ABSTRACT
One of the most popular misconceptions about family life in the past is that most children grew up in three-generation households alongside their parents and grandparents. In the American colonies and preindustrial Europe, the presence of grandparents, parents, and grandchildren in the same household was not the normal family arrangement. There were just too many grandchildren and too few grandparents for this to be a very common situation. In 1850, only 2 percent of the population lived past sixty-five. By 1900, the average life span had climbed to just forty-eight years for women and forty-six years for men. Even in China and Japan, where cultural norms dictated coresidence of two adult generations, high mortality rates in the past limited the number of three-generation households.
