Europe's Happy Families?
Peter Laslett discusses how the Continent's 'happy families' have changed dramatically since the War.
The metaphor is as follows: the traditional family model, present in European countries for as many centuries as we can go back, with important differences from place to place, has been irrevocably shattered, fractured beyond restoration. There is no point in trying to return to it, and in any case no power on earth could restore it.
The definition of Europe in familial terms presents formidable and complicated problems, and there is certainly no family model which effectively includes all the countries of the European continent or the European Community. There is, however, a set of European family tendencies which are particularly well marked in the northern and north-western areas and present, if in sometimes extensively-modified forms, in the southern areas. It is to this set of tendencies that my generalisations will refer.
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