Traces the movement from mutualism to individualism in the context of American family life. Families survived or even flourished during colonization, Revolution, slavery, immigration and economic upheaval. In the past century, prosperity created a culture devoted to pleasure and individual fulfilment.

DAVID DEL MAR Assistant Professor at Portland State University, USA, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Oregon State University, USA. His previous books includeWhat Trouble I Have Seen: A History of Violence against Wives (Harvard, 1996) andBeaten Down: A History of Interpersonal Violence in the West (University of Washington, 2001).

Societies of Obligation The Search for Order in North America Revolution and Continuity Containing the Bourgeois Family Necessity and Tradition The First Modern Family The Family in Crisis and After Freedom's Florescence Countercultures