ABSTRACT
During the last 25 years, many historians have turned their attention from studying political and diplomatic history to investigating family life. Analytic approaches to the investigation of the family have changed significantly as the profession has progressed from focusing on mean household size to using life-course analysis. Ironically, as the field of family history has become conceptually and methodologically more sophisticated, attention has shifted from considering the family as a whole to analyzing transitions in the lives of its members. Indeed, many historians have begun to ignore the family as a social organization, which may have changed over time.
