COVER STORY

Family Timeline: From 1607 to the present

1600-1799
1607, 1620
The first permanent British colonies in what became the United States are established in Virginia and Massachusetts. The faith-centered family plays a critical role in settlements along the frontier, serving as both school and workplace (and for that matter, as factory, mall, hospital, hospice, and church). In colonial days, according to family historians Steve Mintz and Susan Kellogg, convicts, miscreants, misfits, children of the poor, and even new immigrants were housed with reputable families, so that "disorders may bee prevented and ill weeds nipt."

1642
Massachusetts Colony passes a law requiring fathers, as the heads of their households, to lead their families in prayer, to teach their children and their servants to read, and to catechize everyone under their roof, in both Christian doctrine and civil accord.

1776

• America declares its independence; Popular author John Locke, in his widely read and discussed Essay Concerning Human Understanding, views the child as a tabula rasa to be shaped by society. This view of child development quickly became and remains a first principle for modern liberalism.

  An early skirmish in the fight for women's suffrage takes place; Abigail Adams writes her husband John (then at Philadelphia) asking that he "remember the ladies" when crafting the Declaration of Independence and other defining documents. The future president responds that men will never accept "the despotism of the petticoat."

  1790
  

• The first national census shows three-quarters of a million black people living in the United States, 90 percent as slaves. The institution of slavery was devastating to the institution of the family. About one in six slave marriages were destroyed by the sale of one of the spouses; most slaves would live to see the sale of family members (spouse, children, or siblings). In 1858, a slave named Abream Scriven wrote to his wife, who remained behind when he was sold. "Give my love to my dear father and my dear mother for me ... tell them goodbye for me.... My dear wife for you and all my children my pen cannot express the grief I feel to be parted from you. I remain your true

  husband until death."

  1800-1899
  1800
  In Massachusetts, a total of 220 divorces are granted-in the entirety of the 18th century (and only 27 total during the time in which Massachusetts was a colony).

  1831
  

• A young French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville, travels through the United States and observes a great sea-change that has taken place since the landing of the Mayflower. American families, he noted, were no longer seen as the bulwarks of society; they were now seen as shelters from the outside world. He called it "the democratic family," more an agreeable union than an arranged match. It's an important distinction, emphasizing both the good and bad of American individualism. It can be argued that this made for happier marriages, based on love and affection. But the explosion in divorce rates can also be traced back to this individual-over-institution mindset.

  1840
  

• The westward expansion accelerates; families begin crossing the Missouri River in wagon trains, making a respectable 15 to 20 miles per day along the Oregon trail. It costs a family about $400 for a Conestoga wagon and oxen; another $150 is needed for supplies. As many as 500,000 people attempt the journey; an estimated 20,000 die along the way.

  1842
  Catherine Beecher (sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe) publishes A Treatise on Domestic Economy, For the Use of Young Ladies at Home, and at School, which becomes an enormously popular manual. She makes a lucid natural-law argument for the submissiveness of wives and children, then goes on to show where a woman's real influence is seen: "The formation of the moral and intellectual character of the young is committed mainly to the female hand," she wrote. "The mother forms the character of the future man; the sister bends the fibres that are hereafter to be the forest tree; the wife sways the heart, whose energies may turn for good or for evil the destinies of a nation. Let the women of a country be made virtuous and intelligent, and the men will certainly be the same. The proper education of a man decides the welfare of an individual; but educate a woman, and the interests of the whole family are secured."

  1843
  

• Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church, dictates what he says is a direct revelation from God (through the angel Moroni), proclaiming that polygamy is to be re-instituted. The doctrine is not acknowledged to those outside the Mormon Church until Aug. 29, 1852. After that date, the Latter-Day Saints made constitutional arguments defending polygamy, but the Supreme Court ruled that anti-polygamy laws were constitutional, and that the government has a legitimate interest in promoting traditional marriage. In 1890, church leaders announced the practice was to be discontinued; two years later, Utah won statehood.

  1848
  

• The first Women's Rights Convention is held in Seneca Falls, New York, led by suffragettes Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Its "Declaration of Sentiments" railed at men, whose "direct object" was "the establishment of an absolute tyranny" over women. The typical man, according to the declaration, has "endeavored, in every way he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life."

  1849
  

• When a famine hits Ireland, nearly 160,000 Irish immigrants came to the United States in the first year alone. (Nearly one in 10 would die en route from cholera or typhoid fever.) Together with other European immigrants, they help to create a concentrated urban working-class population and to fuel the Industrial Revolution, with its profound effects on the family. Before this revolution (which actually dates back to the 18th century, to steam power and the development of the textile mills), most families lived and worked on farms. But by 1920, more than half of all Americans lived in cities. In a preface to the 1880 Census, Carroll D. Wright observed, "the factory system necessitates the employment of women and children to an injurious extent, and consequently its tendency is to destroy family life and ties and domestic habits, and ultimately the home."

