Family Values in the Old South
, by Friend, Craig ThompsonNote: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
- ISBN: 9780813034188 | 0813034183
- Cover: Hardcover
- Copyright: 1/24/2009
"Will become a useful addition to our understanding of antebellum Southern families, especially in demonstrating their multiple forms, definitions, and functions."--Sally McMillen, Davidson College This collection of essays on family life in the nineteenth-century American South reevaluates the concept of family by looking at mourning practices, farming practices, tavern life, houses divided by politics, and interracial marriages. Individual essays examine cross-plantation marriages among slaves, white orphanages, childhood mortality, miscegenation and inheritance, domestic activities such as sewing, and same-sex relationships. Editors Craig Thompson Friend and Anya Jabour have collected work from a range of diverse and innovative historians. The volume uncovers more about Southern family life and values than we have previously known and raises new questions about how Southerners conceptualized family--from demographic structures, power relations, and gender roles, to the relationship of family to society. In three sections, these ten essays explore the definition of family in the nineteenth-century South, examine the economics of family life, both rural and urban, and ultimately answer the question "what did familymeanin the Old South?"