A Note on the Study of the Colonial Family

Abstract

C ontemporary studies of the American colonial family have infused a new methodology and fresh interpretation into a traditional subject of inquiry. Rather than cram their texts with random details of dress and diet, historians now eagerly place their materials in the broadest contexts. Far from compiling irrelevant snatches of information, they often locate within the family the basic determinants of historical change. Perhaps the two most important contributions to this field are Edmund Morgan's The Puritan Family and Bernard Bailyn's Education in the Forming of American Society.' Morgan and Bailyn persuasively contend that economic, political, as well as social alterations cannot be understood apart from the story of the family in the New World. But as is often the case with pioneer efforts these works raise and leave unsettled issues of paramount significance. A review of their approaches and findings, especially in the light of the work of such European historians as Philippe Aries, may help to frame the sorts of questions future researchers will have to resolve. Two general difficulties characterize the arguments in The Puritan Family and Education in the Forming of American Society. First, they tend to ascribe a uniqueness and distinction to the American experience that may well be untenable. While both authors do, of course, recognize that the colonists often carried European customs into the wilderness, the comparisons they draw between Old and New World practices must confront the findings of recent European scholarship. Secondly, both volumes offer sweeping interpretations albeit conflicting ones, of the history of the colonial family. For Morgan the rise of the family describes the Puritan experience; for Bailyn, its decline is of prime significance. On the basis of the evidence presented, however, there is little to confirm one position or the other. Morgan emphasizes the overwhelming importance of the Puritan