The historical study of the family has recently experienced a shift from the classification of
household structure at individual points in time to analysis from a developmental�…

The newly developing field of family history has contributed significantly to the revision of
prevailing theories about the development of the family in Western society. The fact that pre�…

lvhis paper proposes an alternative mode of analysis of family patterns in nineteenth-century
society. Underlying this approach is a view of the family as a process over time rather than�…

All societies are age graded to a degree and must, therefore, make some provision for
marking and sanctioning the orderly passage from one stage of life to the next. The�…

After many years of neglect, the field of family history has become, during the last 15 years,
one of the fastest growing areas of historical research. The quantity and quality of research�…

Past reviews of American family history, while providing useful information about certain
aspects of family life in the past, have inadequately addressed the conceptual framework�…

This essay examines the recent historical research on the family with the objective of
identifying useful lessons for students of the contemporary family. The following themes in�…

In recent years, the family has emerged as a major subject of historica inquiry.'Numerous
books and articles have appeared describing, among other things, the composition, kinship�…

Whence and whither family history? In his bibliographic and programmatic essay,
Hobsbawm (1971) did not mention family history as a subfield of what was then the relatively�…

This collection of original essays by the leading scholars on the historical study of the family
covers topics ranging from the timing of marriage and chldbearing to love, family relations�…