Continuing a series of explorations of aspects of family life begun
in A History of Marriage Systems (GP, 1988), G. Robina Quale
provides a comprehensive overview of the basic forms of interaction
between the family and the societal macrocosm, as both interact
with disease, available resources, and current technologies. Since
the beginning of human society, Quale says, forager bands and,
later, family households have striven to meet the group's basic
needs by maintaining a ratio of 3 active members to 2 members who
need care because of immaturity, a handicap, or frailty. The book
describes the way in which households have tried to reach the
favorable 3:2 ratio in different areas and periods of history,
factoring in the technological and environmental constraints and
health hazards inherent in those areas and periods. The broad
periods considered include forager and preurban agricultural life,
the period of regional cities and peasantry from about 3500 B.C. to
A.D. 1500, and, since 1500, the age of world cities, which grew out
of the increasing commercialization and demographic expansion of
regional cities. Quale describes how in recent times economic
diversification, fertility reduction, education, social welfare
services, and pension plans have joined bilaterality, equally
divided inheritance, nuclear households, mid-twenties marriage, and
partner self-selection in modern life in Europe and its overseas
offshoots. These patterns are being adapted by other societies as
they also diversify economically. Yet economic diversification,
with all its benefits, also presents problems such as the overuse
of environmental resources and the incidence of pollution-caused
disease. This volume will be of interest to those concerned with
family studies and family history, global environmental history,
and the history of disease, as well as those concerned with
demographic history.
General
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