| Well, I won't venture to speak for Samuel Clemmens' or Charles
Dickens' families, but it so happens that I've spent quite a bit
of time studying the genealogy and history of my family back
over the last 350+ years. In that one family, I believe you will
find both a moderately large number of "traditinal" and extended
families, although you will not find a utopia.
Over the generations, there are lots of examples of multiple
generations living together, some were the standard extended
family: grandparents, parents, children under one roof, others
involved siblings, in-laws or cousins. My grandfather, for
instance, was raised by his cousin and her husband. The reason
was that his own family moved west for religious reasons and
either they couldn't afford to move the whole family or they
wanted him to continue his education, depending on what story
you believe.
Once he grew up, he started the traditional American family as
seen on TV. He worked in insurance, my grandmother was a home-
maker and there were two kids, both of whom grew up to live in
the same kind of family. I know little about the part of the
family that moved west, but I do know about my grandmother's
siblings. My great-aunts lived in two households, both somewhat
extended. One had her spinster sister living with her, and the
other had her widowed sister-in-law living with her. Both of my
mother's sets of cousins were raised in households with three
adults.
Not surprisingly, the same pattern was followed in the next
generation. My mother worked briefly until she and my father
settled down to raise a 3 child family on a single income. In
fact, his income supported an extended family under one roof for
a couple of years. When I was quite young, my grandmother lived
with us in a pretty small house. A few years after she moved to
an apartment closer to all of her friends (partly supported by
both of her children), my aunt and cousin lived with us for a
year or two after her seperation and divorce.
My mother's sister, on the other hand, chose a career with the
U.N., which she gave up after marrying my uncle when she was in
her mid-thirties and settled down to raise a pair of kids.
As you can see, my family for the last three generations have
been the "traditional" male bread-winner, female house-maker,
handful of kids family, in combination with various versions of
the extended family. Virtually all of the relatives who lived
recently enough for me to meet them lived this way.
What about previous generations? Well, on my father's side my
great-grandfather was a habadasher, neither his first wife nor
his second (the first died in child birth) worked. On my
mother's side for several generations my ancestors were
sea-captains, clergymen, and carpenters. The wives had children
about every two years and devoted most of their time to house
and family. Several ancestors cared for widowed, but not
remarried mothers, minor or invalid siblings, and grandchildren.
Often, although multiple households did not live under a single
roof, they did move into new towns together. There are at least
three or four cases of pairs of brothers moving together to
newly founded towns and setting up their homes on adjacent
plots.
Of course there were less traditional people in my family. My
great-aunt was first a stenographer and then an executive
secretary until in the late 1920s she retired to devote her life
to religion. She never married. A great-great-aunt married a
sea-captain and joined him in his travels to the South Seas
where they worked as missionaries. Later she wrote and published
her autobiography. Another great-great-aunt was a Gibson Girl
and married a musician who played with John Phillips Souza. As
far as I know, she worked as a model for years.
You will therefore have to forgive me if I continue to believe
that the way my family has lived for 100 to 350 years is
traditional, or at least that it is a family tradition. I do
not, however, believe that it was a blissful or perfect life.
One of my grandfathers died when my father was only 14, leaving
a household that was alternately supported by my grandmother and
then my father. It wasn't easy. My other grandfather was left
behind when the family moved west. My great-grandmother died
giving birth to my grandmother. My great-great-grandfather was
disowned by his high-born German family for marrying an Irish
maid. He came to this country, fought for it in the Civil war
and spent much of the war in Libby prison. It has been a hard
life for at least some members of every generation back as far
as 1650 when Daniel Davison (my mother is a Davison) was
transported to the colonies as an indentured servant (read
slave) and worked first to earn his freedom, and then to become
a land-owner.
I could go on and on. The point is that in some segments of
society, at least, the traditional family IS a tradition; that
in those segments at least, people DID know what was expected;
that for them the problems created by easy divorce, by mobility,
and by the fragmentation of the family WERE pretty much unknown.
This isn't to say that they didn't have problem, it is just to
say that they avoided many that we experience.
For my money, we could do well by following their examples in
some things. As far as I'm concerned easy divorce, easy
abortions, mobility, and the loosening of family bonds have
heavy costs. Personally, I'm happier following the traditions of
my family than turning away from them. It hasn't made my life a
dream, but it sure seems to beat the alternative.
JimB.
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| I though this might garner some reactions!
