Domestic Revolutions

A Social History Of American Family Life

Steven Mintz, Susan Kellogg

• Publisher: Free Press
• Year: 1989
• Print ISBN:
  9780029212912
• eBook ISBN:
  9781439105108
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

An examination of how the concept of "family" has been transformed over the last three centuries in the U.S., from its function as primary social unit to today's still-evolving model. Based on a wide reading of letters, diaries and other contemporary documents, Mintz, an historian, and Kellogg, an anthropologist, examine the changing definition of "family" in the United States over the course of the last three centuries, beginning with the modified European model of the earliest settlers. From there they survey the changes in the families of whites (working class, immigrants, and middle class) and blacks (slave and free) since the Colonial years, and identify four deep changes in family structure and ideology: the democratic family, the companionate family, the family of the 1950s, and lastly, the family of the '80s, vulnerable to societal changes but still holding together.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• CHAPTER I The Godly Family in New England and Its Transformation
• CHAPTER II The Roots of Diversity
• CHAPTER III The Rise of the Democratic Family
• CHAPTER IV The Shapingof the Afro American Family
• CHAPTER V Industrialization and the Working Class Family
• CHAPTER VI The Rise of the Companionate Family 1900 1930
• CHAPTER VII America’s Families Face the Great Depression
• CHAPTER VIII Families on the Home Front
• CHAPTER IX The Golden Age Families of the 1950s
• CHAPTER X Coming Apart Radical Departures Since 1960
• APPENDIX I Historical Perspectives on the Family
• APPENDIX II The Language of Family History
• EPILOGUE The Politics of the Family The 1980s and Beyond
• Notes
• Index