Aims and scope
The History of the Family: An International Quarterly makes a significant contribution by publishing works reflecting new developments in scholarship and by charting new directions in the historical study of the family.

Open to both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and with no chronological limitations, The History of the Family encourages articles on research across various cultures and societies in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific Rim, in addition to Europe, the United States and Canada. While firmly rooted in history, the journal is interdisciplinary; it publishes articles on demography, sociology, economy and health as they relate to historical developments in family and the life course. ‘Family history’ should therefore be understood in a broad sense.

The History of the Family publishes original research articles submitted by individual authors as well as special thematic issues, recent examples of which are ‘Urban Sanitation and the Decline of Mortality’, ‘Reproductive Politics and Sex Education in Cold War Europe’ and ‘Romantic Relationships Across Boundaries’. Original research articles are traditional journal papers, accepted for review with the stipulation that they are submitted exclusively to The History of the Family.

In addition, the journal publishes data notes and research notes, which include position papers, methodological reports, replication studies, descriptions of databases and other source materials. The research notes provide authors with an alternative opportunity to publish brief papers on important research issues and materials. Recent examples are research notes on ‘Using collaborative genealogy data to study migration’ and ‘The slave registers of Suriname, 1830–1865’.

All submitted manuscripts are subject to rigorous, double anonymized peer review. The History of the Family publishes highly-cited work indexed in the Thomson Reuters Social Science Index and Scopus.