The Transformation of American Family Structure

This essay reexamines the revisionist argument about the history of the family in light of new evidence about long-run changes in American family structure. In particular I use the new Integrated Public Use Microdata Series a national database incorporating consistent individual-level data from the U.S. Census over the period 1850 to 1990. I also report findings from the only eighteenth-century American census of sufficient size and quality to permit a consistent analysis of family composition the 1776 census of Maryland. The evidence suggests that the revisionist interpretation needs revising. In fact a form of extended family structure was dominant in nineteenth-century America and quite probably in the eighteenth century as well. The American preference for extended family structure disappeared in the twentieth century and I...offer a brief analysis of some explanations for this change. (EXCERPT)