integrated women's, men's and children's productive labor. Although the family unit was patriarchal, women played an important role in the colonial economy.
Community Linkages -No sharp distinction was made between family and society. Family life in the society of the colonial period was not sharply differentiated because the family performed the economic, political, religious, and educational functions for society: family was a church, a school, a vocational institute, a house of correction, a welfare institution, a hospital; a nursing or retirement home.
Social Control -Family matters were not considered private instead; intervention by community members and the state were common. People "lived in the street"
Charivari - a noisy public demonstration intended to subject wayward individuals to ridicule and punishment.
Family Structure and Household Composition - Common wisdom once held that nuclear families emerged as a response to industrial society. In the "Golden Age" - extended families - not true.
However colonial families were typically nuclear in structure. Families tended to be larger than contemporary families, but smaller than the stereotypical portrayal. Larger because of slightly more children, servants, apprentices.
Moreover, blended or reconstituted families - husband, wife, children from each of their first marriages that ended in death and perhaps children of this new marriage.
Wives and Husbands -
The early colonists organized their families around the unquestionable principle of patriarchy.
In the earlier colonial period, marriages were arranged based on the social and economic purposes of larger kin groups. Marriages across social boundaries were not permissible.
Romantic love was not wholly absent, but marriage was more of a contractual agreement based upon a specific and sharp gender-based division of labor.
A shortage of women in this period enhanced the status of women, but despite this, wives were unquestionably subordinate to their husbands.
Work for women, whether married or single, was not only approved of; it was considered a civic duty. Women were found in many kinds of employment - they ran mills, boarding houses, printers, etc.
Children - Families of the premodern period reared large numbers of children but household size was not very large because childbearing extended over a long span of years.
Children's religious was intensive and discipline severe. The 3 Rs - repression, religion and respect. Children were seen as "little monsters." In Puritan New England, children were subjected to early obedience training to overcome their sinful nature.
Childhood was not recognized as a separate stage of development. Children were not sentimentalized - viewed as miniature adults although certainly not given the same rights.
Children were viewed in economic terms. Practice of "putting out" children at ten and eleven years of age. Children were seen as property.
The Emergence of Modern Family Life
After 1800, social, economic, and demographic changes produced gradual changes in family living. The transition to an industrial economy was the crucial step in transforming families from integrated work units into specialized domestic units that were separate from the surrounding communities.
Community Linkages -The most important changes wrought by industrialization were the separation of productive labor and the transfer of functions to other institutions.
Modern family life began to emerge at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the nineteenth. The rise of the modern family accompanied the movement of productive work from the household to other settings.
Household Composition - Households became smaller, more private as non-kin such as apprentices left the household. Families became idealized.
Wives/Husbands
Marriage - became based on romantic considerations.
Status of women - subordinate to patriarchal head of household (father/husband)
The Doctrine of Two Spheres - A sharply divided gender system accompanied rising affluence and the separation of production from the household. Men occupied the public sphere of economic affairs, women became guardians of the private sphere of the home.
Division of labor/Role of women
The Cult of True Womanhood/ Cult of domesticity
Women were seen as purer, more civilized than men and the bearers of gentility. They were the "Angels of the Household." The dark side, of course, was that they were also defined as weaker, less capable of rationality, etc.
ideology sharpened class distinctions among women, elevating the status of middle-class women as poor and immigrant women were becoming factory workers
The Family Wage - Only women whose husbands could support a household with a family wage could be domestic caretakers. The family wage was limited to White men. Young people, women and men of other racial groups were excluded from earning a wage sufficient to support a family.
Social Control - The family is no longer subject to control by outsiders. Privacy develops.
Childhood and Adolescence - a change in attitude toward children and their needs accompanied the emergence of separate spheres. As industrialism advanced, the distinct life-cycle stages of childhood and adolescence were recognized.
Children were seen not as evil but as requiring affection and guidance. Children were seen as "natural innocents."
Parenting in middle-and upper-class families involved preparing boys for labor market success and girls for marriage. Children from poor and farm families continued to be economic assets contributed to family survival.
The concept of adolescence evolved in the late 19th century as a consequence of social and economic changes that extended childhood dependency into the teen years. As industrialization gradually moved [paid labor away from the home, the gap between adult responsibilities and children's activities widened. As young people were removed from the labor market, child labor laws went into effect. Compulsory education became necessary as adolescents free time increased. High schools separated youth from the rest of society.
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