  1873
  An anti-obscenity movement, led by groups such as the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, urges the U.S. Congress to make laws against pornography-and also birth control. The "Act for the Suppression of Trade in and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use" outlawed the sale of contraceptive devices, abortion-inducing medicines, and distribution of information on birth-control methods. The law became known as the Comstock Law, after crusader Anthony Comstock.

  1889
  

• A study finds that the United States has the highest divorce rate in the world; this leads to the enactment of tougher divorce laws in almost every state (in South Carolina, divorce is prohibited altogether). The notion of fault is introduced into the process; to obtain a divorce, a spouse has to prove that the other has committed some grievous breach of the marital vows. In general, the laws punish the errant spouse economically, while trying to lessen the hardships the wronged spouse will face. But the laws don't stop the number of divorces from increasing. By 1910, the divorce rate is at 4.5 per 1,000 marriages (yearly); by 1920, it has jumped to 7.7 per 1,000. The main reason the laws didn't work seemed to be the courts, which tended to broaden the statutory grounds for divorce; an appellate court in Indiana, for example, ruled in 1910 that "anything that tends to humiliate or annoy may as effectively endanger life and health as personal violence, and affords grounds for divorce."

  1900-1939
  1901
  Electric vacuum cleaners first become available. The electric washing machine follows, in 1910 (the first models still require that users wring out the clothes by hand). Detergents don't show up until the 1930s.

  1903
  

• President Theodore Roosevelt complains about the falling American birth rate: from 1800 to 1900, the average birth rate of white women had dropped from seven children to 3.56 children. "The chief of blessings for any nation is that it shall leave its seed to inherit the land," he says in a speech. "The greatest of all curses is sterility, and the severest of all condemnations should be that visited upon willful sterility."

  1909
  

• The first electric toasters hit the market. Pop-up toasters appear in 1926. The electric beater becomes available in 1918.

  1910
  

• Washington becomes the first state to grant the right to vote to women. California follows within a year, and in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party includes suffrage as part of its platform. In 1918, President Wilson announces his support for suffrage. An amendment passes in Congress a year later, and becomes law on Aug. 26, 1920.

  1916
  

• Margaret Sanger, a nurse in New York City, opens a birth-control clinic in Brooklyn and is promptly arrested and jailed for 30 days. She had already founded a feminist magazine, The Woman Rebel, and been indicted for inciting violence and promoting obscenity. In 1921, she founds the American Birth Control League, which later becomes the Planned Parenthood Federation.

  1917
  

• The day-care controversy begins. Industrialization has led to more and more women working outside the home, and progressives succeed in opening somegovernment-subsidized day-care facilities. But the city of Chicago takes a closer look at the child-care centers it is funding, and concludes, "apathy and boredom would seem to have no place in the group life of normal children, yet they are to be found frequently among nursery groups."

  1920s
  

• Nineteenth-century dresses, on the average, used 19 yards of fabric. At the close of the Roaring Twenties, the average dress used just seven yards. In Utah, the state legislature considers a law against skirts "higher than three inches above the ankle." Ohio lawmakers discuss decolletage (the proposed limit was two inches of cleavage). Neither measure passes.

  1925
  In a book titled Revolt of Modern Youth, juvenile court Judge Ben B. Lindsay popularizes the term "companionate marriage," which had up until then only been used by sociologists to describe a married couple with no children. Judge Lindsay promotes marriage based on affectionate feelings, mutual respect, and enjoyable sexual activity. But it will only work, he says, if spouses have access to birth control, easy divorces (based on incompatibility, not fault), and education on parenting and sex.

  1927
  The automatic bread slicer is invented by an Iowa man, O.F. Rohwedder; it is perfected a year later by a baker from St. Louis, Gustav Papendick.

  1928
  

• Dr. John B. Watson, a psychologist who developed the theories of behaviorism, offers a foolproof method for perfect parenting. His book, The Psychological Care of the Infant and Child, recommends that children be treated as small adults, not coddled, hugged or kissed (he recommends, for example, shaking hands with children instead of kissing them good morning). "Mother love is a dangerous instrument which may inflict a never-healing wound, a wound which may make infancy unhappy, adolescence a nightmare, an instrument which may wreck your adult son or daughter's vocational future and chances for marital happiness." This book helps popularize the idea of "scientific mothering."

