Mapping the Margins: The Family and Social Discipline in Canada, 1700–1975

Elaine Porter is an associate professor of sociology at Laurentian
University.

The chapters in this volume are written as revisionist family history.
This revision calls into question two aspects of what has come to be
known as the sentimental view of the nuclear family. First, it questions
the extent to which the nuclear family structure meant that more
extended family ties were less important for economic survival and were
displaced by the growth of communities and the state. Second, the
direction of influence between family and state has been reversed to
hold up for examination the role of families in disciplining their
members and setting the pace for the growth of welfare institutions
outside the family.

The book proceeds by examining all those groups not fitting into the
nuclear family model whose very existence called into question the
overarching predominance of the nuclear family. The first four chapters
document the ways in which widows had ties to extended family members
and stepchildren were incorporated into blended families, generally
studied as a modern phenomenon (now due to divorce). The next four
chapters show that spinsters and bachelors had acceptable social
positions and survived with the help of family members within the
Maritime Provinces as a whole, Quebec, and New England. The third
section treats the 20th-century growth of insane asylums, maternity
homes, and orphanages, which only slowly and haltingly served the needs
of different segments of the population. Families continued to be a
resource for their needy members as long as they could manage to do so.
These findings challenge

the notion that nuclear families readily transferred their
responsibilities for dependents to the state.

Ironically, by the mid-20th century the nuclear family had become the
problematized rather than the standard-bearer. This interpretative turn
constitutes the ending of an enjoyable excursion through the margins,
the varied network of pathways that lead back to the major thoroughfares
of family history, if you pay careful attention to the road signs along
the way.