Click on title to link to Friedrich Engels' "Origin Of The Family, Private Property And The State" for the basic Marxist take on this question. Note that some of Engels' work , as is almost always true with historical data and speculation, has needed updating or has been updated, especially over the past fifty years or so. His basic premises, however, remain valid. Forward to more a rational way to increase social solidarity!
BOOK REVIEW
March Is Woman’s History Month
The Family, Sex and Marriage In England 1500-1800, Abridged Edition, Lawrence Stone, Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1979
Abolish the family! That was a slogan that resonated among those of us of the “Generation of “68” radical and counterculture movements of the 1960’s as we rebelled, justifiably so, against the straitjacket of the bourgeois nuclear family structures that we grew up in. Or, as was additionally true in the case of women (and not only women in the end) the struggle against the extra burdens imposed by the dominant male role models that women were seemingly forced to put up with (including in the radical movements). Well, since that time there have been some changes in the nuclear family structure; some dramatic as with the increased role outside the home for women in education, employment and political life and some changes that glaringly reveal the same old straitjacket of women’s continuing dominant role in childcare and domestic duties. In short, in its essentials the bourgeois nuclear family structure has, more or less, survived the onslaught of the 1960’s.
Although we are wiser now in our understanding that abolishing the family by proclamation was utopian nevertheless the need to replace that structure continues today. For those who argue that even that premise is utopian (if just plain not desirable) then Professor Lawrence Stone’s little treatise (well not so little, abridged it still comes to over 400 pages. One can only wonder what the full volume of over 800 pages entailed.) on the evolution of English family life between 1500 and 1800 (with a fair amount of carry over to America) does a great deal to demonstrate that even this seemingly eternal bourgeois nuclear family structure had made dramatic changes over time. As always with older books reviewed here use the material with the understanding that, particularly in this field with the tremendous rises in women’s studies since the 1970’s, that this is a place to start not finish.
Obviously, for those who are the least bit familiar with the historic rise of capitalism, particularly England’s vanguard role in that rise the period under discussion in Professor Stone’s book, is something of a primer for the changes in English society that would drive the industrial revolution of the later part of this period. Stone thus spends some worthwhile time on the decline of the old agrarian, almost feudal, family networks based on kinship and clientage that dominated in the early period, how these arrangements were undermined by the rise of the state, the rise of cities and the capitalization of agriculture. These are therefore the predicates to creating a national market in commodities, and in their wake family relationships.
No study of England in the period that includes the English revolution of the mid-17th century can ignore the importance to changes in family life and sexual mores that the temporary victory of what we call Puritanism brought with it. In many ways the Puritans, or at least their ethos, were the vanguard of the bourgeois nuclear family as we know it today. Consecrating on the individual biological family, the partnership of husband and wife and changes in attitudes toward child rearing are all given serious consideration by Stone. And as the professor repeatedly noted, many of the social mores developed during the flow and ebb of the whole revolutionary period survived the restoration.
In support of his general themes Professor Stone, after laying out the above-mentioned causes for the decline of the old fashioned patriarchal society (and the survival of vestiges of it well into the end of this period) and the rise of the more efficient nuclear family the evolved in the wake of the English revolution, goes into very specific details about some changes in this family structure. He covers such topics as changes in mating arrangements and ritual; the rise of individual choice in marriage outside the traditional parental arrangements; increased opportunities for women outside the home; more permissiveness in child rearing; and, with the increased possibilities of survival beyond childhood due to better economic circumstances and medical knowledge, closer affectionate relationships between the generations.
Professor Stone tops off his work with some very interesting tidbits about the sexual mores of the times using two old familiar characters from this period of English history, Samuel Pepys (17th century) and Samuel Johnson’s biographer James Boswell (18th century) as his foils. The sexual exploits of these guys should make us all blush, right? But here is the ‘skinny’ on the importance of Professor Stone’s book. The next time someone tells you the family has always been and always will be as it is. Or worst, that it is the fighting unit for social change tell them the story is a little more complicated than that. And point them to this book.
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