The Chronosytem: A Social History of Religion and the Family Orientation
This chapter is an accent on the construction of a social historical theory of family change using the theoretical framework developed in Chapter 1. The theory will be illustrated by changes in the family in the Occident and how they are accounted for by using social historical data. The first part will focus on theoretical construction that is to undergird what were the sources of family change through Western history. The second part will focus on five periods of the evolution of the family in the Occident: Roman, early Christianity, Early Medieval, Central Medieval, and the Late Medieval family that is inspired, in part, by the Medieval scholar, McKitterick (2004) This will be followed by a social history of the family in England from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Key scholars will be used to document patterns of the link between religion and the family in each era. They, and others, give us macro sociological reasons for changes as families migrate from one era to another.