ABSTRACT

The Young Adult As Man of His Times Centuries of Childhood, has traced the development of family concepts from antiquity to the present.2 It appears that the much-vaunted periods of development -childhood, adolescence, young adulthood-are inventions of different historical periods. Even maturity and old age are assessed and measured differently depending on which historical epoch one examines. To quote Aries:

For a long time it was believed that the family constituted the ancient basis of our society and that starting in the eighteenth century, the progress of liberal individualism had shaken and weakened it. The history of the family in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was supposed to be that of a decadence: the frequency of divorces and the weakening of marital and parental authority were seen as so many signs of its decline. The study of modern demographic data led me to a completely contrary conclusion. It seemed to me (and qualified observers have come to share my conclusions) that, on the contrary, the family occupied a tremendous place in our industrial societies, and that it perhaps had never before exercised so much influence over the human condition. The idea of the family appeared to be one of the great forces of our time. I then went on to wonder, not whether it was on the decline, but whether it had ever been as strong before, and even whether it has been in existence for a long time.3