The Patriarchy Index Ten Years After: The United States around 1900 and the European Comparison

This article revisits the Patriarchy Index (PI) a decade after its introduction, extending its scope to the United States around 1900 and situating it within the broader North Atlantic demographic regime. Using harmonized census microdata from IPUMS USA, NAPP, and Mosaic, we estimate PI values for the 1880 and 1910 U.S. censuses and compare them with contemporaneous European populations. The study provides the first systematic spatial mapping of family-based patriarchy in the United States, disaggregated by race and region, and identifies clusters and anomalies through spatial autocorrelation.Results show that U.S. counties at the turn of the twentieth century generally exhibited low levels of family patriarchy, with most values falling within the “low” range defined by earlier research. Yet beneath this pattern, significant internal variation emerges. Certain regions display PI values consistent with the Northwestern European model of weak family structure, while others—especially the South and West—register markedly higher scores, approaching those of Southeastern and Eastern Europe. Racial disaggregation reveals divergent trajectories: white households in parts of the South show moderately elevated PI values, whereas Black households tend to display lower scores, underscoring distinct family-driven gender dynamics.By 1910, the overall trajectory was one of depatriarchalization, with high-PI zones retreating and low values consolidating across most regions. These findings complicate the assumption that the Northwestern European model was simply transplanted into the United States. American regional profiles position themselves between the lower tails of Eastern European values and those of Ireland and Central Europe, while remaining distinct from the “core” North Atlantic populations. Rather than a straightforward transatlantic transfer, the U.S. family system appears as a composite formation: selectively receptive to Northwestern European norms in some regions, while retaining or intensifying patriarchal structures in others.The study underscores both the utility and the limitations of the PI framework. While effective in capturing family-based patriarchal structures in the period under investigation, the index becomes relatively insensitive once very low levels are reached and may not adequately reflect twentieth-century transformations. Future research should supplement the PI at least with dimensions of male and female wage labor to provide a more nuanced account of long-term depatriarchalization.