4. Family and Marriage in History

History of family history

• A field of study from the 1960s/1970s:

  • Family structures

  • Child rearing

  • Gender relations within the family

  • Sexual behaviour

  • Generational relations
    
    

Methods of historical Family/Household Research

• What is family? What is a household?

  • A): John Hajnal’s model of European marriage patterns:

    • based on demographic theories (DTM, Malthusian) and aggregated data of censuses

    • creates generalized rules on European (world) scale

  • B): Annales School (Pierre Chaunu, Louis Henry) // Cambridge Group (P. Laslett, A. Wrigley) - Family Reconstruction

    • uses historical statistical data and social historical theories

    • based on case studies, particular social historical research

John Hajnal - European marriage patterns (Princeton Indices)

Nuptiality: the rate of married women aged 15-49 compared to all women aged 15-49, i.e. of child-bearing/reproductive age
Marital fertility: fertility rates of married women, either at specific ages or the full range of reproductive ages

• (North/West) European pattern:

  • high age at marriage (25 yrs+)

  • high proportion of people who never marry at all (approx. 10%)

• Eastern European pattern:

  • early marriage (20-24 yrs)

  • dominant proportion get married

European marriage patterns (nuptiality) & household formation

• European marriage pattern is unique

  • High avg. age at marriage can be traced back to the first half of the 18th century
    
    

Economic system’s influence on marriage patterns & patterns of household formation:

• European pattern:

  • a person would usually have some years of adult life before marriage

  • this is the period of maximum productivity without responsibility for children

  • saving in this period would be easy — it is the basis for future own family

  • originates in stem-family structure (land descends to a single heir)

• Eastern European pattern:

  • system of larger estates with large households

  • young people wouldn’t establish an own household but would stay within the household of their ancestors’

Family History — view “from below”

I. Annales School (Louis Henry, Pierre Chaunu)

• demographic approach; investigates family structures with strong reliance on individual level data

• methods: statistical analysis of personal/individual data gained from non-statistical sources; method: family reconstruction/reconstitution

• aim: reconstructing demographic patterns in pre-statistical times
  
  

II. England - Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure (Peter Laslett, Anthony E. Wrigley)

• same method is applied to reveal family & household patterns: to better understand the functioning & changes of economic and social institutions (landholdings, inheritance, religion, and community structure)

Family Reconstitution / Cambridge Group

• One-place study: prime objective is to transcribe the registers of christenings, marriages and burials of the parish church

• based on individual data related to members of a family can be connected in a database: thus is to reconstruct their families

• this is then correlated with the other archival records such as tax, land and testamentary documents to become a source of academic analysis

• uses historical statistical data and social historical theories

Parish Registers — Available Data

• name of child

• date of birth

• whether the child was legitimate (lawful) or illegitimate (natural)

• date of baptism (and sometimes the date of birth)

• name of the parents (although mothers’ names are not always recorded)

• age of the parents

• place or parish of residence

• father’s occupation

• names of witnesses and occasionally occupations or their relationship to the child (if any)

• the minister’s name and church where the baptism took place

Result of Parish Registers

• nominal database of inhabitants of a parish in a defined period & place

• enables the researcher to connect individuals & affiliated information as well as to identify members of the same family

• family-sheets are created (containing each member + related information)

• provides case studies that serve as the base for the aggregation of statistical information in a pre-statistical time. It becomes possible to analyze demographic processes from a view from below, e.g.:

  • the age of the mother at each birth

  • the time elapsed between the marriage and the 1st, 2nd… last delivery

  • the age of the mother at the time of the last delivery

• former historiographers (e.g.: DTM) presumed that in traditional European societies, early marriage was general and contraception was not widespread

• Hajnal’s model challenged these assumptions

• Family reconstruction research partly refuted this idea:

  • P. Chaunu (based on J. Hajnal’s findings as well): “Marriage age-structure in the Ancient Régime curtailed wedlock by 6-7 years. Classic Europe’s tool against high fertility was the age of the bride.”

  • Contraception was not really widespread— the age of mothers at the time of the last delivery was high (no sign of stopping): approx. 40 yrs

  • BUT they started delivery late (because of late marriage) that is why fertility rates could remain moderately high (cf. A. Coale’s findings — last class)

Cambridge Group of the History of Population and Social Structure

• Founded by Peter Laslett and Anthony Wrigley, 1964

  • Investigated demographic practices (emphasised the importance of changes in fertility at the onset of the demographic transition — vs. DTM)

  • Investigated family structures (based on family reconstruction)

• Peter Laslett’s large-scale analysis:

  • Birth registers in Britain contain less information than in France (or in Italy or in Spain)

  • “It is simply untrue as far as we can yet tell that there was ever a time or space where the complex family was the universal background for ordinary lives of ordinary people.” (Laslett, Household and Family in Past Time, 1972)

Household classification — P. Laslett

• Type 1- Solitaries

  • people living alone

• Type 2 - No family

  • living together who Laslett thought did not constitute a ‘family’

• Type 3 - Simple family

  • couples and their children without any other type of relative

• Type 4 - Extended family

  • plus one or more relatives who do not form other couples

• Type 5 - Multiple family

  • households containing more than one couple are closely related in some way

• Type 6 - Indeterminate

  • —

Family life-cycle

• Laslett’s typology provides a stationary modell (enables comparison but disregards changes within the family/in an individual life)

• Michel Mitterauer

  • Questions the “monolithic” concept of family

  • cyclical nature of families:

    1. preparation (couples before having children)

    2. primary socialization (after the child/ren born)

    3. -4. families with preadolescent/adolescent children (developing new function of the family)
       5. contraction (after kids leaving the family)

History of Children

• A strong impetus came from the publication of Philippe Ariés’s Centuries of Childhood (1960; English: 1962)

  • reveals the importance of using cultural evidence along with demographic data

  • Children are “invented”, recognized not before the 17th C.

  • Children/childhood is a social construction

• Framed within the issues of family structure, changing relations within the family

1. Early agricultural societies

1. pre-transition phase (traditional demographic régime)

2. strong, patriarchal family structure

3. (methods/use of) birth control is limited

4. households are complex systems, with all members involved in the maintenance of the whole

5. children are involved early in family economy/work

6. little emotional value is placed on children (?!)

2. Western families, 17th century (dem. transition phase: declining birth rates, less child in a family)

1. development of stronger emotional ties: parents adopted a new loving and permissive attitude that allowed children greater freedom

2. parents having less children, pursued their emotional and economic satisfaction in those children (children as investment)

3. criticized by: Linda Pollock, Forgotten Children. Parent-Child relations from 1500 to 1900, CUP 1983.

3. Modern, industrial families

1. manufacturing (father) has moved outside the home

2. mother’s increased role in child rearing (gendered nature of child rearing emerges)

3. growing concern for education— adolescence as a new stage of life

4. glorified childhood: toys, book & new rules

5. physical punishment is replaced with the shame of guilt as a primary disciplinary method (control instead of punishment)

6. but: also a loss of parental authority as children became socialized outside home as well (and often early wage earners themselves)