Households in Western History
November 10th, 2007
Mary Hartman's The Household and the Making of History: A Subversive View of the Western Past is a fascinating but deeply flawed analysis of the role of households and the family in Western history. Her argues for the importance of households and average marriage age in Western history, implying it could be important in other societies as well. It is also teleological, eurocentric, and neglects factors other than households and family patterns in influencing Western history.
Hartman argues that an abnormal family system which evolved in northwestern Europe by the end of the medieval era caused western Europe to be the “site of changes that … ushered in the modern era.” (p. 1) After the fall of the Roman empire, northwest Europe had a high amount of fertile land and a relative shortage of people to work it, an unusual situation. Parents in the region decided to delay the marriage of their children so that they could use their children's labor longer to work the land. Thus, compared to other agricultural societies, ordinary people married later – especially women. Over the course of several centuries northwestern Europe evolved an abnormal family pattern featuring late marriage, nuclear households, and spouses who's ages were closer to each other. This contrasts sharply with what she claims were the more common family patterns in other agricultural societies, where women married at a young age to a man significantly older than her and in which most people lived in households with extended families rather than nuclear families.
According to Hartman, northwest Europe’s abnormal family pattern was unstable, unique, and ultimately led to the major changes which supposedly characterize the “modern world” such as the rise of nation-states and the spread of the world capitalist system. The Western Family Pattern reduced the importance of sex differences, as men and women lived together as partners and women were sometimes required to do jobs normally performed by men. Women’s power in the household gradually increased and Western societies eventually moved towards greater gender equality and gender interchangeability.
These nuclear households imprinted themselves on the rest of society, resulting in major social change. For example, the evolution of liberal theories based on government by social contract was a reflection of the way households were formed – parties contracting to live and work together. Her explanation of this and other changes challenges older theories which emphasize either the rise of the nation-state or the rise of capitalism as the key change leading to the “modern era” by arguing that it was households – not political or economic elites – that brought these changes about.
Hartman's conception of a “modern era” is one of the flaws in her work. Most theories of a special “modern era” overestimate the difference between the last five hundred years and the previous five thousand years of human history. Empires have risen and fallen many times since the dawn of states six thousand years ago; the current empire is no different. The Euro-American Empire is only around five hundred years old; other empires have lasted even longer (the Romans were around for nine-hundred years and the Ottomans for roughly six-hundred).
Notions of a “modern era” sometimes encourage a teleological history, and Hartman falls into this trap. In her argument there is a continual increase in gender equality beginning with the formation of the Western Family Pattern and continuing to the present which brings about a number of other changes. There is no sense of contingency in her book, but rather a simple progression from the past to the present – making the present state of affairs seem inevitable once this family pattern was established.
Hartman’s work is also littered with an unintentional eurocentrism. She tends to homogenize non-western societies and does not feature them as an important actor in her narrative. She groups together all non-western family patterns as if they were all the same and did not change over time. Her story is told from the perspective of Europeans but does not have enough on the perspectives of the rest of the world or how they affected the rise of the Euro-American Empire. Her sources on Asian societies are also outdated.
Ultimately, her argument relies on a sole factor causing virtually all changes that occurred over the last five-hundred years, but a single factor can rarely explain so many different things. For example, European colonialism was initiated not by northwest Europe, where these abnormal households were concentrated, but by southwest Europe by what is now Spain. Although households and their abnormal Western family pattern may have been important factors in Western history, it is unlikely they were the only factor.