ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides nuance to understanding constructions and discourse around past families, through exploring a range of disciplinary methods, sources, and coverage of place and time. It builds upon previous understandings of family formation among enslaved people in the Caribbean, to examine the ways in which the brutality of slavery and its abolishment both created dislocation of existing family networks on San Salvador during the 19th century. The book then addresses some aspects of household dissolution and reformation, focusing on the health and care of medieval adolescents entrusted by their families to a leprosarium in Winchester, England. It then offers views of past families which problematise existing imagery around familial roles, whether these are regarding conformity to the standards of aspirational parenting, depictions of the “bad mother”, or the presumed obedience and passivity of children.
