ABSTRACT
In recent years, research has begin to modify many of the myths about industrialisation and the family. The living patterns of adolescent children, therefore, exhibited both change and continuity. Patterns of marriage are likely to be strongly influenced by the need to work the land and pass it on to the next generation. Average family size then remained large throughout the nineteenth century, as falling birth rates from the mid-century were matched by falling mortality. Many permutations of family structure might occur through variations in family size, the early death of a spouse and possibly, following that, remarriage. Family structure in the age of industrialisation shared many features with that of earlier periods because in many ways the experiences which shaped people's lives were the same. Intensive studies of the extended family have tended to be made in towns or suburbs experiencing slow growth or even decline, where the existing population was relatively stable and there were few incomers.
