The family in early modern Scotland includes all aspects of kinship and family life, between the Renaissance and the Reformation of the sixteenth century and the beginnings of industrialisation and the end of the Jacobite risings in the mid-eighteenth century in Scotland.
Scottish kinship in this period was agnatic, with descent judged through a common ancestor, helping to create the surname system in the Borders and the clans in the Highlands, with these systems beginning to break down in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries respectively. There was considerable concern over the safety of children. The abolition of godparents in the Reformation meant that baptism became a mechanism for emphasising the role and responsibilities of fathers. Wet-nurses were used for young children, but in most families mothers took the primary role in bringing up children, while the Kirk emphasised the role of the father for older children. After the Reformation there was an increasing emphasis on education, resulting in the growth of a parish school system, but its effects were limited for the children of the poor and for girls. Most children left home for a period of life-cycle service, as domestic or agricultural servants or as apprentices before marriage.
Marriages were often the subject of careful negotiations, particularly higher in society. Marriage lost its sacramental status at the Reformation and irregular marriage continued to be accepted as valid throughout the period. Women managed the household and might work beside their husbands and, although obedience to husbands was stressed, this may have been limited in practice. Divorce developed after the Reformation and was available for a wider range of causes and accessed by a much larger section of society than in England. Because of high mortality rates widowhood was a relatively common state, and some women acquired independence and status, but others were forced into a marginal existence and remarriage was common. The elaborate funerals and complex system of prayers for the dead that dominated in late Medieval Scotland were removed at the Reformation and simpler services adopted. Burial inside the church was discouraged. As a result separate aisles for the rich and graveyards with stone markers for the majority became common.