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History 5854—Winter 1999

Themes in American Social History:

Demographic Perspectives on the American Family

Steven Ruggles

ruggles@hist.umn.edu

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Everyone should read the common readings (marked with asterisks) each week and one or two additional items each week. You should write a 200-300 word reaction to the readings and e-mail them to the other class participants at least 24 hours before each class meeting. We can xerox the readings in common, and will set up our own reserve system for the books. Otherwise, you can locate items in the library.

Week 1:

Lecture/discussion on historiography of industrialization and family structure and on the problems of pre-industrial statistics.

Week 2: Demography of the Multigenerational Family

*Berkner, Lutz. 1972. "The Stem Family and the Developmental Cycle of the Peasant Household: An Eighteenth Century Austrian Example," American Historical Review 77 (1972): 398-418

Berkner, Lutz. 1975. "The Use and Misuse of Census Data in the Historical Study of Family Structure," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 5 (1975): 721-38.

Laslett, Peter. 1972. "Introduction: The History of the Family." Pp. 1-89 in Household and Family in Past Time, ed. P. Laslett and R. Wall. Cambridge University Press.

Ruggles, Steven. 1987. "Approaches to the Demography of the Extended Family." In Steven Ruggles, Prolonged Connections, 60-83.

Wachter, Kenneth, Eugene Hammel, and Peter Laslett. 1978. Statistical Studies in Historical Social Structure (New York, Academic Press)

Kertzer, David. 1989. "The Joint Family Revisited: Demographic Constraints and Complex Family Households in the European Past," Journal of Family History 14: 1-15

Hareven, Tamara K. 1991. "The History of the Family and the Complexity of Social Change," American Historical Review 96: 95-124.

Week 3. The European Marriage Pattern, Neolocality, and Family Structure

*Hajnal, John. 1965. "European Marriage Patterns in Perspective." Pp. 101-138 in Population in History, edited by D. V. Glass and D. E. C. Eversley. Chicago: Aldine.

Smith, Daniel Scott. 1993. "American Family and Demographic Patterns and the Northwest European Model." Continuity and Change, 1993, 8, 3, Dec, 389-415.

Hajnal, John. 1983. "Two Kinds of Pre-Industrial Household Formation System," in Family Forms in Historic Europe, Richard Wall, Jean Robin, and Peter Laslett, eds. (Cambridge, 1983).

Ruggles, Steven. 1994. "The Transformation of American Family Structure." American Historical Review 99: 103-128.

Kertzer, David. 1991. "Household History and Sociological Theory," Annual Review of Sociology 17: 155-79.

Smith, D.S. 1993. "The Curious History of Theorizing about the History of the Western Nuclear Family" Social Science History, 17: 325-353.

Week 4: Living arrangements of the Elderly

*Ruggles, Steven. 2000. The Fragmentation of the American Family Chapters 1-3.

Costa, Dora L. 1997. "Displacing the Family: Union Army Pensions and Elderly Living Arrangements." Journal of Political Economy 105, 1269-92.

Dillon, Lisa Y. Forthcoming. "Women and the Dynamics of Marriage, Household Status, and Aging in Victorian Canada and the United States." The History of the Family, An International Quarterly, Special Issue on Canadian Family History.

Schoeni, Robert F. 1998. "Reassessing the decline in parent-child old-age coresidence during the twentieth century. Demography 35, 307-313.

Elman, Cheryl and Peter Uhlenberg. 1995. "Co-residence in the early twentieth century: Elderly women in the United States and their children." Population Studies, 49: 501-17.

Kramarow, Ellen A. 1995. "The elderly who live alone in the United States: historical perspectives on household change." Demography 32: 335-52.

Smith, D.S. 1979. "Life Course, Norms, and the Family System of Older Americans in 1900," Journal of Family History 4: 285-298

Smith, D.S. 1981. "Historical Change in the Household Structure of the Elderly in Economically Developed Countries," in Aging: Stability and Change in the Family R.W. Fogel, S.B. Keisler, and E. Shanas, eds. (New York, 1981)

Howard Chudacoff and Tamara Hareven, "From the Empty Nest to Family Dissolution: Life-Course Transitions into Old Age," Journal of Family History 4 (1979): 69-83

Daniel Scott Smith, "Accounting for Change in the Families of the Elderly in the United States, 1900-Present," in Old Age in a Bureaucratic Society: The Elderly, the Experts, and the State in American History David Van Tassel and Peter N. Stearns, eds. (Westport, CT, 1986)

Week 5: Life Course and Life Cycle

Hareven, Tamara K. 1996. The Impact of the Historical Study of the Family and the Life Course Paradigm on Sociology Comparative Social Research, 2 (supplement), 185-205.

