Characteristics of the Western Family Considered Over Time

Abstract

Institutions and cultural complexes have to possess some persistence over time, some perdurance, if they are to be significant for the historian of social structure. The Western family pattern, like the European marriage pattern so brilliantly described over a decade ago by John Hajnal, must be shown to have been present over many generations in order to qualify as a characteristic trait of Westernness. This family pattern no longer singles out Western European culture as once it did – or did according to the view which I shall propound here. Indeed certain important features of it have ceased to exist altogether in the contemporary West, notably the servants, whose numbers used to be considerable. This is to be expected now that cultural and institutional convergence has become so conspicuous in high industrial society. It is in this way that a socialist Russia, a transformed Japan, and a country like Denmark may all finally come to resemble each other as they now are more than they resemble themselves as they previously were. Nevertheless, the data now coming into view suggest that there may have been a particular set of characteristics present in the Western familial setting at all periods for which we have information up to the point of original industrialization (whatever that may mean, or whenever it may be taken to have occurred).