ABSTRACT
This chapter describes some of the enduring patterns of English family life and identifies the more important forces of change which have influenced them. It underlines the enduring importance of the nuclear family in England, outlined its special functions, and singles out certain major continuing influences on the cohesion and effectiveness of the family group and the perceptions, expectations and attitudes of the individuals who composed it. The chapter identifies some of the linked developments which in the course of our period most obviously shaped the material and ideological environments within which the family must be studied. This period witnessed considerable demographic and economic expansion. Political developments, notably the growth of effective government in the sixteenth century and the constitutional changes of the seventeenth, influenced both the course of economic expansion and the reception of new or unfamiliar ideas.
