AMERICAN FAMILIESincluding female-headed households, were found
in the slave community and attested to the impor-
tance placed on kin ties. Rather than the ‘‘absent
family’’ assumed to characterize slave life, slaves
were connected to one another through extensive
kinship networks (Genovese 1986). Extended kin
ties continue to be an important aspect of African-
American families today.
For decades, the heritage of slavery and its
presumed effects on family life have been invoked
to explain social problems in poor black communi-
ties (e.g., Moynihan 1965). The historical evidence
described above does not lend support to this
explanation. Most writers today argue that social
problems experienced in poor black communities
can more accurately be attributed to the effects of
discrimination and the disorganizing effects of
mass migration to the urbanized North rather
than to the heritage of slavery (e.g., Staples 1986).
Societal changes associated with the Industrial
Revolution profoundly affected all types of Ameri-
can families, though the specific nature and extent
of these effects varied by social class, race, ethnic
origins, and geographic region. Prior to the Indus-
trial Revolution, family members worked together
as an economic unit. Their workplace was the
home or family farm, with families producing
much of what they consumed. Family life and
economic life were one and the same, and the
boundaries between ‘‘private life’’ in the family
and ‘‘public life’’ in the community were blurred.
With the development of a commercial economy,
the workplace was located away from the family
unit. Separation of work and family life created a
sharp distinction between the ‘‘public’’ realm of
work and the ‘‘private’’ realm of family. Particular-
ly for women’s roles, changes initiated by the
Industrial Revolution have been long-lasting and
far-reaching. Increasingly, women’s roles were de-
fined by activities assumed to be noneconomic, in
the form of nurturing and caring for family mem-
bers. This was especially true for middle-class wom-
en, and married women were excluded from many
jobs. Poor and working-class women often partici-
pated in wage labor, but this work was generally
seen as secondary to their family roles. Men were
viewed as having primary responsibility for the
economic welfare of their families. No longer an
economically interdependent unit, families were
transformed such that women and children be-
came economically dependent on the primary
wage earner.Thus, children’s roles and family relationships
also changed with industrialization. In contrast to
earlier times, in which children were viewed as
miniature adults and engaged in many of the same
tasks they would also perform as adults, childhood
came to be seen as a special stage of life character-
ized by dependence in the home. And although
children in working-class homes were more likely
to work for pay, the evidence suggests that these
families also viewed childhood as a stage of life
distinct from adulthood (Zinn and Eitzen 1987).
Overall, the family became increasingly defined as
a private place specializing in the nurturance of
children and the satisfaction of emotional needs, a
‘‘haven in a heartless world’’ (Lasch 1977).Family structures also changed during the
1800s. Family size declined to an average of four to
five members. (Of course, average numbers ob-
scure variation in family sizes across social classes
and other important dimensions such as race and
ethnicity.) Though the average size of nineteenth-
century American families was close to that of
today’s families, women bore more children dur-
ing their lifetimes than do American women to-
day. Infant and child mortality was higher and
births were spaced further apart, thus decreasing
the average size of families at a given point in time.
Household size also declined, with fewer house-
holds including nonrelated persons such as board-
ers or apprentices. The average ages at which
women and men married were similar to those of
colonial times, with an average of twenty-two for
women and twenty-six for men. However, greater
life expectancy meant that marriages typically last-
ed longer than they did during the colonial period
(Nock 1987).From 1830 to 1930 the United States experi-
enced two large waves of immigration. The first
wave, from 1830 to 1882, witnessed the arrival of
more than ten million immigrants from England,
Ireland, Germany, and the Scandinavian coun-
tries. During the second wave, from 1882 to 1930,
over twenty-two million people immigrated to the
United States. Peoples from northern and western
Europe continued to come to the United States
during this second wave, but a large proportion of