Death and the Family

ley, in 1971. He is now Associate Professor of sociolo-gy at the University of North Carolina, where he is en-gaged in research on the size and composition of suc-cessive cohorts entering old age, their socioeconomic-political environment, and the implications of histori-cal change in the way these factors interact to pro-duce changing life experiences. The impact of mortality change upon fam-ily structure, although sometimes men-tioned, has been seriously neglected in studies of family history. Many of the most significant changes in the American family-the changing status of children, the in-creasing independence of the nuclear fam-ily, the virtual disappearance of orphan-ages and foundling homes, the rise in soci-