Hareven, T.K. 1974. "The Family as Process: The Historical Study of the Family Cycle." Journal of Social History 7: 322-329.

Stevens, D.A. 1990. "New Evidence on the Timing of Early Life Course Transitions: The United States 1900 to 1980." Journal of Family History 15(2):163-78.

Modell, John, Frank Furstenberg and Theodore Hershberg. 1976. "Social Change and Transitions to Adulthood in Historical Perspective." Journal of Family History 1 (1976), 7-32.

Hogan, Dennis P. 1981. Transitions and social change : the early lives of American Men. Academic Press.

Uhlenberg, Peter. 1978. "Changing configurations of the Life Course," in Hareven, Tamara K. [Ed] 1978. Transitions: The Family and the Life Course in Historical Perspective

Uhlenberg, Peter. 1969. "A Study of Cohort Life-Cycles: Cohorts of Native-Born Massachusetts Women, 1830-1920." Population Studies 23: 407-20.

Glick, Paul and R. Parke. 1965. "New Approaches in Studying the Life Cycle of the Family." Demography 2: 187-202.

Hareven, Tamara K. [Ed] 1978. Transitions: The Family and the Life Course in Historical Perspective

Hareven, T.K. 1994. Annual Review of Sociology. "Aging and Generational Relations: A Historical and Life Course Perspective." Annual Review of Sociology, 20: 437-461.

Hareven, T.K. 1978. "Cycles, Courses, and Cohorts: Reflections on Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Historical Study of Family Development." Journal of Social History 12:97-109.

Week 6: Primary and Secondary Individuals and Cohabitation

*Kobrin, Frances. 1976. "The Fall in Household Size and the Rise of the Primary Individual in the United States." Demography 13: 127-38.

Modell, John and Tamara K. Hareven, 1973. Urbanization and the Malleable Household: An Examination of Boarding and Lodging in American Families Journal of Marriage and the Family, 1973, 35, 3, Aug, 467-479.

Goeken, Ron. 1999. Chapter from dissertation to be completed by then.

Ruggles, Steven. 1988. "The Demography of the Unrelated Individual, 1900-1950." Demography 25:521-36.

Pampel, Fred. 1983. "Changes in the Propensity to Live Alone: Evidence from Cross –Sectional Surveys." Demography 20: 433-448.

Michael, R.T, V.R. Fuchs and S.R. Scott. 1980. "Changes in the Propensity to Live Alone 1950-1976." Demography 17: 39-53.

Bumpass, Larry L.; Sweet, James A. 1991. "National estimates of cohabitation." Demography, Vol. 26: 615-25

Bumpass, Larry L.; Sweet, James A.; Cherlin, Andrew. 1991. "The role of cohabitation in declining rates of marriage." Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 53: 913-27.

Week 7: The Black family before 1940

*Gutman, Herbert. 1975. "Persistent Myths About the Afro-American Family." JIH 6:181-210.

*Morgan, S. Phillip, Antonio McDaniel, Andrew T. Miller and Samuel Preston. 1993. "Racial Differences in Household Structure at the Turn of the Century." American Journal of Sociology 98: 798-828.

Moynihan, Daniel P. 1965. The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. (also reprinted in Yancy).

Rainwater, Lee, and William Yancey. 1967. The Moynihan report and the politics of controversy : a Trans-action social policy report. MIT Press.

Ruggles, Steven. 1994. "The Origins of African-American Family Structure." American Sociological Review 59: 136-151

Stevenson, Brenda E. 1995. "Black Family Structure in Colonial and Ante-Bellum Virginia: Amending the Revisionist Perspective." In M. Belinda Tucker and Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, eds, The Decline in Marriage Among African-Americans: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Implications. Russell Sage.

