The Family in Utopia: Celibacy,Communal Child Rearing,and Continuity in a Religious Commune

Abstract

The Shakers sought to replace the nuclear family with the Shaker family through their unorthodox family practices of celibacy and communal child rearing. Although these practices may have been beneficial in some respects, they contributed to the numerical decline of the Shakers. A quantitative analysis of the children (joined with parents or adopted by the society) in Shaker communities between 1850 and 1870 shows that children with natural family ties were more likely than other children to persist in Shaker communities, and a significant fall in the proportion of those who were more likely to persist contributed to the decline in total membership.