Excerpt from A Social History of the American Family From, Vol. 1: Colonial Times to the Present The three volumes of which this is the first are an attempt to develop an understanding of the forces that have been operative in the evolution of family institutions in the United States. They set forth the nature of the influences that have shaped marriage, controlled fecundity, determined the respective status of father, mother, child, attached relative, and servant, influenced sexual morality, and governed the function of the family as an educational, economic, moral, and spiritual institution as also its relation to state, industry, and society in general in the matter of social control. The work is primarily a contribution to genetic sociology. Not until such an investigation, as lies back of these volumes, has been undertaken is it possible to realize the absolute dearth of connected and systematic material on the general history of the American family as a social institution in relation to other social institutions and to "the social forces." In this as in so many other vital fields of human interest and action, everything has hitherto been taken for granted. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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