The history of the family is a branch of social history that concerns the sociocultural evolution of kinship groups from prehistoric to modern times. The family has a universal and basic role in all societies. Research on the history of the family crosses disciplines and cultures, aiming to understand the structure and function of the family from many viewpoints. For example, sociological, ecological or economical perspectives are used to view the interrelationships between the individual, their relatives, and the historical time. The study of family history has shown that family systems are flexible, culturally diverse and adaptive to ecological and economical conditions.
Definition of family Co-residence and organization by kinship are both important in the development of the concept of the family. A co-residential group that makes up a household may share general survival-goals and a residence, but may not fulfill the varied and sometimes ambiguous requirements for the definition of a family. (In Latin, familia – the source of the English-language word "family" – meant "household" or "slave staff". The Latin word domus meant both "family" and "household".)
Historiography The history of the family emerged as a separate field of history in the 1970s, with close ties to anthropology and sociology. The trend was especially pronounced in the U.S. and Canada. It emphasizes demographic patterns and public policy. It is quite separate from genealogy, although it often draws on the same primary sources such as censuses and family records. An influential pioneering study came in 1978 called Women, Work, and Family. The authors, Louise A. Tilly and Joan W. Scott, broke new ground with their broad interpretive framework and emphasis on the variable factors shaping women's place in the family and economy in France and England. It considered the interaction of production and reproduction in an analysis of women's wage labor and thus helped to bring together labor and family history. Much work has been done on the dichotomy in women's lives between the private sphere and the public. For a recent worldwide overview covering 7000 years, see Maynes and Waltner (2012).
Family history methods
Early scholars of family history applied Darwin's biological theory of evolution in their theory of the evolution of family systems. American anthropologist, Lewis H. Morgan, published Ancient Society in 1877, based on his theory of the three stages of human progress, from savagery through barbarism, to civilization. Morgan's book was the "inspiration for Friedrich Engels' book", The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, published in 1884. Engels expanded Morgan's hypothesis that economic factors caused the transformation of primitive community into a class-divided society. Engels' theory of resource control and later that of Karl Marx was used to explain the cause and effect of change in family structure and function. The popularity of this theory was largely unmatched until the 1980s, when other sociological theories, particularly structural functionalism, gained acceptance. The book, Centuries of Childhood by Philippe Ariès, published in France in 1960, had a great influence on the revival of the field of family history studies. Ariès used the analysis of demographic data to draw the conclusion that the concept of childhood was a concept that emerged in modern nuclear families. The history of childhood is a growing subfield.
Research methodology Since the early 20th century, scholars have begun to unify methods of gathering data. One notable book by W.I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918), was influential in establishing the precedence of systematic longitudinal data analysis. Gathering church files, court records, letters, architectural and archeological evidence, art and iconography, and food and material culture increased the objectivity and reproducibility of family reconstruction studies. Studies of current family systems additionally employ qualitative observations, interviews, focus groups, and quantitative surveys.
Family of origin
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