When did we become so obsessed with nuclear families?
When did we become so obsessed with nuclear families?
Medieval church policies were designed to weaken extended families. The result was a greater emphasis on nuclear families, and more individuality.
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So far in this newsletter I’ve argued that the nuclear family idea is failing us, and that the idea of individual success is a myth. Both of these concepts set people up as islands, tasked with making it in the world on their own. But of course, people who actually do make it often have vast intergenerational networks supporting them. They have a village.
Over time I’ve become increasingly curious where these ideas actually came from. When did we start thinking people were mostly just responsible for themselves? Where did the modern idea of the nuclear-family-as-an-island actually originate?
As it turns out, key origins of these ideas lie in the Middle Ages. More surprising still, they’re at least in part the result of the Catholic Church successfully embarking on a millennium-long campaign to weaken families. Here me out here.
The Church wanted people to have fewer heirs so it could collect more cash
After the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD, Europe was a patchwork of marriage practices. Some people were mostly influenced by the Romans, others by the barbarian tribes. There was polygamy, divorce, concubines, and all sorts of other things that sound out of place in a fast-Christianizing Europe1. For example, I recently read about one French Christian king in the early 500s who married four different women, making him a polygamist, and who was apparently cool with his daughters’ many extra-marital affairs2.
But the Catholic church gradually exerted more and more control over marriage. One way the church did this was by expanding the definition of incest. The rules began with barring marriage between first and second cousins in the early 500s and eventually expanded to sixth cousins in the 1000s3 4. These draconian rules prohibited marriage between people sharing any of their 128 great-great-great-great grandparents, and have been described as the “radicalization” of marriage prohibitions5. In some cases, these rules made it extremely hard to get married at all because everyone in the local village was at least distantly related.
I know, incest, gross. But marrying cousins was common in other cultures at the time (and still is in some places today). And in any case, these rules actually go way beyond what we think of as incest now6.
So why did the Catholic Church care so much?
Some historians think it was because the church needed money to support itself7 8. The idea is that the church was weakening ties between kin and reducing people’s ability to produce heirs.
So, for example, if my grandparents split their estate among their children but then I marry my cousin, we reunite some of our grandparents original resources. The family remains economically intertwined, and things like land are relatively easy to keep. The patrimony stays intact.
But if I can’t marry my cousin, the estate keeps getting whittled down and the odds increase that at least some branches of the family won’t have eligible heirs — and having heirs was a major goal of people at the time. Ties between family members are weaker. Eventually, more land ends up bequeathed to the church.
George Mason economics professor Jonathan Schulz has argued that the result of these incest policies was that the church destroyed clans, lineages and extended families9. He continues:
Destroying kin-networks, hindering adoption, and expanding the number of illegitimate children (in case marriage rules were not followed) left property without kin to inherit. Most often, people would will their property to the Church as a way of increasing their chances of getting into heaven in the afterlife10.
These rules were eventually relaxed in the 1200s11 12, but what’s left when you dismantle intergenerational families? Nuclear families, centered on individuals not clans.
Consent (for marriage, not sex) eroded extended families even more
The other key thing the Catholic Church did was elevate consent as the main thing that made a marriage legit. Counterintuitively, this too weakened families.
Like incest rules, the rise of consent happened gradually as various theologians debated what constituted a real marriage. But by the middle of the Middle Ages, a consensus had formed that the only thing a couple needed to be married was a promise to each other. This meant if a couple got together on their own in the woods and consented that they were married, it counted. They didn’t even need a priest13.
Families still arranged marriages, but the caveat was that the bride and groom were expected to agree to the union. The late historian Michael Sheehan has even argued that Juliet in Romeo and Juliet may have under-appreciated just how much leverage she would have had14 15 in her conflict over who she was going to be with.
Obviously rules and reality aren’t the same and there were instances when people were forced to marry against their will. But gradually those instances became the exception, and more and more individuals came to control (or at least have a meaningful say in) their own destinies.
This ultimately led to a greater sense of individuality16, because family clans had less say in who married whom. One of the primary powers of the family leaders disappeared.
It also paved the way for “companionate marriages”17, or those based on the idea that a couple provides companionship to each other rather than just economic advantages. In other words, our very idea of love is an outgrowth of theological debates about consent that happened more than 1,000 years ago.
The flip side of more individuality and love, though, was that extended families, tribes and clans became weaker 18 and the interests of the nuclear family were elevated above the interests of the group19.
