In De la démocratie en Amérique, Tocqueville describes a comprehensive social change in American democracy that also affects family structures and gender relations (Tocqueville 2010, 1, 17). No less than five chapters in De la démocratie en Amérique deal explicitly with the family and the social understanding of roles in American society (see Chaps. 116 and 117 ). Tocqueville’s judgments were quite surprising to his contemporaries: Nowhere has paternal authority disappeared so completely and with so little bitterness. Nowhere is there greater mutual respect between the sexes, and nowhere is the education of girls and boys more secular and egalitarian.