Work and the Household Economy

One of the most significant historical reinterpretations of the history of the family has been the recognition that, in England at least, the nuclear family was the norm in the mediaeval and early modern periods. At marriage the couple expected to form a new household unit. Assumptions that the traditional ‘world we have lost’ differed significantly from the ‘world we have gained’ have been overturned by a more subtle analysis of the surviving evidence, which pays closer attention to the changes in family structure according to the life cycle. A nuclear family could become extended on the death of a father, when the heir and his family could occupy the holding with the widow jointly, but such arrangements were temporary, and often short-lived. However, although these solutions may be of marginal significance for demographers, they should not be ignored by the social historian. Like the practice of some families choosing to make semi-independent economic provision within the family for an unmarried daughter, they influenced the nature of female experience. Moreover, the possibility of such outcomes differed according to circumstance. Studies have shown that the size and structural complexity of family forms differed in urban and rural areas and according to social status. Manorial customs or urban gild regulations could encourage or discourage the remarriage of widows, and the fact that service in England was envisaged primarily as a life-cycle phase rather than as a lifetime occupation also affected the process of household formation.