Family History, Family Violence: A Review Essay

In: Journal of policy history: JPH, Band 3, Heft 2, S. 203-223

Abstract

A review essay on books by: Steven Mintz & Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York: Free Press, 1988); Elizabeth Pleck, Domestic Tyranny: The Making of American Social Policy against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Oxford U Press, 1987); & Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence (New York: Viking, 1988). Mintz & Kellogg provide a narrative history of the transformation of the US family over nearly four centuries, identifying three profound shifts in structure, role, conception, & emotional dynamics. An alternative model is proposed that emphasizes the continuity, with the possible exception of the decade of the 1950s, of the modern family after the initial "domestic revolution" -- the increasing emphasis on family privacy, mutual affection, conjugal & family rights, & the preservation of the family -- of 1770-1830. Pleck's study draws on primary source material to chronicle the history of domestic violence in the US, challenging the conventional history of the family by demonstrating that Mintz's & Kellogg's "domestic revolutions" were in fact domestic nightmares, signaling the end of reform against family violence. Gordon's monograph uses the case records of the Massachusetts Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Children & other Boston social welfare agencies from 1880 to 1960 to analyze four types of family abuse: violent assault, child neglect, sexual abuse, & wife beating. Besides providing a historical profile of abuse victims, Gordon also modifies the social control thesis of historians critical of Progressive reformers, arguing that a gendered interpretation, rather than class analysis, is the most useful framework for understanding family violence. Gordon is criticized, however, for ignoring the role of ethnicity & cultural values. AA