Some Comments from the Guest Editors

Abstract

There was a time when interdisciplinary boundaries were only crossed over lunch at faculty club. More recently, however, and especially since 1960's, there has been a notable growth in education and research of an interdisciplinary character. Among fields that have engaged in such interchanges are sociology and history, and perhaps no area of mutual interest has benefited more from resulting cross-fertilization than family. Yet, many social scientists vitally interested in this subject remain ignorant or unconcerned with great strides that have been made by those working in what has come to be known as new social history of family. While few will admit it, prevailing view among majority of students of family who hail from sociology, psychology, and related disciplines is that historical considerations, in broad sense, are really of little relevance to their work. Nonetheless, these same people are teaching and writing about in various aspects of family, by which they generally mean comparing what exists now with what existed before sixties or at most a half century ago. Anything earlier than latter is, more often than not, ignored or thought of in romantic images which William Goode has appropriately subsumed under phrase the classical family of Western nostalgia. This focus on short-run change has resulted in what may be a number of misconceptions. For example, we frequently encounter assertion that this country's sexual revolution took place during 1920's. Most readers are aware that source of this belief is finding of Kinsey and his associates that women born after 1900, when compared with their counterparts born a decade earlier, showed a marked increase in premaritial coitus. Historical research on same topic, drawing on bridal pregnancy and illegitimacy data seem to suggest, however, that such behavior was on rise since about