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This volume is a historical-sociocultural critique of many of the myths which surround the family. Throughout the book Mount debunks those myths which he claims have “soaked through into our ideas of history.” In so doing, however, the author promotes an even larger myth or oversimplification: that “the family is a subversive organization … the enduring permanent enemy of all hierarchies, churches and ideologies” (p. 1).
The first myth he challenges, one promulgated by the historian Edward Shorter, is that the “nuclear” family is a modern phenomenon. He cites many scholars as well as the more recent statistical studies of Peter Laslett who demonstrated that “the nuclear family has always been the normal family.”
Mount then counters the myth, popularized by Phillippe Aries in Centuries of Childhood, that the family has treated its children in ever more enlightened ways. Once subjected to infanticide and indifference, children, since the Middle Ages, according to Aries, are an increasingly differentiated and cared for segment of the population. Mount points out, in letters and memoirs going back to Plutarch, that children have always been dearly cared for by their parents.
He also takes on the idea, set forth by C. S. Lewis and Denis de Rougemont, that romantic love was discovered by the troubadours in the Middle Ages. From the inscriptions on the walls of Pompeii to many recent medievalists he shows that feelings of love, including conjugal love, have been present through the ages.
Then arguing against much feminist family history, he claims that women, throughout history, rather than being devalued, have often been seen as equal members in a joint enterprise. He seeks to debunk these myths in support of his contention that the family