The Natural Family as an integrative social force in American history

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The author of this paper, Professor Allan C. Carlson, is one of the United States’ leading commentators on the natural family in society. He delivered this paper to a gathering of the oldest cultural-scientific institution of Serbia, Matica Srpska (founded in 1826), on September 18, 2018. Professor Carlson reveals fascinating details about the role of the family in the history of the United States.

Popular mythology holds that the United States of America is a land of individualists: the lone frontiersman of colonial times; the acquisitive capitalist or solitary cowboy of the 19th century; and the internet tycoon of recent times.

The American identity, this myth holds, is free of the communitarianism found among other peoples. Rather, the American way is one of atomistic individualism, unbound by spiritual or kinship restraints.

This is most untrue. The historical record actually shows Americans to have been a strongly communitarian people, bound by familial and religious obligations. Most strikingly, Americans have been shaped by what I call the Natural Family model.


American Gothic cartoon.jpg

WE'LL BE BACK!

The recurring features of this family form have been: early and nearly universal marriage; high fertility; close attention to parenting and children; complementary (rather than equal) gender roles; flexible but real intergenerational bonds; stability; and an aspiration towards family economic autonomy. (For the full argument, see: Allan C. Carlson, Family Cycles: Strength, Decline, and Renewal in American Domestic Life, 1630-2000, 2016. See a review of this book on page 25 of this edition of News Weekly)

This authentic American way differs sharply from the historic European family pattern identified by demographer J. Hajnal, evident since about 1700, involving: a high or late average age for first marriage; a high proportion of people who never marry at all; and relatively low fertility.


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The Natural Family as an integrative social force in American history
 
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