GENERAL AND HISTORICAL

What is a Family?

   An institution of two or more members, living together over an extended period, be they biologically related or non-related. A family may act as an economic unit, i.e., a "working community," in which each member contributes something necessary to the household. A family is also defined legally so that one may inherit a portion of another member's possessions.
   THE FAMILY is usually seen as the foundation of society and an integral part of history.

What types of families are there?

 -The nuclear family--
  consists of a husband and wife alone, or with their
  children. This unit can be a biological or non-biological
  combination.

-The extended family--
  involves several members, not necessarily under the same
  roof. Even though the addresses may be different, the
  people involved are vital to one another and cooperate or
  fight with one another. (Example: Russian families in
  years past sometimes could not all fit under the same
  roof. However, they lived in huts close to one another and
  continued to function as one family.) The household can
  consist of two or more members living under the same roof
  (nucleated or nuclear family), but it can also include the
  extended family.

-The truncated family--
  usually a family in which there has been a divorce or
  death, leaving one parent with children.

What do historians mean by family history?

 -General thoughts: Infants depend on parents; then, the
  role is reversed and parents depend on children. In the
  twentieth century, on the average, three people survive
  per family into their seventies.

When people, on average, live to an older age (70+), what happens?

 -population increase (older population)
 -the wisdom of the old contributes to survival (e.g., when
  older Indians in the Southeast died of a multitude of
  diseases when whites arrived, the old ways of surviving
  died also)
 -increased burden on family
 -tensions within family and working environments
 -financial responsibility shifts from family to government.

   In times past, there were usually fewer elderly people per members of society than today; however, most were an integral part of the family--younger members took care of older members and, in turn, the elder member contributed their wisdom and know-how. These elders were quite hardy to have survived to such an advanced age. They often retained their faculties, especially since they were afforded respect.
   In Europe, the state became the primary caretaker during the nineteenth century. For Americans this change took place during the 1930s. Because of advances in medicine and more hygenic living, today many people live into old age who earlier would have died at a younger age; that is, they would have died either as infants, before age five, or as a consequence of accidents and illnesses before their full adulthoods or in adulthood. Interestingly enough, when life expectancy increases, it causes child-bearing years to extend also. This seems to be the result of menopause shifting from the thirties to the forties. And yet we produce fewer children than in any period of the past.

Why do we produce fewer children than most previous generations in the West?

   Most significantly, beginning with the eighteenth century, more children per woman survived. Exact numbers differ from region to region, but on average four out of every five infants survived to adulthood. We must ask next: How many times can a woman have a child in ten years? If breast-feeding, a woman can have an average of five children in ten years; that is, we base that rate on a two-year interval that on average separates births.
   Almost as important, with women being able to bear longer, and with more infants surviving, population curves began to rise.

How were families handling more and more surviving children?
   If they had a farm, they worked the land, either as owners or as servants. But there are limits on the number of people who can live on a certain plot of land. Without this increased survival of the children, the work was accomp- lished by relatives, other children, or temporary help (seasonal labor). The families with surplus children had to
send them either to other families, send them off to a monastery or nunnery, let them move to cities, or have them join the military.
   One major problem arose when there was a surplus of one sex over the other in a particular household. For example, how did families resolve the accident of only females being left in a household? How would the family name remain? Who would work the fields? Since both sexes had peculiar responsibilties and were needed on the farm, men had to be attracted either as servants or as owners to break the deadlock. Part of the answer to these questions was that males were more valued than females in pre-modern societies. As is easily imagined, as more people survived there came a point at which a certain region could not tolerate more people; with the industrial revolution that problem was solved in that surplus persons could migrate to cities and thus contribute to the industrial revolution.
   But that phenomenon brought its own problems for families. By the twentieth century, governments were asked to assist with resolutions. Who, for example, was to train people to work in factories, offices, etc? The average family quite obviously is unable to prepare the child for an industrial and technical society. Before the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mothers could teach a child while s/he was in the household and the father could do the same for him/her with the land and farming (or other businesses). Now, this responsibility has been handed over to various public entities.

HISTORICAL AND CYCLICAL

What is a family cycle?

  It is the cycle most marriages traversed and, with some           changes, still traverse.
  The cycle used to be:
      Marriage
      The Birth of Children
      The Death of a Spouse
      The Marriage of at least one of the Children
      The Death of the Second Spouse.

  Today the cycle might be:
      Living Together
      Marriage
      Child/ren or DINK(ation) (Dual Income, no kids)
      Divorce
      Truncated Family
      Remarriage of one or both Partners
      Living Together of Child/ren
      Marriage of Child/ren
      Death of one Partner
      Divorce of one of the Children
      Death of the Remaining Partner

   The family cycle, as you see above, starts at marriage; that is, when a family starts and when each partner enters certain public and private socially, religiously, econ- omically, and politically accepted promises. Each partner promises to make certain valuable contributions to the new family unit.
   We are sometimes told that marriages are made in heaven, but throughout history the practical reasons are more immediate. Basically some sort of living arrangement is needed for the procreation of the species, both marriage partners are essential for the raising of children, each individual partner is only recently able to live by him/herself, and both sexes are required to run a farm. And yes, there is love and friendship in marriage.

   Here are some practical ways of looking at family cycle.

