Johnson’s Dictionary defines family as “those who live in the same house,” without reference to kinship or marriage. It is telling that, in the early eighteenth century, no word existed to denote just the biological relatives within a household: servants, guests, students, patrons, governesses, tutors, apprentices, and unrelated children could fall within the category of family. Most of the terms for kinship had multiple meanings: a noun as apparently simple as father had multiple denotations that bled into each other. It could refer to the Deity, to the nation’s monarch, to a natal parent, to an adoptive or stepfather, to a father-in-law, or to a deceased male ancestor. Or it could mean a seminal individual or an august male friend. Other terms – mother, brother, sister – were similarly multivalent. To understand family life in the eighteenth century, we have to abandon many of our modern preconceptions about what a family is and try to examine the past without prejudice.

Varieties of the family

Social historians disagree on the particulars, but most concur that the early modern family was an institution in transition. In one popular account, the eighteenth century witnessed the birth of the insular married couple: throughout the era the custom of arranged, honor-based unions gave way to a more companionate model. Others suggest the transition from pragmatic to affective marriage took place in or before the late Middle Ages, and others still that such a change never took place: the nuclear family, they argue, with a married couple that was both emotionally and instrumentally bonded, was a long-standing feature of British life.