Peter Earle. The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London, 1660–1730. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1989. Pp. xiii, 446. $35.00.

1991 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-130
Author(s):  
Jacob M. Price
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Family Life ◽  
University Of California

Family Life in Lower and Middle Class Homes

1952 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carson McGuire
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Family Life

scholarly journals The First Mrs. Rochester: Wrongful Confinement, Social Redundancy, and Commitment to the Private Asylum, 1883‑1923

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-167
Author(s):  
Cheryl Krasnick Warsh
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Birth Rate ◽  
High Standard ◽  
Case Histories

Abstract Historians have debated the growth of asylums as either a movement towards social control or as a benevolent reform; yet commitment was primarily initiated by kin. The rapid overcrowding of asylums reflected the success of institutions in responding to family crises. Through analysis of 1,134 case histories of a private asylum, the Homewood Retreat of Guelph, Ontario, the dynamics of the late Victorian and Edwardian middle-class household are evident in the circumstances which culminated in the decision to commit. Urban industrialization and the declining birth rate rendered households less able to care for the insane, while the permeation of capitalist relations into family life rendered the heads of households less willing to care for nonproductive adult members, particularly socially redundant women. The diagnosis of neurasthenia enabled members of the middle class to institutionalize kin for behaviour which, although not violent or destructive, was irritating and antagonistic, thereby reflecting the high standard of middle-class proprieties.

Family policy for all South African families

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (5) ◽  
pp. 1189-1200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlize Rabe
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
South African ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
White Paper ◽  
Family Diversity ◽  
Vulnerable Families ◽  
African Families

The ‘White Paper of Families in South Africa’ is critically analysed in this article. It is shown that although family diversity is acknowledged in the aforementioned document, certain implications of the document undermine such professed diversity, not all caretakers of children are acknowledged and supported, and financially vulnerable families are not strengthened. Instead, narrow ideals of family life are at times promoted, suggesting middle-class heterosexual values. It is argued here that the realities of family life should be accepted as such and family in different forms should be supported consistently, not subtly pushed to conform to restricted interpretations of what families should be like.

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