Prehistoric: social organization is heavily structured through kinship and community; our public/private categories may not map neatly onto it.

Pre-modern: household, economy, politics, religion, and community substantially overlap.

Early modern: specialized public institutions and increasingly differentiated domestic life develop alongside one another.

Modern: society develops a particularly strong conceptual and institutional distinction between individual/household/private life and state/market/civil/public life.

And there is now arguably another transformation occurring. Digital technology destabilizes the modern distinction: people work from bedrooms, conduct intimate relationships on commercial platforms, publicly display domestic life through social media, and generate personal data that is processed by corporations and governments. In that respect, the very sharp public/private division associated with industrial modernity may be becoming more porous again.

One qualification is crucial: these period labels work best as a broad framework, particularly for European history, rather than as universal stages through which every society passed. Different cultures have drawn boundaries around household, community, political authority, secrecy, intimacy, and individual autonomy in substantially different ways.