The family system prevailing among a small ethnic group towards the end of the pre-industrial era is examined on the basis of data from a parish in Northern Russia. Identification of the factors shaping this system is facilitated by a comparison with descriptions of ethnic Russian family systems in Southern and Central European Russia, which have been studied more extensively. The characteristics of the family system in the community described here conform most closely to the latter. Since little microstructural research has been done on Northern Russia, the data presented here will serve as an example of the development of the family system in the region in the nineteenth century.

This article investigates the antecedents, experience and consequences of service in the lives of rural-born Dutch women within the urbanizing and industrializing context of the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. The decision to enter service was often taken by the girl's parents against the background of a distress-ridden household. From the latter part of the nineteenth century, the migration fields of servants widened, with women more often serving in middle-class households in the growing large cities. The consequences of out-migration to these urban and more diverse labour and marriage markets, and for some women also the educational work setting of urban service itself, were that larger proportions of women contracted advantageous marriages and settled outside their rural region of birth.

This article deals with changes in the management of industrial labour in Catalonia between 1830 and 1925. In the absence of state welfare, families developed a number of strategies to try and secure an adequate standard of living. During the nineteenth century labour markets were informal, and working contracts implicit. However, with the advent of scientific organization of labour in the 1920s, hourly wage agreements began to be recorded. The application of cooperative game theory illuminates the processes by which households in this era managed to generate income. Both kin- and non-kin-related networks were used to improve the living standards of the household. Strategies of co-residence initially developed by migrants were later imitated by locally born inhabitants. Initially the living standards of migrants were thus higher than those of natives.

This article explores the policies of the Bulgarian socialist regime (1944–1989) towards the family. Initially, the Bulgarian Communist Party focussed on the abolition of the patriarchal family, the emancipation of women and the struggle against ‘bourgeois residues’ in family life. However, the dramatic decline of the birth rate – a result of rapid urbanization and increasing female employment – led to a re-direction of official discourse. Reproduction became heavily politicized, as the 1968 ban on abortion makes evident. Despite pro-natalist measures, the government was unable to stop the fertility decline. This article demonstrates how socialist family policy was gradually modified through negotiation between the Party and the population.