Family in Europe History - Coursework Example

These large extended families were contrasted sharply with the emerging nuclear families of the industrial age as a means of attempting to re-capture a by-gone age of greater social responsibility and control. By couching the family in such terms, these sociologists were encouraging the reinstatement of the patriarch as the dictator of the family, determining the best course of action for each member of the family through his choice of heir, thus determining which child would be permitted to marry and reproduce, as well as subsuming any and all inclinations of the women of the household who were never permitted to inherit and were seen to pass into the possession of another family if and when she did get married.

This reduced her value to little more than a bargaining chip with other families in search of wives for their sons and precluded any individuality for her or any of her other younger siblings. These models took their support from contentions that the agrarian society necessarily consisted from time immemorial to have consisted of large extended families living in multi-generational households all working together for the common good. Historical-statistical analysis proves that the major contention of the pre-industrial family models proposed by Le Play and others is false.

Analysis reveals that the average family size beginning as early as the seventeenth century was typically no larger than four or five persons per household. This was compared with the average size of households in more modern times, which was found to be closer to three persons per household, which does not reflect the tremendous differences claimed by earlier sociologists. In addition, statistical analysis has demonstrated that the reduction in family size did not occur in conjunction with the Industrial Revolution but only began to occur as living conditions and other events