  1929
  

• A stock market crash leads to the Great Depression; from 1929 to 1930, the unemployment rate jumps from 3.2 percent to 8.7 percent. The depression is at its worst in 1932, with an unemployment rate of 23.6 percent. More than a quarter of all households do not have a single employed person.

  1935
  

• The Social Security Act is signed into law to do two things: provide an income for a worker's old age, and need-based assistance to the poor.

  1940-1969
  1940
  

• The Selective Service Act (the draft) passes, creating the first peacetime draft, as the war in Europe escalates. In the United States, the marriage rates also escalate. A wedding ring manufacturer, J. R. Woods & Sons, reports its sales are up 250 percent after Congress enacts the draft; in the next three months, the marriage rate leaps by 25 percent. But these new families face changing conditions; even the young husbands who don't go off to war are much more likely to work for wages in the defense industry than on the family farm. The war vanquishes the Depression; in 1943, full employment is reached. Wages increase, but so do food prices, and certain items are scarce. More women enter the workforce: 19 million women work outside the home during the war, compared to 14 million before. Income taxes rise by 50 percent during the war. Americans invest $135 billion in war bonds-the interest from which later fund a huge post-war spending boom.

  1942
  Fashionable Freudianism hits home-the bestselling book A Generation of Vipers, by Philip Wylie, argues that a world of ills is caused by a domineering mother and an absent (physically or emotionally) father. Motherhood faces a two-pronged assault: Experts warned about neglectful mothers (now in the workforce) and overbearing, smothering mothers.

  1946
  

• Dr. Benjamin Spock publishes Baby and Child Care, telling mothers, "you know more than you think you do." His advice is at the opposite end of the spectrum from Dr. John B. Watson's in 1928. Dr. Spock tells parents, "Children raised in loving families want to learn, want to conform, want to grow up. If the relationships are good, they don't have to be forced to eat, forced to learn to use the toilet."

  1947
  

• The suburbs become a major part of American life as Developer William J. Levitt begins building and selling small, inexpensive homes in a potato field on Long Island. Most of the homes, which cost $6,999, were bought with government loans (Veterans Administration and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Administration). Each has four rooms, and measures 25 feet by 32 feet. There is only one floor-plan. But by the time the sawdust settles, 17,500 families live in Levittown. Of the 13 million new homes built in 1948, 11 million are built in suburbs.

  1950
  

• At the start of the year, there are about 1.5 million television sets in American homes. By the end of 1951, there are 15 million. By 1960, nine out of 10 homes have television sets.

  1951
  

• J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye is published; over the next few years, an identifiable youth culture emerges. It's an economic development as much as anything else; by the mid-1950s, American teens have, on average, more than $550 each year to spend on non-necessities. Book publishers, music publishers, Hollywood, and even the garment industry respond with products aimed at youths. Many adults are confused. In 1957, Look magazine hires a consultant to translate teenage slang.

  1953
  Hugh Hefner publishes his first issue of Playboy magazine; at the same time, Alfred Kinsey's deeply flawed but deeply influential study, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, is released. The combined effect is to make men and women wonder whether everyone else is having more fun than they are. Playboy pioneers airbrushing techniques; Kinsey claims that half of all women have sex before marriage, and a fourth of all married women have affairs. It isn't so much a Sexual Revolution as a Sexual Doubtfulness Revolution, with some Americans coveting not their neighbor's wife but what they are told their neighbor's wife is up to, statistically speaking.

  1962
  Illinois becomes the first state to decriminalize sexual conduct between consenting adults. Other states follow; by 2000 only a few have anti-sodomy or crimes-against-nature laws still on their books; they include Louisiana (a law now being challenged), Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, and North Carolina.

  1965
  

• A young Assistant Secretary of Labor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan (later a U.S. Senator), writes a confidential report that doesn't stay confidential for very long. His research shows that the rising crime rates in the inner cities, as well as other forms of urban decay, are traceable back to the breakdown of the black family. "The evidence-not final, but powerfully persuasive-is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling." There were solid families in the inner cities, he acknowledged, "but for the vast numbers of the unskilled, poorly educated city working class, the fabric of conventional social relationships has all but disintegrated." He showed that the illegitimacy rate among blacks had gone from 17 percent in 1940 to 24 percent in 1960 (during the same period, the rate among whites went from 2 percent to 3 percent). At the time of the report, a quarter of all black women were either divorced or living apart from their husbands.

