Chapter 3: The Family in Historical Perspective

Summary

This chapter looks at how the family has changed over time and how certain periods each contributed to what we consider ‘family’ today.

The colonial family had a similar family structure but different sexual relations. Husband and wives were close and kept the family together, yet at that time the wife was (explicitly) subordinate to the husband. Everyone was hard-working, including men, women, and children.

The way of life and the concept of ‘family’ among American Indian tribes was specific to each tribe. Marriage at a young age was common and one needed few grounds for divorce. Puberty was an important step for a American Indian family member – different tribes had different ways of recognizing this. Many ways of life for American Indian families were from the religious traditions of specific tribes.

The African American family at the time was a slave family. Fathers were not only fathers to biological sons, but served as surrogate fathers to unrelated boys. Women raised children and did house-work, including making food and clothes. After slavery, many formal marriages were held and families tried to come together.

Between 1820 and 1930 many people from across Europe immigrated to the United States. Many of these immigrants worked for a low wage in the factories. Families were then less based on economic support than other types of support. Housing conditions were bad, diseases spread throughout the populations, money was short, and crime was high among immigrant neighborhoods.

From 1900-1930, American families in general were less based on economic support, more based on companionship – and this was now becoming explicit. The great depression caused economic hardships, sending each family member to look for work, including children.

World War II caused the types of jobs that people were employed in to change. Many men were drafted to fight in the war, leaving their jobs to be filled, as well as new ones that opened up to service the war-effort. Women were more common within the workforce and divorce rates rose.

After World War II, when soldiers returned in the fifties, women were relegated to domestic jobs and those jobs were glorified. Gender roles were enforced and birth rates rose dramatically. The suburbs become more and more attractive as a place to live.

The modern family has had lower birth rates, higher divorce rates, and more college-educated women filling jobs outside the home traditionally reserved for men. Most recently, the ‘family’ has been responding to economic difficulties dealing with war, health costs, and big-business loses.

What I learned

I had not realized how bad the conditions were among immigrant workers in the United States. I have always found it difficult to realize how economic factors can impact what the family is. This difficulty that I have seems to be from the fact that now marriage is not thought of as economic support – family is not thought of as economic support, but much more than that as moral support and as companionship. As teaching how to behave and encouraging one to think for themselves how to behave. In reading this chapter, I affirmed that these attitudes of mine are certainly embedded in a greater context of history. That had I been born a hundred years earlier, I probably would not have thought that way.

Questions/Concerns

I did not know of any societies that were matrilineal, that “traced their family descent through their mothers line rather than their fathers” – such as the one tribe of Indians that the book mentions.

It makes me realize how much of the family is based on tradition. It makes me wonder when such decisions were made; for example, the decision to follow the family descent through the father rather than the mother.

The discussion of all kinds of hardships in this chapter – from war, to the economy – also prompts me to think about how the size of the family is a factor in their resilience – how it may be beneficial to be in a group of 4 or 5 people that we call family members in times of struggle ( or how it might be different to be in a group of 10 or only with 1 other person).