ABSTRACT

The family remains the pivotal institution in modern industrial society. Nevertheless, the last hundred years have witnessed powerful demographic and social changes which have altered the form and nature of the British family. This transformation largely concerns the changing position of women in both the private and public spheres of life and this chapter highlights some of the main strands of these changes. For instance, chapel tablets, church gravestones and cathedral memorials provide witness to the high infant mortality rates experienced by the Victorian family. Another facet of the changing face of mortality is seen in the age distribution of deaths occurring then and now. In the period 1901-2 one-third of all female deaths (322,000) in the United Kingdom were for girls under five and only 14 per cent were formed by those reaching seventy-five years or more. Family stability was not a feature of either Victorian or Edwardian life. Returning to today, just 1 per cent of all female deaths in 1989 were for children under five and two-thirds (66 per cent) related to women aged seventy-five or more. Such evolving patterns provide a base against which the issue of family stability past and present can be more sensibly discussed, while dispelling the beliefs of mythologers who hold that admired family values and habits are observed only in times past.