Synopses & Reviews
Review
"Daniel Blake Smith asks some interesting questions about colonial domestic life in Maryland and Virginia and answers them as best he can from the information obtained from manuscript family papers, letterbooks, diaries, and from a few published diaries and letters. His chapter headings indicate the scope of his search: Autonomy and Affection, Parents and Children, Sex Roles and Female Identity, Fathers and Sons, Husbands and Wives, Kin, Friends, and Neighbors, Inheritance and the Family, The Family in Illness and Death, and, finally, toward a History of Early American Family Life. The amount of repetition in the book indicates the sparseness of the sources, so that the same facts are used over and over again. To Smith, however, 'what the sources make undeniably clear is that by the late eighteenth century many men and women were developing an altered view of the family and the world beyond it, a perspective that was deeply rooted in a strong moral sensibility and the belief in the need for emotional warmth within the family.'" Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)