Families of a new world: Gender, politics, and state development in a global context

In classical liberal theory, the family is conceived of as a realm unto itself, distinct from civil society and immured from incursions by the state. This theoretical separation does not, however, hold up very well under historical scrutiny. The simultaneous development of modern states and the bourgeois family in the West, and the attempted imposition of a Western family model throughout the colonial world, not only challenge the notion that states and families occupied "separate spheres" but call for further inquiry into the nature of their relationship during the period of nation- and empire-building that spanned the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries.