The family life course in history: sources and methodological problems

The importance of the developmental approach to the history of family life and to the changing structure of the individual family during its life cycle would now appear to be undisputed. It has not been easy, however, to adapt empirical study to meet the requirements of this approach, mainly because of the different sources available to researchers in different countries.

Our aim in this paper is to outline the possibilities and problems involved in the developmental approach when using serial household lists, a source common in Austria and elsewhere. The family life course, as we see it, embraces the entire household. Changes in household form we define as the family life course. The household lists are a type of annual census taken over long periods of time and not, as is more usual, perhaps once a century. This particular source therefore enables us to investigate households and their development over several generations.

There are detailed lists for a long series of years for the districts now known as Lower and Upper Austria. We have used lists for Andrichsfurt in Upper Austria, Gmünd in the Lower Austrian Waldviertel, Rappoltenkirchen in the Vienna Woods, and Maria Langegg in the Dunkelsteiner Wald, limiting the study to rural areas in the nineteenth century.

The possibilities of analysing serial household lists are many. Like single listings, serials throw light on the population according to age, marital status, and household position, whether spouse, child, servant, etc.