Family Life in Early Modern Times, 1500-1789. . - Reviews - book review

Contemporary Review, March, 2002

Family Life in Early Modern Times 1500-1789. David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli, editors. Yale University Press. [pounds sterling] 30.00. 365 pages. ISBN 0-300-08971-6. This is the first of a new three-volume set which looks at the history of the family in Europe over the past five hundred years.

Prof Kertzer teaches in Brown University in the U.S. and Prof Barbagli, in the University of Bologna. The nine contributions are divided into four parts. The first part, 'Economy and Family Organisation', looks at the material conditions of family life in the period, at serfdom in eastern Europe and at manufacturing before the advent of the 'Industrial Revolution'. The second part, 'State, Religion, Law and the Family' has two essays which deal with developments in Europe's laws affecting the family and with the impact of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Part III, 'Demographic Forces' has only one essay which deals with the surviving statistical evidence for mortality and fertility in European families. The final part, 'Family Relations', has three essays on relations between parents and children, on marriage, widowhood and divorce and on kinship and its powerful hold. Although the essays cover a wide spectrum they are united round one common theme: the idea that the assumed view of pre-Industrial marriage is erroneous. While most families were larger than today, Europe was not made up totally of large patriarchal families. Not everyone married and while families were larger not all couples had large numbers of children. Not all marriages survived. The reality of married life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is quite different and there was great variety. It is also wrong to think that a 'traditional' family structure gave way to a 'modem' one either as a result of the Industrial Revolution or the French Revolution. These essays, taken together, will remake our view of family history in Europe and we look forward to the next two volumes.