Pleck, Elizabeth. 1972. "The Two-Parent Household: Black Family Structure in Late-Nineteenth Century Boston." JSH 6:3-31.

Tucker, M. Belinda and Claudia Mitchell-Kernan. 1995. Trends in Africxan-American Family Formation: A Theoretical and Statistical Overview. In M. Belinda Tucker and Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, eds, The Decline in Marriage Among African-Americans: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Implications. Russell Sage.

Lammermier, Paul. 1973. "The Urban Black Family in the Nineteenth Century: A Study of Black Family Structure in the Ohio Valley, 1850-1880." Journal of Marriage and the Family 35:440-55.

Tolnay, Stewart E. 1997. "The Great Migration and Changes in the Northern Black Family, 1940 to 1990." Social Forces 75, 1213-1238.

Tolnay, Stewart E. 1998. "Migration Experience and Family Patterns in the 'Promised Land’" Journal of Family History 23, 68-89.

Tolnay, Stewart E. 1998. "Educational Selection in the Migration of Southern Blacks, 1880-1990." Social Forces, in press.

Furstenberg, Hershberg, and Modell. 1975. "The Origins of the Female-Headed Black Family: The Impact of the Urban Experience." JIH 6:211-34.

Shifflet, Crandall A. 1975. "The Household Composition of Rural Black Families: Louisiana County, Virginia, 1880. JIH 6:235-60.

Week 8: Race and Marital Behavior since 1950

Oppenheimer, Valerie K. 1994. "Women’s Rising Employment and the Future of the Family in Industrial Societies," Population and Development Review 20: 293-342

Ruggles, Steven. 1997. "The Rise of Divorce and Separation in the United States, 1880-1990," Demography 34: 455-479, with comments by Oppenheimer and Preston and reply.

Wilson, William Julius and Katheryn Neckerman. 1987. "Poverty and Family Structure: The Widening Gap Between Evidence and Public Policy Issues" in The Truly Disadvantaged Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Mare, Robert D. and Christopher Winship. 1991. "Socioeconomic Change and the Decline of Marriage for Blacks and Whites," in The Urban Underclass, ed. Christopher Jencks and Paul E. Peterson, pp. 175-202. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution.

Fitch, Catherine and Steven Ruggles. Forthcoming. "Historical Trends in Marriage Formation, United States 1850–1990." Somewhere.

Fossett, M.A. and K.J. Kiecolt. "Mate Availability and Family Structure Among African Americans in U.S. Metropolitan Areas." Journal of Marriage and the Family 55:288-302.

Landale, N.S. and S.E. Tolnay. 1991. "Group Differences in Economic Opportunity and the Timing of Marriage: Blacks and Whites in the Rural South, 1910." American Sociological Review 56:33-45.

Lichter, D.T. et al. 1992. "Race and the Retreat from Marriage: A Shortage of Marriageable Men?" American Sociological Review 57(6):781-799.

Testa, M. and M. Krogh. 1995. "The Effect of Employment on Marriage among Black Males in Inner-city Chicago." Pp. 59-95 in The Decline in Marriage among African-Americans: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Implications edited by M.B. Tucker and C. Mitchell-Kernan. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Week 9: The Impact of Welfare

Murray, Charles. 1984. Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980 New York: Basic Books.

Moffit, Robert. 1992. "Incentive Effects of the U.S. Welfare System: A Review." Journal of Economic Literature 30: 1-61.

Ruggles, Steven, 1997. "The Effects of AFDC on American Family Structure, 1940-1990." Journal of Family History 22: 307-25.

Ellwood, David T. and Mary Jo Bane. 1985. "The Impact of AFDC on Family Structure and Living Arrangements," Research in Labor Economics 7: 137-207.

 

Some possible substitute Topics:

Pampel, Fred C.; Peters, H. Elizabeth. The Easterlin effect. Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 21, 1995. 163-94

Easterlin, R. A. 1980. Birth and Fortune: The Impact of Numbers on Personal Welfare. New York: Basic Books.

Pampel, Fred C. Relative cohort size and fertility: the socio-political context of the Easterlin effect. American Sociological Review, Vol. 58, No. 4, Aug 1993. 496-514