European Family Systems and Demography, Past to Present

Since the works of John Hajnal in the 1960s, scholars debated how family systems have been the basis for different forms of socio-economic devel-opment in the regions of Europe. The proliferation of studies in recent decades has highlighted the complexity of the phenomenon, seeking to study not only the consequences but also the causes underlying the forms of domestic organisation. Starting from these debates, this chapter investigates the changes in marriage patterns from the Middle Ages to the present day in Europe, focusing on how the forms of kinship formation, property transmis-sion, cohabitation, and cooperation responded not only to social and cultural transformations, but were also a response to changing demographic dy-namics, mainly the force of mortality, and the optimization of environmental exploitation. We also investigate how these family forms have in turn affected the lives of men and women through marriage strategies, fertility dynamics and exclusion practices.