Book Review: An Elite Family in Early Modern England: The Temples of Stowe and Burton Bassett 1570–1656 by O’Day, Rosemary

Abstract

expectations, even though everyday life remained difficult. In her chapter on this era, Engel is right to emphasize the way in which the “double burden” affected women’s lives. Ironically, men’s “marginality in the household would contribute to a perceived crisis of masculinity in the late Soviet era, for which women would again be held responsible” (185). Grandmothers stepped in to fill the void and they are fixtures in female-headed households down to the present. In her final chapter, Engel addresses the catastrophic impact the collapse of the USSR had on family life. In the 1990s, state supports for women and the family disappeared entirely, and the birthrate fell even further as the economy contracted. Patriarchal rhetoric, and occasional pro-natalist campaigns, have flourished in the media but have had little actual effect, given that women’s work remained vital to family budgets. Indeed, in 2017—in other words, long after the worst effects of the economic collapse of the 1990s were over—48.6% of the Russian workforce was female (206). Socio-economic inequality was a hallmark of Russia’s transition to a market economy, and rural poverty was simply staggering once the collective farms were dismantled. Having children became a luxury in rural communities. Engel also describes how exploding rates of alcoholism not only reduced male life-expectancy, but also led to an exponential increase in domestic violence—something which admittedly had never truly disappeared from everyday family life in the three hundred years covered by her book. As one can see from the contents of this review, Barbara Engel’s well-written new book offers quite a comprehensive look at all aspects of Russian family life in the modern era. Hence, it is both a welcome addition of the scholarly literature on the history of the family in Europe and an impressive resource for teaching.