ABSTRACT
The rise of the new cultural history has had a profound impact on the nature and extent of the study of the history of the family. Broadening the debate to consider issues such as gender, sexuality and the nature of popular culture has meant the incorporation of major theories into the field and has helped place the history of the family in the context of wider society and linked the field to major developments in scholarship. In place of the old certainties of elite and popular, religious and irreligious, law and disorder, historians, taking their cue from post-structuralist thinking, particularly that of Michel Foucault, tend to think in pluralities and processes of negotiation, rather than conflict or imposition. In this sense, ideas of gender, sexuality and culture were all negotiated fields, where the results were always tentative and constantly changing as part of a process of interaction and adjustment.
