ABSTRACT
Almost from the beginning, historical studies in household composition came under heavy fire. Many anthropologists, who had been studying ‘domestic groups’ for decades, did not take very kindly to this kind of approach (for the anthropological critique, see below, Chapter 2), and many family and social historians followed suit. Most of these critiques bore on the two key pillars of the type of household history carried out by the
Cambridge Group, namely the very concept of household, and the typology based on it. I shall dedicate Chapter 2 to reviewing those critiques.
