"The History of the Family" is about the changing interactions between family and social, political and religious structures over the last thousand years of European history. The family is usually described in terms of patterns of kinship, inheritance, relations between the sexes and generations. The author examines the contemporary use of these terms and their evolution from nineteenth-century anthropology and social thought. He then considers how these concepts apply to and reveal the nature of European and other societies. A central aspect of the author's argument is that the history of the family is crucial to the interpretation of social development. He describes and analyzes the changing relationships between family and state and between kinds of household structure, and access to property in traditional and industrial societies. He also seeks to explain the loss of independent status by women in Europe around 1100, and the rise of a male prerogative which survived unchallenged into the 19th century.
Viewed as a flexible way of ordering social relationships, the family and its shifting role and structure can be more readily understood, the author argues, than if it is defined as an evolving tradition.
- ISBN10 0631146687
- ISBN13 9780631146681
- Publish Date 7 September 1989
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 14 February 1992
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
- Imprint Blackwell Publishers
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 172
- Language English