Those in marginal family formations - spinsters, bachelors, orphans, unmarried mothers, the insane, and the aged - have largely been overlooked by historians. Building on the new theoretical proposition that the family must be seen as a regulatory institution of unequal hierarchies of age, gender, and social status, Mapping the Margins challenges the view that the nuclear family was dominant in Canada and provides significant new evidence to help understand family life historically. In constructing broader arguments about the changing relationship between the family, the individual, and the state, this innovative volume charts a new interpretive framework that sees the family as a central arbiter in constructing identities and politics in the modernizing world.Contributors include Denyse Baillargeon (Université de Montréal), Bettina Bradbury (York University), Josette Brun (Université Laval), Nancy Christie (Hamilton), Gwendolyn Davies (University of New Brunswick), Michael Gauvreau (McMaster University), Peter Gossage (Université de Sherbrooke), Ollivier Hubert (Université de Montréal), Jack Little (Simon Fraser University), James Moran (University of Prince Edward Island), Suzanne Morton (McGill University), Matt Savelli (McMaster University), Michele Stairs (York University), James Struthers (Trent University), and David Wright (McMaster University).