| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

A History of Household Government in America. By Carole Shammas. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002. xviii, 232 pp. Cloth, $55.00, ISBN 0-8139-2125-2. Paper, $19.50, ISBN 0-8139-2126-0.)
In the 1960s and 1970s as family history was emerging as a field in American history, the household was a primary focus, especially among historians of early America. Inspired by the work of historical demographers in England and on the Continent, American historians found early censuses extraordinarily important in helping them reconstruct the structure of the household, a grouping that includes all those under the power of the head—not only spouse and children but also servants, boarders, and slaves. Yet scholarly attention soon shifted to other subjects, such as kinship and the nuclear family. Carole Shammas's A History of Household Government in America attempts to bring the focus back to the household by chronicling both its history as a concept and the history of the governance of the American household from the seventeenth century.	1
Insisting on the importance of the household, Shammas emphasizes the power of the head of the early American household. She attributes the larger size of American households, compared to European ones, not only to indentured servitude and slavery but also to a policy of poor relief that paid wealthy households to take in paupers.	. . .

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