  Moynihan proposes greatly increased federal spending, which turns out to make things worse, but his diagnosis is dead-on. "There is one unmistakable lesson in American history; a community that allows a large number of men to grow up in broken homes, dominated by women, never acquiring a stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future-that community asks for and gets chaos."

  1970-1989
  1970
  

• California Gov. Ronald Reagan signs the first no-fault divorce law, bowing to the conventional wisdom of the day that divorce would be less nasty (and less harmful to children) if it were easier to obtain and didn't require a finding of fault. By 1974, 45 states have similar laws.

  1972
  

• The Equal Rights Amendment is passed by both houses of Congress, but it lacks the popular support to become law. Suffragette Alice Paul penned the proposed amendment and her allies in Congress presented it at each session from 1923 on, but it fails to pass until 1972. When it is sent to the states, only 36 of the required 38 vote to ratify it before the deadline Congress has set.

  1973
  The plague of Doe vs. Bolton and Roe vs. Wade, two Supreme Court cases that legalize abortion, begins. Justice Harry Blackmun, writing for the majority in Roe, says the decision is based on a residual right to privacy. He does not address the question of the humanity of the child.

   

• An October oil embargo sends gasoline prices from 30 cents per gallon to over a dollar. The embargo lasts until March 1974, but a more lasting consequence is the minivan. Responding to the gas crunch and the new emphasis on economy and small size, Chrysler begins developing the first minivans, which debut in 1980.

  1976
  

• Researcher and radical feminist Shere Hite publishes The Hite Report, a scientifically unsound yet immensely popular "survey of female sexuality." Drawing conclusions and quoting heavily from questionnaires she mailed out, the study "found" (without going into too much detail) that 70 percent of women are unsatisfied by normal intercourse, and need other stimulation. Many Americans accept the conclusion that regular sex is unsatisfying and other options should be explored. The sexual union is no longer about babies and bonding between husband and wife; pleasure is now the sole purpose.

  1981
  

• Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control identify the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, after investigating reports of a mysterious "gay cancer." The 189 cases investigated by the CDC are all homosexual men; within a few years, though, the disease starts to show up in other segments of society. The disease has major political and cultural consequences: The homosexual-rights movement gains sympathy and the disease adds urgency to the arguments for providing condoms and sex education in the schools. But most importantly, AIDS gives lie to the claim of sexual revolutionaries that sex can be without consequences.

  1985
  

• Some Washington wives led by Tipper Gore and Susan Baker (wife of then-Treasury Secretary James Baker) call on the music industry to clean up its act. They found the Parents Music Resource Center and testify at Senate hearings about the possibility of a ratings system much like the one used for movies. Frank Zappa also testifies, and after mocking Tipper Gore's southern accent, declares that a ratings system would be "the equivalent of treating dandruff with decapitation." The PMRC backs down (with Tipper telling any reporter who would listen that she loves Springsteen and played the drums in high school), and in 1990 actually opposes mandatory labeling bills being considered in more than 20 states. The music industry itself eventually adopts a voluntary ratings system.

  1990-2000
  1990
  

• Iraq invades and occupies its neighbor, Kuwait. President Bush orders a massive mobilization of sea, air, and land forces. The war, once begun, lasts from Jan. 17 to Feb. 27 of 1991. The planes are great, but one of the most striking images of the war is the sight of young uniformed mothers kissing children goodbye. The government's policy of offering educational benefits in return for a short stint in the reserves has been popular, particularly with minority women. At the height of the mobilization, the Pentagon acknowledges that 67,000 single parents, and 70,000 parents with children, are serving in the Persian Gulf.

  1996
  The city of Chicago's Commission on Human Relations rules that the Boy Scouts broke the law when they didn't give a position to a homosexual former Eagle Scout, Keith Richardson. The ACLU steps in and sues the city of Chicago for sponsoring 28 Explorer posts, contending that the city was sponsoring discrimination. City officials surrendered and withdrew sponsorship. The ACLU and the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund sue the Boy Scouts to force the organization to accept homosexuals; the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on the case by the summer of 2000.

  1998
  

• The Starr Report is released over the Internet. The subjects of oral sex and adultery, having already invaded the family hour on television, creep into evening newscasts and Sunday morning political discussions.

  2000
  

• The Vermont legislature hammers out a "civil unions" law, a quasi-marriage for homosexual couples. It's a response to an earlier state Supreme Court ruling that homosexuals have a right to the benefits of marriage, if not to the formal designation. When the law takes effect on July 1, same-sex couples can go to their town clerks, apply for a license, and be "united" by a Justice of the Peace or a minister. There's also a quasi-divorce clause; "dissolutions" will be handled by the state's family courts.