Family Structure in Seventeenth-Century Andover, Massachusetts

Greven, Philip J.

doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-722050-5.50010-5

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Over the next two decades, Laslett and his followers elaborated a theory that Northwest Europe had, from a very early date, a unique family system characterized by nuclear family structure and neolocal marriage (Hajnal 1982; Laslett 1983; Reher 1998). Almost immediately after Laslett’s first publications on the family, historians asserted that nuclear families had also been standard in England’s North American colonies from the time of earliest settlement (Demos 1965; Greven 1966). American social historians were soon among the most prominent and enthusiastic supporters of the hypothesis that the nuclear family had predominated for centuries in both North America and Northwest Europe (e.g., Hareven 1994, 1996).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconsidering the Northwest European Family System: Living Arrangements of the Aged in Comparative Historical Perspective

Ruggles

2009

Population & Development Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

During the past four decades, historians and demographers have argued that historical Northwest Europe and North America had a unique weak-family system characterized by neolocal marriage and nuclear family structure. This analysis uses newly available micro-data from 84 historical and contemporary censuses of 34 countries to evaluate whether the residential behavior of the aged in historical Northwest Europe and North America was truly distinctive. The results show that with simple controls for agricultural employment and demographic structure, comparable measures of the living arrangements of the aged show little systematic difference between nineteenth-century Northwest Europe and North America and twentieth-century developing countries. These findings cast doubt on the hypothesis that Northwest Europeans and North Americans had an exceptional historical pattern of preference for nuclear families. Copyright (c) 2009 The Population Council, Inc..

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconsidering the Northwest European Family System: Living Arrangements of the Aged in Comparative Historical Perspective

Ruggles

2009

Population & Development Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…1 Demos (1970) and Greven (1978) report that only small proportions of colonial households in communities were nonnuclear; it was more common for elderly parents to locate one or more children nearby in separate dwellings. In contrast, Ruggles (1994) finds that a large proportion of elders lived with kin in Maryland in the late eighteenth century.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Old Age, Economic Activity, and Living Arrangements in the Early-Twentieth-Century United States

Elman¹

1996

Social Science History

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Two major transitions in U.S. household structure involving the living arrangements of the elderly have taken place over the last two centuries. The first transition, around 1820, marked the demise of the colonial household economy and the rise of a privatized household economy (Degler 1980; Demos 1986; Lasch 1977; Ruggles 1987; Rutman 1977; Ryan 1981). The old tended to share households with the nonold after this time, and the prevalence of coresidence peaked at the turn of the twentieth century (Ruggles 1987). The second shift, around the late 1940s, marked a quiet “demographic revolution” in living arrangements (Smith 1986). It brought a rapid decline in intergenerational coresidence and a parallel rise in young adults and the elderly living as primary individuals.

show abstract

Family Structure in Seventeenth-Century Andover, Massachusetts

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Reconsidering the Northwest European Family System: Living Arrangements of the Aged in Comparative Historical Perspective

Reconsidering the Northwest European Family System: Living Arrangements of the Aged in Comparative Historical Perspective

Old Age, Economic Activity, and Living Arrangements in the Early-Twentieth-Century United States

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About