This pioneering, wide-ranging history offers a bold new narrative of American family life, tracing its progress from an era of interdependence to one of individualism. Throughout periods of colonization, the Revolution, slavery, industrialization, immigration, and economic upheaval, American families survived and even flourished because reliance on others was patently necessary. But as author David Peterson del Mar shows, the unprecedented prosperity of the last century both freed Americans from mutual dependence and created a culture devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and individual fulfillment. This shift from obligation to freedom turned the maintenance of resilient families into a countercultural act, one that today requires a conscious decision to qualify the American commitment to freedom. Book jacket.