During the period 1500 - 1800 there were massive changes in world social and cultural systems, and the family unit as we recognize it today came into being. The emphasis on the individual, the right to personal freeedoms and the desire for privacy developed during this period and were symptomatic of world-wide shifts in attitude that also affected religion and politics. This is a study of the evolution of the family, from the (to us) impersonal, economically bonded and precarious extended family group of the sixteenth century to the smaller, affectively bonded nuclear unit that had appeared by the end of the eighteenth century, and shows how this process radically influenced child-rearing, education, contraception, sexual behaviour and marriage. This work challenges many of the conventional views hitherto held about English society at that period