Journal of Family History

Recent ethnographic research undertaken with coastal inhabitants of the Taltal district on the Andean coast of South America facilitates corroboration of the development of a shared territorial map, with the extended family as a basic nucleus. These families, notwithstanding centuries of the imposition of the Encomienda system and mining industry, have historically occupied the rural territory from the housing/productive space of the majada, whose settlement led to a strong system of alliances predating the early historical period. The tracing of local family networks is presented here from the Almendares family registry, currently one of the groups defined as Changos or Camanchacos.

Family history is undertaken by millions around the world seeking to understand their past. This practice is understudied, and we need to work hard to understand how it works. Over the past decade, family history has been transformed through the use of DNA sequencing to enable genetic genealogy. Through analyzing data generated in a number of focus groups with family historians, this article contributes to our understanding of family history as a practice by engaging closely with the community. In particular, the article considers the responses of family historians to the challenge of the new data generated through DNA sequencing. Looking at the ways in which the practice is changing enables a clearer view of how family history works and how scholarship might engage with it.

In 1839, several white Quaker women in Providence, Rhode Island, founded the Providence Association for the Benefit of Colored Orphans; they sought to take in the city’s orphans. During the first years of operation, dozens of African American parents admitted and withdrew their children from the Association. The vast majority of the children admitted had living parents or were paid boarders. In 1846, the Association incorporated as the Providence Association for the Benefit of Colored Children with an enlarged mission to provide for the support and education of black children. During the final collapse of slavery in Rhode Island, black parents transformed an orphanage into an institution that also offered short- and long-term care and education for wards and boarders. In doing so, they expanded the work of white reformers from raising African American children to supporting their needs as working parents.

This article charts the gradual sexualization of marriage in twentieth-century Greece, exploring both expert and lay ideas. First, through official writings and marital correspondence, it sketches the subtle transformation of the nineteenth-century ideal of conjugal love into a more sexualized emotion by the turn of the century. Then, it analyzes the writings of “sex experts” and the correspondence with their clients, showcasing how sexual pleasure became a priority within marriage after World War II. Lastly, the records of a postwar mental health service show that by the late 1970s, the consensus on the importance of mutual sexual satisfaction was being established.

This article investigates the relationship between labor force transitions and becoming a mother in the early twentieth century. It aims to answer the question: did women start industrial homework when they had their first child? The empirical material consists of 588 interviews made with individual industrial homeworkers in 1911. Event history models were used to analyze the data. The study found that many of the industrial homeworkers did start around the time they had their first child. The results thus suggest that in the early twentieth century, having a child did not always imply making a labor force transition out of the labor force but could also imply making a labor force transition to flexible types of employment, just as it often does today.