Agricultural families can be traced back to 11,000 years ago. At the end of the hunter-gatherer period, something called the agricultural period in which agricultural societies spread all over the world and changed the basic family structure to the way we know it today. All within one chunk of land animals were domesticated and plants were harvested, and this is how the agricultural family originally developed. This as a result meant more stabilized lives because these were now permanent homes as opposed to temporary settlements. .
This lifestyle provided much more food, but lots of manual labour was required which was quite tiring. In turn, the hard labour led to the number of children per family to increase greatly so that there could be as much help around the land and with the animals as possible. The wealth of a family had everything to do with the size of their land as well as their family. The bigger the family, the more land they were capable of prospering. .
Soon after the concept of agriculture began, everything a family produced began to be controlled and distributed and "private" properties came into existence. Now people had to work to defend their property. Men who didn't work on farms became other professions within the city. Women became more involved in household activities. Families at this stage were highly organized. .
Monogamy became the preferred marital status in most parts of the world. Patriarchy was established which meant the men were the decision makers and rulers of everyone that lived under their roof. This is when women became the property of their husbands and had few legal rights. .
Arranged marriages became more common because that way families were guaranteed to soon have more children in the family. At this point in time, children were considered an economic asset. .
When young adults would get married, but would not move out of the family's home and have their own kids there, that would become an extended family.
