Nuclear Family

The Nuclear Family in Early America

Scholars' opinions differ as to when the nuclear family became the dominant familial structure in America. Although most scholars see this shift from the extended to the nuclear family as occurring in the nineteenth century, other historians date the nuclear family's prominence to colonial times. During the first centuries of American settlement, the family was the primary producing unit. Unlike the European family, which functioned as a “little monarchy,” the family on American soil operated more democratically, as a kind of “little commonwealth,” with the family working together. In this setting, the male head of the household functioned as the embodiment of all family members, serving as the link to the community and as the family's voting representative. A man's status was thus linked to the happy and orderly functioning of his family. This order was valued by the community for preserving political stability, sustaining piety, and ensuring the community's productivity. While parenting was a shared duty, fathers were particularly involved in preparing their sons for their future responsibilities as household heads.

Every person had to find a place within a family, and a man's male identity was based on his position within a household. Unmarried adults or adults with children whose nuclear families had been disrupted by death or temporary separation generally joined the household of another nuclear family, making a male head of household responsible for more than his own wife and children. As late as the nineteenth century, a third or more households included a secondary family, or subfamily, in addition to the primary nuclear family. However, the one constant was that the head of the household tended to be male. The father was responsible for the education, religious instruction, and future of all members of his household, including his nuclear family and any residing subfamily, apprentices, or servants.

By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, several developments began to redefine men's relationships to their nuclear families. The ideologies of republicanism and Romanticism discouraged authoritarianism and encouraged affection as a basis for family bonding, resulting in a growing respect for women and mothers as uplifting and moral influences on their families. At the same time, families were becoming smaller and husbands were spending more of the day away from home, separating them from their families.

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