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Multigenerational social structures of related individuals are the oldest form of social organization. Scholars of early human evolution increasingly argue that the complex relationships that developed within families, similar to tool‐use, are a crucial driver in the evolution of the human brain. New technologies and ways of using them were not simply invented to solve problems or address material needs, but also to foster social activities, such as communal childcare, that would allow more children to survive (Hrdy 2009). Families in the Paleolithic lived by foraging, gathering plants and insects, trapping and hunting, and then cooking and eating in groups. About 15,000 years ago, as the earth’s climate entered a warming phase, humans began intentional crop‐raising and domesticated plants and animals, modifying them by selective breeding so as to better serve human needs. Thus people were “domesticated” – settled into sedentary co‐residential groups – before plants and animals were, not the other way around. Paleolithic and Neolithic people divided labor by gender, age, and perhaps other factors, but sources for this and other aspects of family life are fragmentary and difficult to interpret, and there may have been significant variety (see Chapter 11 by Marcia‐Anne Dobres in this volume).

In more recent eras, the structure, function, and even the definition of “the family” have varied tremendously from culture to culture, and for different social groups and genders within each culture. Some groups practiced polygamy and others monogamy; for some, the most important unit was the nuclear family of a man, a woman, and their children, while for others the extended kin network was most important; in some groups, the family was primarily a unit of reproduction, while in others it was primarily a unit of production; in some groups, married couples lived with the husband’s family (patrilocality), in others with the wife’s (matrilocality or uxorilocality), and in others in their own household (neolocality). In some groups non‐related individuals such as slaves or servants were considered part of the family, and in others they were not; in some groups adoption or godparentage created significant kinship‐like ties (termed fictive or spiritual kinship) while in others only blood mattered; in some groups marital partners were chosen by parents or the family as a whole and in others by the individuals themselves. In some groups a woman brought a dowry in goods or money to her husband on marriage while in others a man gave goods or money to his wife’s family (brideprice); in some groups marriage was forbidden to certain segments of the population (such as slaves) while in others nearly everyone married; in some groups divorce was easy and in others impossible; in some groups premarital sexuality was acceptable or even expected and in others it was harshly punished; in some groups the oldest son inherited everything (primogeniture) and in others all children, or all sons, shared in inheritance (partible inheritance); in some groups marriage was early and in others it was late; in some groups, people married within their group (endogamy) and in others outside of their group (exogamy); in some groups spouses were about the same age while in others they were very different ages; in some groups contraception, abortion, and even infanticide were acceptable practices of limiting the number of children, while in others these were strictly prohibited.

All of these variables interacted and changed over time for a host of reasons. In both ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, marriage was generally monogamous, though men could and did have more than one wife if their economic status was high enough or if their wife had not produced an heir. Government took an interest in family life. About a third of one of the world’s earliest written law codes, that of King Hammurabi (1792–1750 BCE) of Babylon (part of Mesopotamia), were laws regarding marriage and family life, most of which were gendered. For example, a husband could divorce his wife without returning her dowry if she “made up her mind to leave in order that she may engage in business, thus neglecting her house and humiliating her husband” and could drown her if she “has been caught lying with another man.” The code does not mention punishment for a married man who had sex with a woman not his wife, leaving the impression that it was not forbidden.

Many of the gender patterns in family life that developed in the world’s earliest civilizations carried over into the classical cultures of Eurasia (roughly 500 BCE–500 CE), though they became more rigid as written law codes expanded and religious and philosophical systems posited clear gender distinctions. The family was generally regarded as the basis of society, and rights to political positions were usually limited to male heads of households. As in Mesopotamia and Egypt, most people married, though in some places certain marriages, such as those between slaves, between a slave and a free person, or between persons of different social classes, were prohibited. Although men were allowed mistresses, of equal or lower class, a higher‐status woman could not have legitimate sexual relations with a lower‐status man, and in some places could be harshly punished for these. Household size depended on social status, with wealthier households comprising relatives and servants living together in a large compound and smaller, less affluent living in nuclear family units. Whatever a household’s size or composition, everyone living within it was under the authority of the male head of household which, upon his death, passed to the eldest son or other male in the hierarchy.

