ABSTRACT
Broken families were more common in pre-industrial England than in even the modern United States of America. Almost half the guardians nominated in wills from Yorkshire parishes in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were mothers, but a significant minority, nearly one-fifth, were members of the wider kinship network. Broken families could be reconstituted through remarriage, but for some there were long periods of poverty, disability and old age. Old age, disability and death demonstrate a reaffirmation of the family as the primary social unit for the dissemination of wealth, but also affection, companionship and aid. Death and survival were potential social problems in early modern England. However, people had developed and adapted social mechanisms to deal with both sets of circumstances. Where families were more prosperous, they cared for those with both physical and mental disabilities within their own homes. The medieval Church made an explicit link between sin and disability.