Sheehan has called these changes one of “the keys to the history of the family in the English-speaking world during the last seven centuries,” and suggested that even now their full implications have yet to be realized20.
We can keep evolving if we want to
We ended up with plenty of good things from this process. Not only did we get marriages based on love, but a society without strong tribes eventually proved to be fertile ground for things like democracy.
But I also think one of the unintended consequences from these ancient events is that our sense of village life is disappearing. Of course our sense of individuality continued to evolve over the centuries, but the religious policies in the medieval period really got this ball rolling21.
Strange as it may sound, I find knowing this history comforting. It means the problems we face today are an outgrowth of decisions actual human beings made long ago. Our fundamental sense of self, for example, is influenced by the more or less arbitrary opinions of mid level priests more than 1,000 years ago. If someone like that can shape our world, then we can probably shape it too.
Thanks for making it to the end of this post. If you didn’t think it was terrible, feel free to share.
“The Origins of WEIRD Psychology.” Jonathan Schulz, Duman Bahrami-Rad, Jonathan Beauchamp, and Joseph Henrich. June 22, 2018. Page 4
Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage. Stephanie Coontz. 2005. Page 92
The WEIRDest People in the World. Joseph Henrich. 2020. Page 168-171
Marriage, Family, and Law in Medieval Europe: Collected Studies. 1997. Michael Sheehan. Page 253-254
“Kin Networks and Institutional Development”. Jonathan F. Schulz. 2020. Page 9
I was surprised to discover while writing this post that many states, including California and New York, actually allow first cousins to get married today. Here’s Wikipedia’s map on what is allowed and where.
Marriage, Family, and Law in Medieval Europe: Collected Studies. 1997. Michael Sheehan. Page 248. Also (and primarily) Jack Goody’s The development of the family and marriage in Europe.
There were likely other factors as well, and some of the historians I’ve read (and cite in this post) have debated various motivations. But every scholar I’ve cited here, as well as others I’ve read recently, have brought up this idea that the church’s war on incest had a relationship to its need for money to support things like monasteries, nunneries, etc.
“Kin Networks and Institutional Development”. Jonathan F. Schulz. 2020. Page 56
“The Origins of WEIRD Psychology.” Jonathan Schulz, Duman Bahrami-Rad, Jonathan Beauchamp, and Joseph Henrich. June 22, 2018. Page 57.
“Kin Networks and Institutional Development”. Jonathan F. Schulz. 2020. Page 10
Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage. Stephanie Coontz. 2005. Page 100
Marriage based solely on consent did have problems. For example, if a couple became unhappy, they could just claim they never consented to be married and get out of the union. The result was that over time a “proper” marriage came to include public announcements and ceremonies — traditions that still exist today.
Marriage, Family, and Law in Medieval Europe: Collected Studies. 1997. Michael Sheehan.
If you think about the tension in many stories about medieval marriages, much of it derives from the conflict between the desires of a potential bride or groom, and various family members. The fact that this tension exists highlights the role of consent; family members knew they needed to get the couple onboard with any marriage strategy. That wouldn’t have been the case in ancient Rome, where fathers (paterfamilias) were required to arrange marriages for their children. Though a good paterfamilias was expected to arrange unions with people his children approved of, that wasn’t a requirement and in the end fathers had wide latitude when it came to marriage decisions. The HBO series Rome actually does a good job of showing this. Repeatedly in the show, men make and dissolve marriage arrangements for their daughters and sisters. The women sometimes protest, but those protestations generally have no bearing on the plans. The point is that people have always had desires, but the ability of those desires to influence actions has varied in different time periods.
Marriage, Family, and Law in Medieval Europe: Collected Studies. 1997. Michael Sheehan. Page 39
Family and Household in Medieval England (Social History in Perspective) 2000th Edition. Peter Fleming. Page12
The WEIRDest People in the World. Joseph Henrich. 2020. Pages 167, 191
Marriage, Family, and Law in Medieval Europe: Collected Studies. 1997. Michael Sheehan. Page 86
Marriage, Family, and Law in Medieval Europe: Collected Studies. 1997. Michael Sheehan. Page 40
This isn’t to pick on Catholicism. I’m not Catholic but have known many great people who are, and I’ve had positive experiences in Catholic settings. There are some things I absolutely love about Catholicism, like the architecture. Additionally, other branches of Christianity built on these developments, so really the entire western world, Catholic or not, is operating in this framework now. And of course, plenty of good things, like our modern idea of love, came from these developments.