Changing Perspectives on the American Family in the Past

Past reviews of American family history, while providing useful information about certain aspects of family life in the past, have inadequately addressed the conceptual framework informing the discipline. This article begins by reviewing four approaches developed by social scientists for studying the family: household composition, generations, family cycle, and life-course. The life-course perspective seems the most promising for a dynamic, complex view of families that links changes in the domestic sphere to wider societal trends and concerns. Using the analytical perspective of the life-course, we then examine significant historiographical contributions in four areas of family life—childbearing, early child development, adolescence, and old age.