Notes.
1Mitterauer (1996) disputes the notion that household patterns may be so neatly divided between Western and Eastern Europe. A recent issue of The History of the Family, An International Quarterly devoted to the Balkan family demonstrates that there is as much variation in family systems within the region as between the Balkans and the West (1:4(1996)). Earlier, Laslett proposed a four regions typology for Europe (1983:525-31).

2 Laslett (1983:516, n.6) attributes this classification system to Henry ("it was adapted with only one important change from that devised by Louis Henry"). However, Henry's conception of the conjugal family has a decidedly demographic tone, so that of the triad father-mother-child(ren), any two parts constitutes a conjugal family unit.

3 Compared with census listings from the 1930s for the same region, four-fifths of the difference in child-woman ratios is due to rising age at marriage (including, in 1930, all forms of union-consensual and religious as well as civil), and only one fifth is due to increases in life expectancy. Average age at marriage for females rose 9.5 years over four centuries, while life expectancy at birth in Morelos in 1930, following almost two decades of revolution (and robolución), increased less than five years (McCaa 1996).

4 Monaghan describes a contrasting system of child marriage in a modern-day Mixtec town in Oaxaca in which the mother-in-law takes responsibility for educating the daughter (1996:183): "The bride traditionally of a very tender age, is usually ignorant of all the tasks expected of a woman. It is up to her mother-in-law, as the 'caretaker of the loaned daughter' to teach her and socialize her into the work habits of the household."

5 Kellogg (1986:117) contends that uxorilocal residence in ancient Mexico was due to the absence of sons, but this is clearly not the case in the listings studied here. Robichaux sustains the same thesis for modern Mexico which, if true, would constitute another of the many fundamental distinctions between the Nahua family of the past and that of the present (1997a:156).

6 Monaghan's study of Oaxaca describes a system where patrivirilocal marriage was the rule: "When speaking of marriage, Nuyoo say that a woman's leaving her natal household is intrinsic to her being, since 'no woman is born into her true household.' ...heads of households who refuse to allow their daughters and sisters to marry are frequently described as stingy or self-centered" (1996:188).

7 Another important contrast with modern Mexico where, according to Robichaux (1997a 156) few married brothers-in-law reside under the dominion of their sister's



The Nahua calli of ancient Mexico: household, family, and gender


©Robert McCaa (rmccaa@tc.umn.edu)
posted August 27, 1999
Department of History, University of Minnesota

Household and Family in Past Time
Palma de Mallorca, September 9-11, 1999