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Steven Mintz

Domestic Revolutions: A Social History Of American Family Life Paperback – April 3, 1989

by Steven Mintz (Author), Susan Kellogg (Author)

76 ratings

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Based on a wide reading of letters, diaries and other contemporary documents, Mintz, an historian, and Kellogg, an anthropologist, examine the changing definition of “family” in the United States over the course of the last three centuries, beginning with the modified European model of the earliest settlers. From there they survey the changes in the families of whites (working class, immigrants, and middle class) and blacks (slave and free) since the Colonial years, and identify four deep changes in family structure and ideology: the democratic family, the companionate family, the family of the 1950s, and lastly, the family of the '80s, vulnerable to societal changes but still holding together.

Print length

352 pages
Language

English
Publisher

The Free Press
Publication date

April 3, 1989
Dimensions

6 x 1.1 x 9.25 inches
ISBN-10

002921291X
ISBN-13

978-0029212912
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ The Free Press; Illustrated edition (April 3, 1989)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 002921291X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0029212912
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.1 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #152,199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #293 in Sociology of Marriage & Family (Books)
- #1,760 in Historical Study (Books)
- #5,747 in World History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
76 ratings

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2 star		4%
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Robert C. Rogers

Well-researched study of the cultural shifts in family through American history

Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2020

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Although dated (copyright 1988), this book is the best source I have found to give a well-researched description of the cultural shifts in family life through American history. The introduction lays out the premise of the book, and the rest of the book backs it up: America family models changed from the "Little Commonwealth" in the Colonial Era, to the "Democratic Family" in the 1800s, to the "Companionate Family" in the early to mid 1900s, to the "Diverse, Permissive Family" of the late 1900s that is riddled with irresponsible individualism and more desire for self-fulfillment than for care of children. Yet despite how pessimistic this sounds, the book also emphasizes that history teaches the resilience of family in the midst of change.

3 people found this helpful

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Cindie

Fantastic

Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2019

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This book should be read by anyone studying family patterns and behaviors in America. It is well written and simply fascinating. I have shared mine with Sociology students, Marriage and Family Students and Genealogical Research students.

One person found this helpful

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DrItaly

An amazing compilation and analysis of data on marriage and family ...

Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2015

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An amazing compilation and analysis of data on marriage and family from the pilgrims to the 1980's. There are times when the data is presented with a bias, but generally the authors are fair. I believe Domestic Revolutions is a title that grabs you but which is overstated -- the notion and pattern of family develops adapts, but the word "revolution" is much too strong.

4 people found this helpful

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Abi

Great book.

Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2019

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I'm reading it for a school assignment, but it's an interesting book that everyone should read to understand more about the family at different times and how its history impacts today.

I do not like that it does not let you copy/paste in its digital form. After you reach a certain number of allowed words it blocks it and you can no longer copy.

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Bob Fancher

Excellent info, less excellent analysis

Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2006

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This nearly-twenty-year-old book still has much to commend it: comprehensive scholarship, easy-to-read (though not sparkling or tight) prose style, and no heavy-handed ideological agenda (though the author's values and assumptions aren't hard to discern).

On the down side, there's not much by way of interpretive framework, and what's there wavers between incoherence and airy-fairy hand-waving.

On the former, for instance, the authors seem both (a) to want to see a significant set of fairly stable "family values" that lasted from the late eighteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, which are overthrown by late-twentieth century changes, and (b) to show the overwhelming diversity of family life, and the enormous deviations from the alleged stable values, during the same period. But point (b) seems to prove point (a) wrong.

On the airy-fairy issue, they have this notion of "the family" as resilient, rising to all sorts of challenges and adapting to all sorts of strains. But it's hard to tell what they mean by "the family" in that context, since they identify no core set of traits, no base-line definition, that pervades the enormous range of "families" they so effectively describe. One could just as easily use the info they present to argue that "the family"--meaning the child-producing, and/or sex-regulating unit of society--is, as conservatives fear, becoming decreasingly important among forms of human affiliation, more peripheral to decision-making and social life.

The info-overpowering-the-analysis problem even goes to the paragraph-by-paragraph level. Dozens, if not hundreds, of times, the thesis sentences of paragraphs seem grafted on after the fact, with the collation of facts in the particular paragraph at best losely related to the putative thesis, and the theses contradictory of each other in the space of just a page or two. The book reads as if they, or more likely an editor, realized late in the process of writing that the book lacked, but eeded, something resembling a narrative flow, then tried to impose it on a near-final draft. Whatever really happened to produce this phenomenon, much of the book lacks any integral drive or argument, and what's there often seems oddly imprecise relative to the information presented.

Still, the info is great, and well worth thinking about on your own.

A couple of things seem a bit off, to me. They date the rise of the companionate family about a century earlier than other scholars I've read. Well, actually, they do and they don't--after they'd said so much about the rise of the companionate family in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, I was surprised then to find a whole chapter that agrees with other scholars that the companionate family was a product of the early twentieth century. Huh? Which was it? My guess is that they mistakenly ascribe a more pervasive social presence and influence to the early foreruners of the companionate family than is accurate.

And while they aren't heavy-handed with their agenda, they frequently say things like, "The government recognized it's obligation," or "The government failed to accept its duty." That seems to me to reflect naivety about "the government," as if it were some separate, pre-existing entity that has inherent obligations, rather than a tool of society that can and does take different forms under different circumstances; and about the social dynamics that create obligations.

But the book is well worth a read. Especially these days, when so much ill-informed blather about "family values" taints public disourse--from both the right and the left--better knowledge of the enormous diversity and flux that have characterized "the family" would help both sides stop being so self-righteous.

24 people found this helpful

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ryno

Text sufficient

Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2016

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The product arrived in a timely fashion and in the quality described by the seller.
The text it's self is a good overview of the family in society and how societal influences impact the family. The text does not address all aspects of familial life and needs supplementation but overall is a good foundation.

One person found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

As expected

Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2019

Verified Purchase

Textbook was delivered as expected

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Dharini Trivedi

Amazing and informative