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F • ▶ family introduction The family has long been the ugly stepchild of history Traditional history focuses on politics, wars, and revolutions but not the ordinary happenings of everyday life The private world, one dominated by women, simply seemed too common to be of any scholarly interest In the 1970s this situation began to change gradually as historians examined social and cultural history However, all of the problems of family history have not been resolved Emotional history and sexual history remain fields with major gaps of knowledge at the start of the 21st century The very definition of a family also differs from region to region, thereby complicating studies of the family While the medieval Europeans established nuclear families, Africans lived in clans, with family relationships extending far beyond the nuclear family A father or mother to a medieval African was not the same as a father or mother to a medieval European or Asian Scholars of the family have been burdened with a lack of sources For many regions, including the Americas, most evidence about family life must be drawn from archaeological sources Attempts to justice to women of the medieval period have encountered special difficulties owing to the character of the documentary sources that are typically used The writings of church leaders and theologians have been repeatedly cited, with little consideration of the accuracy of their descriptions of conditions or of their audience By a similar method of investigation, a modern scholar might conclude that modern Catholics never practice birth control Law books and manuals have also been misleading William Blackstone’s 18th-century pronouncement that European women lacked any legal rights in the medieval era enjoyed wide acceptance until the 1970s Childbearing is at the heart of the family It is also one of the few aspects of medieval life that was not shaped by class standing or wealth Rich or poor, women suffered and were injured in labor Often, they died during birth, along with the child Contraception by mechanical, medicinal, and magical means found limited use in all cultures, though it had little effectiveness Abortion and infanticide apparently had been practiced since ancient times in all regions of the world and continued in the medieval era Females were the targets of infanticide much more than males because the cost of raising a daughter and providing a dowry were more costly than the labor that she could provide to a family However, females in the Americas and Africa seem to have been much more highly regarded than females in Europe, Asia, and the Islamic world American and African women were valued for their childbearing and ability to link clans This valuation probably reduced female infanticide rates in this region The gender roles of men and women influenced all aspects of the family Males and females in Europe, Asia, and the Islamic world had different ages of consent, and a double standard gave sexual freedom to the man but not the woman While the Islamic world emphasized polygamy (where either spouse could 415
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