Wilfrid Laurier University Scholars Commons @ Laurier History Faculty Publications History Fall 2000 “The iH story of Us”: Social Science, History, and the Relations of Family in Canada Cynthia Comacchio Wilfrid Laurier University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/hist_faculty Recommended Citation Comacchio, Cynthia, "“The iH story of Us”: Social Science, History, and the Relations of Family in Canada" (2000). History Faculty Publications. 6. http://scholars.wlu.ca/hist_faculty/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the History at Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. "The History of Us": Social Science, History, and the Relations of Family in Canada Cynthia Comacchio JUST AS THE 20TH CENTURY gasped its last, Canada's purported national newspaper pledged an "unprecedented editorial commitment" to "get inside the institution that matters the most to Canadians: the bricks themselves, our children, our families." Judging by the stories emanating weekly from "real families" in Toronto, Calgary and Montréal, commitment to "the bricks" remains strong despite unremitting bleak prophecies about the family's decline. There is much concern, however, that their mortar is disintegrating. At the dawn of a new millennium, Canadians worry about such abiding issues as the decision to have children, their number and timing; finding decent, affordable shelter; whether both parents will work for wages and how child care will be managed [and paid for] if they do; how domestic labour will be apportioned; what single parents must do to get by; and — most pressing of all — how to master the wizardry that might reconcile the often-conflicting pressures of getting a living with those of family.' These "family matters" strike certain transhistorical chords.