Marriages linked social groups, and weddings were central occasions in a family’s life. Spouses were chosen carefully by parents, other family members, or marriage brokers, and much of a family’s resources went toward the ceremony and setting up the new household. Marital agreements, especially among the well‐to‐do, were stipulated with contracts between the families involved, a practice that continued for centuries throughout the world, and in many areas continues today. In China during the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE) marriages involved the exchange of an elaborate trove of betrothal gifts between the families of the bride and groom. A marriage with no betrothal gift or dowry was dishonorable, with the woman often considered a concubine rather than a wife. Once all these goods had been exchanged, the bride was taken to the ancestral home of the groom, where she was expected to obey her husband and his living relatives, and to honor his ancestors. Confucian teachings required upper‐class men to carry out specific rituals honoring their ancestors and clan throughout their lives, and to have sons so that these rituals could continue. Men’s names were inscribed on the official family list, and women’s on the list of their marital families once they had a son (Watson and Ebrey, 1991).

In the postclassical period (500 CE–1500 CE), philosophical and religious ideals of family honor and sexual propriety led to the seclusion of elite women within their households in China, India, and much of the Islamic world. The vast majority of people in these cultures were not members of the elite, however, but peasants who spent their days raising food. Almost all of them married, not because of Confucian principles or Hindu teachings or Islamic injunctions, but because marital couples and their children were the basic unit of agricultural production and procreation was an economic necessity and not simply a religious duty.

Throughout the world, the poor and working class of both sexes led similar lives of hard work, often side by side, in which the family unit was essential to the economic survival of parents and children. If married life for wealthy and prosperous women was more comfortable materially, it was nonetheless extremely confining, allowing women few decisions except in regard to child‐rearing. Even then the law did not allow a mother to make decisions counter to her husband’s wishes. For society as a whole, the intact family unit imparted the orderly transmission of property, titles, social and political stability, and traditions from generation to generation. Through a system of patriarchy from above – the state, Church, and military – matched by patriarchy from below – fathers, brothers, and sons – a hierarchical order endured. The acceptance of this system bound the poor, both male and female, in service to the elite, and though they usually were loath to admit it, never benefited men at the bottom of the social ladder. Instead this arrangement provided powerless men with a false status, a hierarchy from below, that worked against their self‐interest.

The religious traditions of the postclassical period developed norms regarding familial relationships that were clearly gendered. In India, for example, Hindu ideas about the importance of family life and having many children meant that all men and women were expected to marry, and that women in particular married very young; widows and women who had not had sons were excluded from wedding festivities. Parents, other relatives, or professional matchmakers chose one’s spouse, and anything that interfered with procreation, including exclusively same‐sex attachments, was frowned upon (Ghosh, 2008). The domestic fire was symbolically important; husband and wife made regular offerings in front of it. Children, particularly boys, were shown great affection and developed close attachments to their parents, especially their mothers. These mothers often continued to live in the house of their eldest son upon widowhood, creating stresses between mothers‐ and daughters‐in‐law; cruel and angry mothers‐in‐law were, and still are, standard figures in the legends and stories of classical India.

In European family life, the influence of the Christian Church was apparent in rules and customs. Officially the Church declared that consent of the spouses was the basis of marriage and indeed, until the sixteenth century, consent of the spouses was almost all that was required to have a valid marriage. This was an area of contention between the powerful Church and the state, since parents wanted to arrange “suitable” marriages for their offspring and objected to the interference of a priest or bishop who ruled in favor of the marriage partners. Because of its sacramental nature, marriage was increasingly held to be indissoluble, and sexual relations outside of marriage were viewed as illicit. Thus Christian Europe banned polygamy and divorce, and attempted to prohibit any form of sexual relationship apart from marriage, such as concubinage or premarital sex.

Throughout most of Eurasia in the classical and postclassical periods, a husband’s death brought great changes in a woman’s situation. She became a widow, a word for which there is no male equivalent in many ancient languages and one of the few words in English and other modern languages in which the male, widower, is derived from the female instead of the other way around. In some places widows were secluded or under the control of their sons, but in other places they became more active legally, buying and selling land, making loans, and making donations to religious establishments. A widow’s actions were acceptable because she was often the guardian for her children and in control of the family finances, but she was also somewhat suspect because she was not under direct male control.

In Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific, it is extremely difficult to make generalizations about the structure and functions of families, as the geographical areas are vast, civilizations longstanding, and population groups diverse. The “family” could be defined as a fairly wide kinship group with a voice in domestic and community matters, such as who would marry and when they would do so, who would have access to land or other economic resources, and whose conduct was unacceptable and worthy of censure or punishment. These decisions were arrived at through a process of negotiation and discussion within the family, where the opinions of older male family members carried more weight than those of younger or female members. These two hierarchies – age and gender – interacted in complex ways dependent on the issue at hand, with older women sometimes having control of younger men on certain matters, especially with regard to arranging marriages

Polygynous marriages were common in many parts of world in a pattern termed “resource polygyny.” Rulers of states and villages had the most wives or other types of female dependents as a sign of status, and they used marriage as a way to make or cement alliances. Resource polygyny could lead to conflict between fathers and sons, as families had to decide whether resources would best be spent acquiring a first wife for a son or another wife for the father. Some scholars have seen this generational conflict as a source for harsh initiation rituals for unmarried young men as a precondition for marriage and joining the ranks of fully adult men. Marriage could also be used as a means of cementing military conquests and absorbing a defeated population. The leaders of both the Incas and the Aztecs, for example, married the daughters of rulers of the groups they had conquered, and in seventeenth‐century Virginia, the Algonkian‐speaking chief Powhatan reinforced his domination of other groups by marrying women from their villages and then sending them back once they had borne him a child. In contrast, African families lived in house‐compounds in which each wife had her own house; each wife also had her own cattle, fields, and property. This notion that a wife’s property actually belonged to her husband, while standard in Europe, was not accepted in most of Africa. In parts of the world in which women were secluded, all wives might live within the same household, in special quarters constructed for them, termed the harim (which means “forbidden area”) or zenana.

Many cultures in Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific were matrilineal, with property passed down through the female line. This did not necessarily mean that women were economically or legally autonomous, but that they depended on their brothers rather than their husbands. Their brothers also depended on them, however, for many of these cultures also had systems of marriage involving a brideprice. A man could only marry after his sister in order to use the money or goods his family had received as her brideprice to acquire a wife for him. This system encouraged close life‐long relations among siblings, with women relying on their birth families for support if they came into conflict with their husbands. In matrilocal groups, such as those in eastern North America, husbands came to live with their wives’ clans, while related women lived together. In these matrilocal groups, either spouse could initiate divorce. A man who wished to divorce simply left his wife’s house, while a woman put her husband’s belongings outside her family’s house, indicating she wished him to leave, but the children always stayed with the mother and her family.

Relatively easy divorce was an essential part of systems of temporary marriage that developed in some parts of the Pacific and Southeast Asia. These were cultures in which people were taught to have a strong sense of debt and obligation to their parents and family for having been given life, termed òn in Vietnamese and hiya in Tagalog, the language of part of the Philippines. This concept of debt extended beyond the family to the larger political and economic realm, so that people were enmeshed in a complex system of dependency, sometimes placing themselves or family members into “debt‐slavery,” as this promise of service and loyalty was known. Gift‐giving was another important way to make alliances, pacify possible enemies, and create links and networks of obligations among strangers. Since gifts of women were considered the best way to transform strangers into relatives, these unions were often accompanied by a marriage ceremony and the expectation of spousal fidelity, even if only temporarily. If the spouses disagreed with one another or the man was from elsewhere and returned to his home country, the marriage ended, just as marriages between local spouses ended if there was conflict or one spouse disappeared for a year or more. Both sides gained from such temporary marriages; the man gained a sexual and domestic and sometimes business partner, and the woman and her family gained prestige through their contact with an outsider and their repayment of a debt. Concepts of debt also structured marriage patterns in other ways; prospective grooms frequently carried out brideservice for their future fathers‐in‐law, understood as paying off their obligations.