ABSTRACT
In the 1600s, the English diarist Ralph Josselin used ‘the six nuclear-family terms “father”, “mother”, “brother”, “sister”, “son”, and “daughter” … to claim kinship with a wide circle of relatives by blood and marriage’. 1 Indeed, with these six terms Josselin acknowledged at least 32 people as ‘family’, raising important questions about early-modern ideas of family, friends and kin. According to Naomi Tadmor, Josselin’s ‘mother, stepmother, and mother-in-law, for example, were all recognized by him as “mothers”, with his daughters’ marriages he gained “sons”, and as his sisters married he recognized their husbands as “brothers”. In addition he had servants, whom he also recognized as members of his “family”, as well as other individuals claimed by him as kin and important “friends”’. 2
