ABSTRACT
The belief in the existence, prior to industrialisation, of extended family households dates back at least to the 1920s in American sociology, but specific references to empirical studies attesting to its existence are rare. The logic of the argument concerning industrialisation and the ‘classical extended family’ now becomes clear. ‘Industrialisation’, that is, the destruction of the peasant mode of production, changes the family type. Medick notes that the same type of household composition may result from radically different family systems, but goes on to point out a defect even more important when considering the relation between type of family system and type of economy. ‘Mode of production’ is itself however a dangerous term, since it functions in Marxian thought as a means of periodising history, of establishing differences between periods, and can tend to blind us, just as much as the over-reliance on simple numerical indices of household structure, to the differences existing within an historical period.
