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32 Laslett, P., ‘Mean household size in England, since the sixteenth century’, in Laslett, P. and Wall, R. eds., Household and family in past time (Cambridge, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wall, R., ‘The household, demographic and economic change in England, 1650–1970’, in Wall, R., Robin, J. and Laslett, P. eds., Family forms in historic Europe (Cambridge, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wall, R., ‘Work, welfare and the family: an illustration of the adaptive family economy’, in Bonfield, L., Smith, R. M. and Wrightson, K. eds., The world we have gained (Oxford, 1986).Google Scholar See also R. M. Smith who argues that English household formation was a culturally distinctive pattern involving economic (and residential) independence for the newly married. Smith, R. M., ‘Fertility, economy, and household formation in England over three centuries’, Population and Development Review 1 (1981) 615.Google Scholar

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41 D. S. Smith found that marital status, followed by employment status and then age predicted whether an older man was head of his household. Smith, , ‘Life course, norms, and the family system’, 289.Google Scholar As with the American census, there is no clear interpretation of what being head of household meant. However, as Smith argues for the American case, headship in Britain appears to have correlates (with age, sex, marital status, and employment status, for example), suggesting that being head of household had a cultural meaning during the nineteenth century.

42 See Riley, M. W., ‘On the significance of age in sociology’, American Sociological Review 52 (1987), 1–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Riley, M. W. and Riley, J. W. Jr, ‘Longevity and social structure: the potential of added years’, in Pifer, A. and Bronte, L., eds., Our aging society (New York and London 1986), 53–78.Google Scholar

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44 See Chudacoff, and Hareven, , ‘From the empty nest’Google Scholar; Hareven, Chudacoffand, ‘Family transitions’.Google Scholar See also, Smith, D. S., ‘Life course, norms and the family system’.Google Scholar

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46 Brenner, and Laslett, , Sociology from crisis to science? 117.Google Scholar They stress that there is no necessary relationship between the family and social reproduction. Non-familial resources may be totally or partially responsible for social reproduction. The community or the state, for example, may provide some or all of the services for children or the infirm. How the responsibilities for social reproduction are allocated in different cultural and historical contexts becomes the focus of analysis.

47 Brenner, and Laslett, , Sociology from crisis to science? 5–7.Google Scholar

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50 It is possible, for example, that in different societies and in different historical periods definitions of dependency may vary. In societies such as England where the creation of independent households at marriage seems to have been a long-standing cultural rule, conditions under which the aged are perceived to be dependent or when they, themselves, recognize that they must relinquish their independence, might be different from a society in which patrilocal postmarital residence is the norm. See for example Kertzer, D. I., Family life in central Italy, 1889–1910: sharecropping, wage labor and coresidence (New Jersey, 1984) 96.Google Scholar Kertzer found the large majority of the widowed elderly (between 74 per cent and 96 per cent of those age 65 and older) living in extended and multiple family households.

51 See Thomson, , ‘Welfare and the historians’Google Scholar; Thomson, , ‘The decline of social welfare’Google Scholar; and Thomson, , ‘I am not my father's keeper; families and the elderly in 19th century England’, Law and History Review 2 (1984), 265–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 See Thomson, , ‘Welfare and the historians’Google Scholar; and Thomson, , ‘The decline of social welfare’.Google Scholar