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Thornton 2001, The Developmental Paradigm 

The Paradigm, Data, Methods, And Scholars

The Developmental Paradigm

  • Has a very long history: it was influential in ancient Greece and Rome
  • A model of change that has been applied at the individual, organizational, and societal levels
  • Change = natural, uniform, necessary, directional
  • Human beings = stages of growth + decline
  • Societies = life cycle stages
  • Different speeds of progressing
  • Many stages exist in a single cross-section

Cross-Cultural Data

  • Accounts of explorers/travelers → described customs of groups
  • Scholars collected their data through community studies + ethnography
  • Led to new profound questions
    • About family change

Reading History Sideways

  • Problem: limited historical data
  • Reading history sideways: historical geography that substituted variations across space for variations across time, thereby converting spatial heterogeneity into homogenous development
    • Ordering contemporary societies along the trajectory of development
    • Ethnocentrism: northwest Europe viewed itself as the pinnacle of development
    • Societies different from Europe = least developed
    • Reading the history of the European past in the non-European present

The Scholars

  • 1500s-1600s: Acosta, Hobbes, Locke

  • 1700s: Smith, Rousseau, Voltaire, Millar, Trugot, Condorcet, Hume, Ferguson, Maltus

  • 1800s: Comte, Tyler, Maine, Morgan, Spencer, Marx, Durkheim, Westermarck, Le Play

    → interest in family relationships and processes

Describing And Explaining Family Change

Cross-Sectional Differences in Family Patterns

  • Many differences between the family systems existing in northwest Europe and elsewhere
    • Saw other societies as having a low status for women
    • Northwest Europe societies were less family-organized and more individualistic
    • Less female involvement in hard labor
    • Saw women’s status as higher there

Interpretations Based on a Developmental Trajectory

  • The great family transition: development was seen as the process that transformed traditional families into modern ones
    • Less developed became non-northwest European
    • Developed became northwest European
  • Development would transform family systems outside northwest Europe from traditional to modern

Theoretical Explanations

  • Explanations for the shift from traditional to modern family:

    • Industrialization
    • Urbanization
    • Increases in education and knowledge
    • Increased consumption and mobility
    • Democratization
    • Christianity
    • Religious pluralism
    • Secularism

    *Transition from a traditional society to a modern one

The Northwestern European Decline in Marital Fertility

  • Substantial decline in marital fertility → modern fertility
    • Due to the use of contraception and abortion
    • Product of socioeconomic and family development
    • Mortality decline = predictor of the decline in fertility
    • Demographic transition

New Historical Studies

  • Northwest Europe did become more organized around non-family institutions over time but the change was not as large as assumed before
  • Most other family dimensions of northwest Europe in the 1700s and 1800s had existed for a very long time
  • The “great family transition” could not be documented in the European archives. It was a myth!
  • Almost all the substantial changes occurred after, not before, the early 1800s
  • Ideas of developmental idealism have contributed to substantial and important family change in the past 200 years

Developmental Idealism And Family Change

Developmental Idealism as a Causal Force

  • Changed human institutions
  • The developmental histories provided criteria for evaluating the legitimacy and value of the many existing ways of organizing human society
    • Northwest Europe became the standard for judging
    • Provided a model for the future

The Propositions of Developmental Idealism

  • Four basic propositions

  1. Modern society is good and attainable

  2. Modern family is good and attainable

  3. Modern family is a cause and an effect of a modern society

    1. Important force for social progress
    2. Enhance economic well-being

  4. Individuals are free and equal, and social relationship are based on consent

  • Inalienable rights of freedom, equality, and consent = attached to all human relationships

The Power of Developmental Idealism

  • If only some of the 4 propositions were embraced, it would have considerable power to change family ideas and behavior
  • 1st proposition = influence on family behavior
  • 2nd proposition = inspire the family aspirations of those who endorse it
  • 3rd proposition = influence for family change
  • 4th proposition = powerful force for family change
  • Ideas of developmental idealism: informed government policies/programs and citizens’ thinking

Effects of Developmental Idealism in Northwest Europe

  • Developmental idealism: ideational framework
  • Effects:
    • Rights of individuals/government
    • Delegitimizing hierarchies based on both gender and generation
    • Change in the direction of modern family
    • Future expectations

Effects of Developmental Idealism Outside Northwest Europe

  • Undermines indigenous family forms
  • Governmental influence
    • Era of European colonization
    • Family reform movements happened in colonies
  • South and Central America: program for the Christianization
  • China and Soviet Union: based on Marx’s ideology
  • Family planning movement
    • Helped to reduce fertility
    • Try to increase the desire for smaller families and to encourage the use of contraception
  • Incentives + coercion (in China, India, and Indonesia)
  • Expansion of mass education
    • Educational change alone accounts for most of the family changes explained by all socioeconomic factors
  • Mass media: mechanism for diffusion
    • Exposure to mass media → strong predictor of family patterns