Public and Private Families: An Introduction SELF PRINT: Evergreen Release

by Andrew J. Cherlin

“individualistic marriage”: a union based on individual rewards rather than on the approval of family, friends, and community.

It is a vital concern because so much depends on it: the well-being of the next generation, the health and comfort of the growing older population, and the emotional rewards we so highly value.

In that spirit, let me briefly discuss the viewpoint I bring to the writing of this textbook.

But even if we do have biological predispositions toward some behaviors and away from others, whether we exhibit these behaviors depends on the social circumstances of our lives: the upbringing we received from our parents; the cultural influences we absorbed from peers, neighbors, ministers, and the media; and the economic constraints or racial prejudices we may have faced.

Biological predispositions balanced out by environment. Nature vs. nurture.

social institution a set of roles and rules that define a social unit of importance to society

In all of these cases, the use of the singular would signal the study of a social institution rather than just a set of relationships.

An institution can grow stronger or weaker over time; it can take on somewhat different forms at different times and places; and it can be difficult to define at its margins. But it is a visible structure that people can recognize and understand. It also does something important for society.

Currently, most Americans seem to view their own families primarily in emotional, personal terms—the terms of the private family—and to pay less attention to the commitments and obligations of the public family.

Most people have used the public perspective in thinking about families throughout most of history.

painting children’s heads and bodies, as if their subjects were, in fact, small adults. Moreover, the artists dressed children in the same clothes as adults. From such evidence, Ariès concluded that the concept of childhood was a modern invention.

Ariès argued that it was only with the spread of schooling and the decline in child deaths—neither of which occurred on a large scale until the 1800s outside the noble and middle classes—that the notion of a protected, extended stage of childhood emerged.

When historian Linda Pollock located and read 68 diaries written by American and British parents in the 1600s and 1700s, she found that most of them were aware that children were different from adults and that they needed parental guidance and support.

Nevertheless, parents of this period did seem less saddened by the death of an infant than that of an older child.

Together, these fields provide an anchor for the study of the contemporary family. They describe the context in which the contemporary family has developed.

The American Family before 1776 There were several kinds of American families prior to the Revolution. There were, first of all, the families of the indigenous people who would become known as American Indians. There were the families of the European colonists. And there were the families of the African slaves,

kinds of American families b4 the revolution

lineages: kinship groups in which people trace their descent either through the father’s or through the mother’s line but not both.

Among other virtues, lineages limited the number of people who were related to a person and with whom that person must share land, water, animals, and other resources.

matrilineal describing a lineage in which descent is traced the mother’s line The American Indian population was devastated by diseases brought by Europeans, such as smallpox—diseases to which the native population had developed no immunities. Moreover, we know that large numbers of American Indians were killed in wars and massacres (Snipp, 2007). How these catastrophic events modified family and kinship is unclear.

how diseases and major population declines thru war affected kinship ties.

Related lineages were often organized into larger clans that provided the basis for social organization and governing.

If you were a child, your father was a guest in your mother’s home. Although strong bonds existed between wives and husbands, a woman’s ties to her maternal kin—her mother, her mother’s brothers, her maternal cousins—were generally stronger.

matrilineal. Mother's brothers approved of your husband not your father.

Still, if you were a boy, you did learn many of the skills of an adult male—growing crops, herding animals—from your father. It was as if you had two kinds of fathers: a biological father who taught you skills and an uncle-father who held greater authority over you. If you were a girl, you spent less time with your father.

American Indian children were more independent than European American children: They were given more freedom and experienced less physical punishment

organization of American Indian societies served to strengthen the social order and to protect individuals against unfriendly outsiders.

lineage and kinship

Marriages were typically arranged by elders from the prospective bride’s and groom’s lineages. (Marrying someone from the same lineage was forbidden.)

It’s not that love between the young couple was necessarily lacking, but their marriage also served the larger purpose of tying together members of two lineages who could provide assistance in times of trouble or need.

MOST IMPORTANT

Through apprenticeship and service, working next to an adult, children and youths learned the skills they needed to farm, trade, garden, cook, and make clothes.

Selected Plymouth Colony families also functioned as

Examples follow:

to anyone who visits the Puritan houses that still stand in Massachusetts.

description of Puritan houses follows

For example,

more examples of puritan public life

informal marriage. Until the Council of Trent in 1563, the Catholic Church accepted as a marriage any public statement by a couple that they considered themselves married to each other, as long as neither partner coerced the other and their marriage did not violate church laws about who could marry whom.

Until 1753 the Church of England, which had broken with the Catholic Church during the reign of Henry VIII, recognized informal marriage (Therborn, 2004).

Even as late as 1850, informal marriage was common in England among the poorer classes (Gillis, 1985). People used the phrase...

Informal marriage was particularly common in the Middle Colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland) and the Southern Colonies (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia), where the Anglican Church (the American wing of the Church of England) did not provide enough clergy, and in frontier areas where social control was looser.

A form of bigamy also sometimes occurred: A man who left his wife and migrated to a faraway state or territory was unlikely to be followed, so he could marry anew without much fear of prosecution (Hartog, 2000). In

what they mean by bigamy.

American colonial society, families had many public functions but a smaller private role than today.

Family: 1776–1900 Pinpointing the beginnings of social change is always difficult; rarely can we discern a great divide between an older way of life and an emerging one. Nevertheless, the decades surrounding the American Revolution seem to have been a watershed in the history of the American family.

Clearest among the white middle class, it had four new characteristics:

The role of romantic love probably increased within marriage during this period, at least among the middle and upper classes who left diaries and letters that historians can read today

To be sure, young adults today still care about a partner’s character, but the stakes are not as high as in the past because it is possible for women to lead independent adult lives and because ending an unhappy marriage through divorce is much more acceptable. In the early 1800s, then, both emotion and practicality played important roles in choosing a spouse.

political philosophers argued that lifetime marriage with the husband as the head was similar to American governance: It involved democratic rule by a leader (the husband) with the voluntary consent of the governed (the wife). Preserving marriage was seen as essential to maintaining a democratic moral order.

connection between marriage and government

the family’s contribution to public welfare was conceived more broadly than today.

Cott's theory

many Americans also thought that marriage served as the foundation of national morality. This view of marriage as the moral and political backbone of society would erode during the twentieth century.

This greater economic independence facilitated the growth of individualism. The transition accelerated in the mid-1800s with the spread of industrial capitalism, which created factory work for the great masses of immigrants and their descendants.

The sharp split between a rewarding home life and an often alienating work life led to the emergence of the idea of “separate spheres”: men’s sphere being the world of work and, more generally, the world outside the home; and women’s sphere being the home, relatives, and children.

And whereas men’s sphere was seen as providing no reward other than a paycheck, women’s sphere was the center of affection and nurturing, the emotional core for husbands and children.

Important differences between the two spheres.

“the cult of True Womanhood.”

Woman’s sphere in the 1800s at once limited women’s opportunities and glorified their domestic role. It was a more restricted economic role than wives in the colonial and revolutionary eras had experienced (O’Connor, 2009). To be sure, the colonial wife was also home most of the day, but she was collaborating with her husband in the family economy;

Differences between women's spheres in the 1800s and before

But other historians, while acknowledging the restrictions and dependency inherent in the domestic sphere, argue that it nevertheless offered some benefits. Appointing women the guardians of moral values and giving them the major role in rearing children provided them with substantial influence.

Moreover, the ideology of women’s sphere may have created a self-consciousness of, and an identification with, women as a group.

These friendships and associations may have been a prerequisite for the development of feminist organizations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.