The article highlights the significance of alliances of blood and marriage in early modern England and beyond, including both positive and negative relations among kin. Examining different historiographical approaches, it emphasizes the role of kinship in explanations of historical change and continuity. Rather than focusing on the isolated nuclear family or, conversely, on an alleged decline of kinship, it highlights the importance of enmeshed patterns of kinship and connectedness. Such patterns were not only important in themselves (whether culturally, socially, economically, or politically), it is suggested, but they also invite new comparisons with other early modern societies, and in the long run. Even patterns typical of present-day ‘new families’ and ‘families of choice’, or aspects of the present-day language of kinship may bring to mind some similarities with notions of kinship and related ‘household-family’ ties characteristic of the early modern period, the article proposes.

This article observes the ways in which the law mediated kinship relations in early modern England in three contexts: inheritance, marital property law, and provisions for the financially distressed. An enquiry into statutory law adopted during the period indicates that Parliament was not active in legislating in the area of family law. The courts, however, were actively involved in determining the validity of property settlements, thereby setting their temporal bounds. Both the jurisprudence and the settlements themselves illustrate that families became more interested in providing maintenance within the nuclear family (for children and widows) than they were in fostering patrilineal continuity. Likewise, an obligation to support financially needy kin was required from only a relatively small universe of family members.

This article evaluates the extent of economic support provided by the family in English society. The first issue addressed is the importance given to relationships between family members both by contemporaries and by historians when attempting to distinguish different types of household. Following sections of the article discuss the role of households in redistributing income from the better-paid to the less well-paid or non-earners and the significance of economic support received from members of the family living elsewhere relative to that provided from within the household and from other outside sources, such as the community, employers and neighbours. A further section then assesses the impact of demographic change on the size and composition of the kin group and the extent to which population mobility made regular contact with close kin more difficult.

The SOCSIM micro-simulation model is used to investigate how kinship and family patterns in Britain changed as people passed through the ‘First Demographic Transition’, starting in the late nineteenth century, and the ‘Second Demographic Transition’, from the 1960s. Certain types of kin, such as former partners, became more common, and others, such as ever-born siblings, less so. An ageing of generational relationships is observed: events that formerly occurred early in life, such as the experience of one's parents' deaths, are being postponed. Patterns of re-partnering are leading to more partial relationships involving step- and supplanted parents, half-siblings, former partners and stepchildren.

The realization that European family forms are failing to converge as predicted by modernization theory has led many scholars to suspect that the broad regional differences detected by historians persist in the present and are likely to influence future developments. This article outlines some relevant hypotheses prompted by historical studies about the role of family and kinship as sources of social security and analyses the results of comparative work on contemporary Europe, paying special attention to the relative weight of cultural and structural factors. Although differences still appear to predominate over commonalities, it is not inconceivable that in certain important respects European countries might paradoxically converge, owing to the generalized decline of the welfare state, towards forms of welfare provision that are closer to the ‘familialistic’ models of southern and eastern Europe than to the ‘modern’ models of Scandinavia and north-western Europe.

This micro-study examines the Maltese parish of St Mary's (Qrendi) in the second half of the eighteenth century. First it will be argued that – as in many other contemporaneous communities – migration to other parishes made its population extremely fluid. A second interest lies in the extent to which social distinctions and unruly behaviour further disrupted village solidarity. Finally there will be a consideration of the thesis that such unstable elements were counterbalanced by various integrative ties that bound the Qrendin together, such as charity, the obligations of neighbourliness and an intense devotion to the parish, kinship and godparenthood.