The physical and ideological boundaries between public and private in early modern Scotland were constantly contested, resulting in a shifting reality of what was public and private. This fluidity has been recognized by historians, but how, when, and why the shifting took place is not as clear. The moral church courts (Kirk Sessions) of Reformation Scotland allow a unique opportunity to begin to understand the largely elusive boundaries between public and private in the early modern era.
IN HISTORICAL SCOTLANDhe history of the family, and of child upbringing and the place of women within and without the home, is so neglected in Scotland as to verge on becoming a historiographical disgrace." 1 T.C. Smout wrote these words in 1986 and his concerns were echoed by historians throughout the early 1990's. 2 As families were the basic building blocks of communities, social historians recognized the centrality of understanding family life in Scotland, to understanding Scottish society. Recent studies have begun the mammoth task of finding the family in historic Scotland. This issue of Scottish Tradition seeks to contribute to this process by bringing together some of the recent work done by scholars engaged in the study of the historical family.The advancement of family history has been most successful in work done on the modern era. Family studies began slowly with publications on women such as Uncharted Lives by the Glasgow Women's Group, as well as Out of Bounds and World is Ill Divided edited by Esther Breitenbach and Eleanor Gordon. These early works influenced the development of family history in Scotland and historians such as Leah Leneman realized the large gap in knowledge and began to publish prolifically. 3 Recently family historians of the modern era have been able to build upon these earlier works and they have expanded their frameworks to include aspects of gender and class which bring a level of sophistication to studies of the modern family in Scotland. 4 The articles in this issue by Andrew Blaikie, Lynn Abrams, and Ann-Marie Hughes are excellent examples of this sophisticated approach to the modern family. These articles also illustrate how much work still needs to be done to create a more comprehensive understanding of the family in modern Scotland.
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