ABSTRACT
The matchmaker’s role stopped short of the actual proposal by the family. The families then negotiated the marriage contract, which was drawn up by a notary and signed in their presence. Families arranged marriages carefully because their social standing and material welfare were involved, as well as the perpetuation of their name. In the lineage family, collateral branches were added to the stem family, that is, other married siblings of both sexes and their children lived with their parents and the oldest son’s family, so there were several families as well as several generations under one roof. Nuclear families became two families biologically when a second family of step-parent and step-siblings joined the original nuclear family, which had been truncated by the death of a parent, and might be so again. In complex families, therefore, younger children tended to remain at home unmarried until their father died, and the quarrelling often became intense, even violent.
