ABSTRACT
Sociohistorical research on the household became systematic and comparative from the early 1970s onward, as the result of the work of scholars associated with the Cambridge (England) Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. While earlier historians had not wholly neglected past social life at the household level, their generalizations tended to be questionable because they were based largely on individual case studies. The Cambridge Group, by contrast, argued that a large class of historical evi-dence-census-type household listings-had been overlooked by earlier work, and that this evidence, quantitatively analyzed, could form the basis of general statements about small-group life in the past and its changes over historical time. Subsequent historical research on the household in fact has maintained the quantitative thrust, challenging earlier characterizations of domestic life and opening a host of new questions that still need answers.
