The decline of the family is a staple complaint in Maltese public discourse and beyond. Unfortunately, the discussion itself is all too often marred by ignorance. The present is compared with the past… with scarcely much knowledge of the real past, or, indeed, much knowledge of the actual present.

Sometimes, however, we get a rare opportunity to hear someone discuss the family, as an institution, with real knowledge. One such scholar is Martine Segalen, emeritus professor at the University of Paris, who will be giving a public lecture tomorrow.

Segalen’s work has spanned the entire range of family studies from the millennial history of the western family to the examination of seemingly minute details, like changing patterns of naming and nomenclature, but which turn out to be revealing of much broader processes of personal identity and kinship structures.

Her historical studies have burrowed deeply into one region of France, as with her study of kinship in Lower Brittany between 1720 and 1980. They also include a comparative study of love and power in peasant family in 19th-century rural France, a classic work that overturned much of the conventional wisdom on the subject – the fact that today many of its conclusions seem unsurprising testifies to the impact and spread of Segalen’s work.

The idea that only our kind of society cares for romantic love is one such myth

She is also co-editor of the standard (in French and in English) two-volume history of the (mostly western) family, a work that begins with the prehistory of its subject and continues with examinations of the various family systems one finds in the history of what we now call ‘the West’, the Jewish family, the Roman family, the impact of Christianity and, later, industrialisation, all the way down to the family in the US and in the modern Scandinavian welfare state.

That collaborative work throws a cold light on some of the questions raised in public debate today. The idea that the family is in crisis is a long-standing obsession of industrial and post-industrial society, although for different reasons. With obsessions come myths, of both the self-congratulating and the self-flagellating varieties.

The idea that only our kind of society cares for romantic love is one such myth. So is the notion that family bonds are not as important as they generally were in traditional societies. There may have been more nuclear families in the wake of the collapse of the Roman empire than there were subsequently in the Middle Ages. In today’s Europe, family connections remain important for getting a job; and, in periods of economic downturns, when jobs are scarce, intergenerational dependence increases.

This kind of broad framework enables us to recognise important historical continuities in western family structures and, hence, puts us in a better position to evaluate the changes, point by point.

Segalen has done this in different contexts. She is (to my knowledge uniquely) the author of textbooks on both the sociology and the historical anthropology of the family. She has a great ability to sum up a mass of disparate detailed material in a simple but illuminating way. Simple but not too simple. Her account of the family is always three dimensional: the emotional bond between the couple, the raising of children and the management of the household.

The style in which all this is written is of a piece with the substance. Clear, full of human warmth, letting the larger picture emerge from the mosaic of telling detail, with the occasional startling direct question (‘who do children belong to in the age of custody cases and IVF?’), the style is congruent with the analysis: the family, as such, is not in chaos; it is dynamic and resilient, but to know why one has to look at the details.

In recent years, she has turned her attention to the changing role of grandparents and the changing identity of children. Given this historical and comparative expertise, no one is more qualified than Segalen to answer questions on the future of the family.

Segalen will be giving the Third Goody Lecture in Society, Culture and History, entitled ‘The Importance of Being Kin’, at the Goody Library, Valletta Campus of the University of Malta, tomorrow at 6pm.