The model of the bourgeois or Victorian family that received its idealized expression in the 19th century has its roots in complex processes of socioeconomic and cultural changes going back to the late medieval period. It was a long time before this type of family really became standard or normative for most people in Western societies, and it has remained more an ideal than an actuality for many people. For well into the 18th century, and even later in rural and frontier areas, other types of family patterns still predominated. For peasant and farming families in Europe and America, the home continued to be a workshop where a variety of goods used by the family were produced. The family members had little private space, for most of the house was taken up by the workshop where goods were created. Farm animals might live in sheds under the rooms where the family lived, a practice that still continues in peasant families today. Grandparents, unmarried aunts and uncles, apprentices and other dependents quite often swelled the ranks of persons living in a household.

Aristocratic families also did not correspond to the modern nuclear family type. In 18th century palaces a large court of retainers dwelt in attendance. Still sometimes legitimate and illigitimate children of a great noble, as well as the children of servants, lived together. Servants often slept in the same rooms as their masters or outside in the halls. Functions that we think of as intimate and private, such as a great magnate’s eating or going to bed, were public events.