The most critical change in world view and values ""possibly in the last thousand years of Western history"" is the shift from ""distance, deference and patriarchy"" to what Stone (best known for work in early modern English history) calls ""Affective Individualism."" In this massive, aptly illustrated book, he explains and analyzes the change, taking as example the development of the modern family. The 16th-century ""Open Lineage Family""--a cool economic and political calculation for the good of kin, community, and the male line--is replaced by the ""Restricted Patriarchal Nuclear Family"" (1550-1700), under pressure of an authoritarian state, patriarchal protestant theology, and Reformation upheaval to become a sterner agent of social control. In ""the great age of the whip"" children are ""broken"" for the good of their souls, wives for the pleasure of their husbands. Counter-trends toward greater freedom and equality (the recognition that coercion has limits) yield the ""Closed Domesticated Nuclear Family"" (1640-1800), increasingly egalitarian and affectionate, increasingly withdrawn from interests of kin and community. Husband, wife, and kids like one another better and the world less...[click on Kirkus Reviews for the rest of the review]