The Making Of The Modern Family
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Tanning and foxing
What transformed the cold, utilitarian household of pre-modern Europe into the emotionally charged, child-centred sanctuary we recognise today? Edward Shorter's landmark work, The Making of the Modern Family, chronicles the dramatic revolution in domestic life that swept through the Western world from the eighteenth century onward, tracing the rise of romantic love, maternal bonding, and the private nuclear family unit as we know it. Drawing on a vast wealth of historical evidence — from parish records to diaries, court documents to demographic data — Shorter argues that capitalism and the surge of market culture fundamentally liberated young people from the constraints of community and kin, igniting a sentimental revolution that reshaped courtship, marriage, and child-rearing alike. Rigorous in its scholarship yet compulsively readable, this work sits at the crossroads of social history, anthropology, and historical sociology, presenting a bold and at times provocative thesis that continues to challenge historians and social scientists alike. Shorter writes with clarity and conviction, weaving together macro-level demographic trends and intimate personal histories to illustrate how profoundly ordinary people's inner lives were altered by forces they scarcely understood. A work of sweeping ambition and enduring relevance, it leaves the reader questioning just how natural the modern family truly is — and what its future might hold.
Author: Edward Shorter
Format: Hardback
Published: 1976, Collins
Genre: Society & culture
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Tanning and foxing
What transformed the cold, utilitarian household of pre-modern Europe into the emotionally charged, child-centred sanctuary we recognise today? Edward Shorter's landmark work, The Making of the Modern Family, chronicles the dramatic revolution in domestic life that swept through the Western world from the eighteenth century onward, tracing the rise of romantic love, maternal bonding, and the private nuclear family unit as we know it. Drawing on a vast wealth of historical evidence — from parish records to diaries, court documents to demographic data — Shorter argues that capitalism and the surge of market culture fundamentally liberated young people from the constraints of community and kin, igniting a sentimental revolution that reshaped courtship, marriage, and child-rearing alike. Rigorous in its scholarship yet compulsively readable, this work sits at the crossroads of social history, anthropology, and historical sociology, presenting a bold and at times provocative thesis that continues to challenge historians and social scientists alike. Shorter writes with clarity and conviction, weaving together macro-level demographic trends and intimate personal histories to illustrate how profoundly ordinary people's inner lives were altered by forces they scarcely understood. A work of sweeping ambition and enduring relevance, it leaves the reader questioning just how natural the modern family truly is — and what its future might hold.