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3. Thornton, Arland, “Changing Attitudes toward Family Issues in the United States,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 51 (1989): 873–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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9. Hareven, Tamara K., “Introduction: The Historical Study of the Life Course,” in Hareven, , ed., Transitions: The Family and the Life Course in Historical Perspective (New York, 1978), 5.Google Scholar In chapter 1 of Transitions, Glen H. Elder, Jr., formulates the conceptual framework of life-course analysis and its application to historical research.

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15. Mintz and Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions, 47.

16. Ibid., 205.

17. Ibid., 62.

18. Ibid., xx.

19. Demos, John, Past, Present, and Personal: The Family and the Life Course in American History (New York, 1986), 75.Google Scholar

20. Pleck has published a series of articles that contain information not included in Domestic Tyranny. See, for example, “Wife Beating in Nineteenth-Century America,” Victimohgy: An International Journal 4 (1979): 60–74Google Scholar; “Feminist Responses to ‘Crimes Against Women,’ 1868–1896,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 8 (1983): 451–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. Pleck, Domestic Tyranny, 9.

22. Quoted in ibid., 22. In her most recent work, Pleck notes that in 1639 the colony of New Haven enacted the first American law against family violence. It punished incest with death by hanging. See Pleck, , “Criminal Approaches to Family Violence, 1640–1980,” in Lloyd Ohlin and Michael Tonry, eds., Family Violence (Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, vol. 11) (Chicago, 1990), 19–116.Google Scholar

23. Mintz, Steven, “Regulating the American Family,” Journal of Family History 14 (1989): 91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. Pleck, Domestic Tyranny, 48.

25. Ibid., 95.

26. Ibid., 107.

27. Ibid., 129.

28. Ibid., 163.

29. Gordon, Heroes, 295.

30. Breines, Wini and Gordon, Linda, “The New Scholarship on Family Violence,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 8 (1983): 506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. Loizos, Peter, “Violence and the Family: Some Mediterranean Examples,” in Martin, J. P., ed., Violence and the Family (New York, 1978), 190–94.Google Scholar A popular piece of Italian doggerel said of the wife that:

Quoted in Coppa, Frank J., “Those Who Followed Columbus: The Italian Migration to the United States,” in Coppa, Frank J. and Curran, Thomas J., The Immigrant Experience in America (Boston, 1976), 126–27.Google Scholar

32. Discussing the assimilation of middle-class Italian Americans, Micaela di Leonardo points out that “power relations based on age and gender seem to have declined in importance. Specifically, parents assert less control over their children's lives, and women in domestic groups, especially daughters, have increased parity with men.” Micaela di Leonardo, The Varieties of Ethnic Experience: Kinship, Class, and Gender among California Italian-Americans (Ithaca, N.Y., 1984), 115.Google Scholar Young Italian-American husbands reacted angrily at their wives’ “insubordination.” In the late 1930s, one Italian-American contacted a social agency seeking a divorce from his wife of less than a year. Her “offense”: refusing to hold a towel for him to dry his hands. Instead she remained seated at the dinner table reading a newspaper. Significantly, she had been raised in America, he in Italy. Williams, Phyllis H., South Italian Folkways in Europe and America: A Handbook for Social Workers, Visiting Nurses, School Teachers, and Physicians (New Haven, 1938), 92.Google Scholar Rather than arguing for assimilation, Sherri Broder suggests that differing notions of respectability among the working class explain their use of social agencies, but only as a last resort. See “Informing the ‘Cruelty’: The Monitoring of Respectability in Philadelphia's Working-Class Neighborhoods in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Radical America 21 (1989): 34–47.Google Scholar

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34. Gordon, Heroes, 24.

35. As a researcher who has been refused access to adoption case records by numerous East Coast adoption agencies on the grounds of confidentiality, I am perhaps especially sensitive to obstacles preventing legitimate research. But Gordon goes beyond the normal preservation of client confidentiality and in the process has inadvertently made it extremely difficult to replicate her study. In addition to using only fictional names, which is standard procedure when using confidential case records, Gordon has taken the unprecedented step of not citing the file number of the agency case record; instead she cites “a code system developed for this research.” Gordon assures her readers that “any researcher who has permission of the relevant agency to see the records can get the actual case numbers by writing to me” (303). That should be cold comfort to a younger scholar wanting to investigate Gordon's findings further.

36. Pleck, Domestic Tyranny, 195. For extensive overviews of social scientists’ theories purporting to explain family violence, see Gelles, Richard J. and Straus, Murray A., “Determinants of Violence in the Family: Toward a Theoretical Integration,” in Wesley R. Burr et al., eds., Contemporary Theories About the Family, vol. 1: Research-Based Theories (New York, 1979), 549–81Google Scholar; and Susanne K. Steinmetz, “Family Violence: Past, Present, and Future,” in Sussman and Steinmetz, eds., Marriage and the Family, 725–66. For a recent feminist perspective, see Yllo, Kersti A. and Straus, Murray A., “Patriarchy and Violence against Wives: The Impact of Structural and Normative Factors,” in Straus, Murray A. and Gelles, Richard J., eds., Physical Violence in American Families (New Brunswick, N.J., 1990), 383–99.Google Scholar For an overview on the development of the field of family violence, see Gelles, Richard J., “Violence in the Family: A Review of Research,” in Gelles, , Family Violence, 2d ed. (Newbury Park, Calif., 1987), 26–46.Google Scholar

37. Pleck, Domestic Tyranny, 179.

38. A fascinating discussion of the collaboration between historians and social policymakers can be found in the introduction to David J. Rothman and Stan ton Wheeler, eds., Social History and Social Policy (New York, 1981), 1–18. The editors “remain convinced of the viability of uniting history and social policy, but we recognize how complicated and even discomforting it is to accomplish this task” (ibid., 3). For other accounts of researchers and policymakers, see John Demos, “History and the Formation of Social Policy Toward Children: A Case Study,” in Demos, Past, Present, and Personal, 186–212; Richard J. Gelles, “Applying Research on Family Violence to Clinical Practice,” in Gelles, Family Violence, 213–33.

39. Mintz and Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions, 243.

40. Pleck, Domestic Tyranny, 203.

41. Ibid.