1) I don't remember the names of the books, though I do remember
their effort to debunk--one in particular spent a good chunk
of text debunking the idea that people in the Elizabethan era
got married in their early teens. Next time I get to the library
and remember, I'll try to get a few names. Some of what I remember
comes from textbooks and supplemental reading for college courses
(now over a decade ago!). Some comes from Scientific American
articles. References will be hard to come by...
Data was roughly that the long-term trend is later marriage,
with men marrying a few years later than women. Long-term
trend is fewer children.
2) Sure, there have always been "traditional" families. But they
did not use to be the universal experience that some people
now think they were. Trying to set up that family as an ideal
to be either aspired to or combatted is a misreading of history.
Remember also that even in a population where 90% of the people
do not have children, nonetheless every person will have grown
up in a family with children. Memories of one's past are not
necessarily good guides to the statistical present.
3) Statistics are always suspect, particularly those used to prove
something (see Irving Huff's "How to Lie with Statistics").
Demographers generally use parish records, which leave out
migrants, but are complete enough to be analyzed for statistical
data on births, deaths and marriages. Other data is available
from tax records, but personal data such as age at menarche only
starts being recorded in the 1700's in Sweden.
There are records from the deep past, but they tend to be
fragmentary--consider the records of the Inquisition into
the village of Montaillou, which give a snapshot picture of
relationships, beliefs and ideals for a small village in
southern France. It's anyone's guess whether that village
was "ordinary" (outside of the un-ordinary aspect of being
heretical...). That book was "Montaillou" (spelling not
100% guaranteed).
In any case, where the definition changes or the rate of reporting
changes, the statistics are going to be flawed, and an honest
statistician will tell you so. The popular media fail to be
honest in this respect.
4) Begin private opinion in response to .4:
TV rots the brain, just as sugar rots the teeth.
However, it does not make you evil, it makes you stupid.
End private opinion.
-John Bishop
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| A bit belated, in fact, but still due.
Kudos to John for making the point that the "traditional" family
is as traditional as the black-and-white Philco TV on which we watched
Father Knows Best. The '50s were the zenith of that model family,
the brief interlude when enough Americans could afford it so that
the brainwashing made it seem "normal".
Before the industrial revolution, families lived on farms. Everybody
did something. Nobody went to work at the factory. In the industrial
period, factory work began, but poor women worked in factories or
for money at home (making clothes, etc.). Rich people (men or women)
didn't really work, though some rich men "managed" poor workers,
and their wives didn't have to work. The middle class was small.
Then the depression (nobody had a job), WWII (everybody had a job)
and then the fifties (instant tradition). There were of course
exceptions, but studing the 90th percentile (income-wise) family
won't net the same result as the above, which aims towards the 50th.
fred
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| This is germane: it's a letter to the Wall Street Journal in response
to an article about "the family". I don't have the original article
here, but this should give you both an idea of what it said, and
a pointer to an acedemic demographer!
"Your page-one report of changes in the family (Sept. 25) leaves
the impression that the family is disintegrating, a view not shared
by many of us in the field. There is little indication that
urbanization has altered traditional functions of the family. While
a majority of women with young children are working, this work
is largely part-time and discretionary. Nor is there evidence of
a large increase in voluntary childlessness. At least among
upper-middle-class women, childbering is being delayed, with consequent
"biological squeeze" as less-fertile women have less time than in
the past to bear children.
(* Aside--I don't see how the last sentence proves that there is
no increase in voluntary childlessness. I suspect poor editing
of a much longer letter. End aside *)
"Divorce rates vary over time and may be inflated since figures
cited may include the same persons divorcing and remarrying. As
Mary Jo Bane at the Radcliff Institute has shown, most children
of divorce very soon become part of a reconstituted family. The
unanswered questionis the number of first marriages in a particular
cohort remaining stable over time; one study of corporate executives
suggests long-term maritial stability is the norm. It is true that
the underclass black family presents a serious problem. Since there
is a linear relationship between head-of-household employment and
family stability, provision of job training and employment for black
men would do much to reduce present problems faced by the urban
black family.
"Large birth cohorts such as that following World War II lead to
increased competition for jobs and marriage partners, with expectable
mental-health problems affecting the stability of family structure
over brief periods. The smaller birth cohorts now reaching adulthood
suggest that many of these problems may diminish.
Prof. Bertram J. Cohler
University of Chicago."
While I might take exception to some of what this guy has said
("corporate executives" are a good model of the average family?
"linear relationship"--how is stability quantized? Why should
large cohorts lead to increased competiton for partners--the
birth gender ratio is still about even, no?), I figured you guys
would like to read it.
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