Monica Hardin's short monograph is a careful demographic analysis of households and short-term changes in them in Guadalajara from 1811–1842. The focus on specific households, in particular cuarteles, or neighbourhood units, and their changes between censuses distinguishes this study from most other household studies. As the author writes, ‘My work specifically demonstrates that, whereas the average household composition (e.g. whether nuclear or extended households) varied hardly at all between 1821 and 1822, the “average” person often lived in completely different residential arrangements in 1822 compared to 1821’ (p. 3). While this is an accurate statement of her findings, it very much understates the value of this fine work.
The primary sources for this study are the censuses of 1821 and 1822 with complementary information from the censuses of 1811, 1813, 1839 and 1842 for Guadalajara. These censuses include information on individuals (name, age, occupation, sometimes race, and position in household), households, and geographic location by cuartel. Hardin is interested in changes within households, rather than aggregate changes in household metrics, and therefore she develops a methodology that allows her to isolate the households that persisted between censuses. She starts by analysing the censuses of 1821 and 1822, isolating the ten cuarteles that appeared in both censuses. The analysis of these cuarteles by household head allows her to construct the first data on persistence of households between the two censuses. That analysis gives the astounding result that 69.8 per cent of households were transient (did not have the same household head) between the two censuses (p. 49). This extraordinary rate of household formation and dissolution is an extremely important finding for understanding globally of the family in history and in Latin America.
An important strength of Hardin's work is the way she contextualises it within the historiography of demographic and community studies of the family. Beginning with Peter Laslett's iconic work on the continuity in size and composition of the nuclear family over three centuries in western Europe, Hardin examines work from Canada, the United States, France, Spain, the Netherlands and other areas in Latin America on relevant aspects of household organisation and change. On the particular point of frequent and rapid population changes in residence within urban communities, she notes similar findings or suggestions in the works of Michael Swann, Michael Scardaville, Dennis Valdes, Linda Greenow, David Robinson, Robert McCaa, and David Reher among others. In chapter two Hardin argues that the high level of transience did not result from the political turmoil of the independence period, but rather was the common experience of communities in the period.
Hardin's analysis of why households changed so rapidly finds that older household heads who were Spanish, male, married, and relatively prosperous were more likely to persist as heads over time. Race and/or ethnicity were not reliable categories in the censuses, but partial data suggests that Spaniards were more likely to have stable households. Sex of head of household was also important as an indicator of stability with female heads of household substantially less stable than male heads (p. 55). Occupation also was somewhat significant in the prediction of household stability.
Most striking, however, is Hardin's analysis of change within stable households reflected in these censuses. Of the 27.7 per cent of households persisting from 1821 to 1822, 79.4 per cent did not have the same members in 1822 as they did in 1821. This was because they took in or lost children, kin, boarders and/or servants (p. 92). This result seems very much at odds with the simultaneous finding that average measures of household size, number of children, number of kin, boarders or servants changed little from 1821 to 1822 (Table 4.1). But the changes Hardin documents are only apparent by analysing the censuses by individual household and not according to aggregate change. The data also show that household structure became modified for 38.7 per cent of persisting households, such that many that had been nuclear households became extended or multiple family-related or unrelated households, or vice versa. This finding of significant incorporation and shedding of kin and non-kin among households over a very short time period reinforces prior research by several scholars. It strongly supports the views that the role of the extended family and kinship within and among households is a fundamental characteristic for household survival.
The data on children are especially striking in this study. The movement of children into and out of Guadalajara households from 1821 to 1822 characterised 52.6 per cent of persisting households. This includes non-kin children for 60 per cent of persisting households and a remarkable number of children under the age of ten (p. 98). Hardin also notes that some of the movement is circular, as children often left and later returned to the household. In this section Hardin references studies on the history of childhood and child circulation, but seems uncertain if child circulation was related to domestic service, as Nara Milanich and Ann Blum have argued. She also notes that prosperous households were more likely than poorer households to expand and to add non-kin (both adults and children).
It becomes clear in the conclusion that Hardin has a methodological objective in this study in addition to her interest in household stability. She feels that demographic studies that use single censuses or that use samples of censuses for aggregate analysis are intrinsically inadequate to understand the dynamics of the family and household. She makes a compelling case that tracing households over time, utilising individual information on members, provides important information on household dynamics. Hardin argues against the use of the developmental or life course approach to family history espoused by Tamara Hareven that ‘decided against tracing real families over time’ (p. 123, note 2). Hardin points out that an aggregate analysis of the Guadalajara data would not have shown the mobility among households that she believes ‘was the means by which most families coped with the necessities of the times’ (p. 122). This study provides important insights for historians into the family, especially for those concerned with methodological approaches to census analysis.