   In traditional societies death played a terrible role in marriages and their rearrangements. For example, what if all children died except one, along with wife, when the husband was at age 40, with the surviving child at age 8!
   What was the man to do next?
   In most settings he had to find a new wife: and so we have an average time between death and marriage of one year, ten days. Let us say that the husband married a woman aged 35. In many cases he died soon afterwards, and the new wife had to regenerate her family size in order to keep the farm and her husband's child and the two children from her recent marriage.
   What was she to do next?
Even though she was older, she may have been able to find a husband because she had land and children (a way to survive).
   The sad thing was that if no one survived in a family...that is of course still true today...all the work from previous generations benefitted another family.

What kinds of externals can interfere in the process of building a family and its viability?

Phenomena that interfere in the process of building a family are war, plague, famine, fire, other natural disasters, and societies.
   War is a particular problem, and it is isolated here from other social phenomena because of its great impact. War often means that men are off fighting and unavailable to work the farm, to reproduce, and to protect family and farm.
In modern wars, the situation is complicated even more by wholesale killing not only of men, but also of women and children and the consequent elimation of whole families within a short period of time. One can compare this impact of war to the disastrous plagues of previous periods in history, (for example, the diseases that decimated American Indians in the eighteenth century or most of Europe in the fourteenth century).

   Society may also disrupt family cycles through:
   - school
   - taxes
   - draft
   - arranged marriages
   - political and economic ostracization
        (like Afro-Americans/Indians)
   - baptism, confirmation.

If "history" has an impact on family, does the family have an impact on history?

 -Families are the reproducers of nations.
 -When families stop to exist, reproduction and tradition  stop.
 -Yet, families were and are often the causes of war.

FAMILIES IN SPECIFIC HISTORICAL SETTINGS

Eighteenth and nineteenth century families
    a) Families were economic, social and political units;
    that is, most communities were agriculturally based,
    and the survival of the family depended heavily
    on individual contributions to the common effort
    to survive.
    b) Average size of Western European household: 4.75 people.
    c) In the eighteenth and at least the first half of the nineteenth century, large families were desirable as half of the children produced did not survive childhood.
    Those who lived were vital to agricultural economies.
    d) With increased urbanization, fewer children were needed, also more children survived than expected, and the land could support only so many. Thus, many second and third sons and daughters had to migrate off to work in trades and manufacturing.
    e) Factors on which family size depends:
       - life expectancy
       - age at which women marry
       - fertility
       - economics
       - religion
       - child training and education
    f) Think for a moment about the impact of the length of women's child-bearing years; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries child-bearing began at an earlier age and ended at menopause or death, whichever came first. In Europe during an increasing life expectancy, more women could thus bear more children at the ages of 18-40, which produced a noticeable increase in the birthrate. The reasons more women were available to bear children is that they were dying less often in childbirth and living longer.
    g) By the end of the nineteenth century, households were reduced in size with the advent of better health conditions, less emphasis on agriculture, and greater urbanization.

By the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, serious limiting of the household set in:
    a) Extended families were breaking up and moving apart.
    b) More specific birth control methods and increased abstinence came into favor--most children survived now and additional forms of birth control had to enter the picture if family size was to be controlled
    c) The nannies and governesses disappeared.
    One of their original function had been to take control of the children because the wife needed to be in the fields. Now, however, the wife is back in the house.
    Thus there is less need for in-house help. Keep in mind that this phenomenon applied less to the middle and upper classes than to the lower class.

In the twentieth century, children become a financial hardship to some. Today approximately $120,000 goes into the raising of one child; that is excluding higher education.
    a) Women are marrying at later ages which reduces the chance of bearing a large number of children.
    b) More and more urbanization brings about smaller and smaller families because of life-styles and smaller housing units.
    c) Zero population advocates influence people to cut back on number of children per family.
    d) The average size of the family at this stage is
    +/- 2.2 people. This figure takes into account singles,
    and non-marital relationships.

How does one, as a budding historian, best view the family?

Of greatest convenience would be to see it as a continuum. This could be expressed as a circle, which is fed and diluted at points where persons enter and exit the circle. Various factors disrupt this cycle:
  - disease (TB, food poisoning, measels, small pox, flu,
    pneumonia, plague)
  - size of land
  - childless marriages
  - crop failure
  - war.

Keep in mind that historical cycles and family cycles are not the same and often do not have the same needs and values. An example could be that of a young man who resists the draft: he is going against the cycle of history (and the "needs" of society), while his values are with the family (since he may be needed on the farm).

Also families make plans to do certain things over a long period, and these plans may affect subsequent generations. The plan not to have a child has a tremendous impact not only on that couple, but the future of the family. Interesting is that by the twentieth century, the family became more concerned with its own generation than future generations. With this strategy, the birth rate slowed down considerably.
  Some external pressures that have affected the birth rate are:
  - working women
  - cost of living
  - industrial ups and downs
  - cost of birth
  - female rights and education (society agrees with women
    restraining births)
  - emotional investment (fewer children, more love devoted)
    Example: Even in a modern industrial society, like the
    Soviet Union, the family unit is very important because
    of a persuasive government. The family is looking more
    towards western ideas of luxury and small family. But
    the leaders of the Soviet Union are urging Russian
    families to have more children. Why is this policy not
    working?  Families cannot afford luxuries or the strain
    of supporting children, so they choose luxuries.
    Americans do not tend to worry about living for the
    future; they live from day to day. Family survival is
    not considered. We have more time to pamper ourselves.
    The Soviet Union still has to worry about making life
    better. There is little time for "self."
 

IMPORTANT TERMS
 

NOTES