Family, women, and the state: notes toward a typology of family roles and public intervention

Abstract

No matter how natural it is to depict the family as the nucleus of private life, in fact it has long been a concern of public authority. But the nature of this public impact has changed. This chapter proposes a historical typology for the relationship of state and family during the last two centuries. To be sure, this is a history of the conceptual bases of the relationship, for actual practice was far less clear-cut, and carried forward older as well as more recent concepts.