Introduction

Understanding family practices in later life raises a number of difficulties for research and the development of social policy. Three main problems can be identified from a survey of the literature provided by historians, sociologists and those working in the field of social policy. First, generalisations are often made about ‘the family’ in previous centuries or in ‘modern times’. These often ignore substantial class, gender and ethnic differences – strikingly apparent in the 21st century but no less real at earlier periods of historical time (Pelling and Smith, 1991; Haber and Gratton, 1994). Second, certain types of data are problematic if we want to draw well-founded assessments of attitudes and practices towards older people within the family. Census material may be admirable for some purposes (for determining the structure of households, to take one illustration) but less adequate for others (for assessing motives behind support for older kin, for example). Diaries, narrative interviews, archival records and policy documents also have merits and limitations for understanding the family as a ‘set of practices’ as opposed to a ‘rule-bound’ social institution (see Chapter One). Third, and probably most importantly, as an area of study, research on the family has been particularly affected by value positions about the nature of social change and its impact on family life and family practices.

Perspectives on the family and older people tend, as Kertzer (1995) has observed, to swing between two extremes: the ‘romantic view’ of the past, which views older people as firmly in control of their lives, treated with respect by all around them, and the ‘revisionist view’, which sees older people shunted into workhouses, ejected by their families at the first sign of frailty and dependency. In social theory, the former approach was illustrated by modernisation theory as developed by Cowgill and Holmes (1972), which associated technological and industrial development with a lowering of the status of older people. In the case of the latter, historians such as Lawrence Stone (1977) viewed the rise of poor relief as a sign of the family transferring responsibility to the community. Referring to the later 18th century he suggested that: ‘The fate of King Lear at the hands of his daughter foreshadowed a century of change and uncertainty in family and societal attitudes to older people’ (Stone, 1977: 403–4).