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American family and demographic patterns and the northwest European model

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Daniel Scott Smith
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Continuity and Change , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , December 1993 , pp. 389 - 415
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

ENDNOTES

1 Peter, Laslett, ‘Characteristics of the western family considered over time’, Journal of Family History 2 (1977), 90.Google Scholar

2 Hajnal, , ‘Two kinds of pre-industrial household formation system’, in Richard, Wall et al. eds., Family forms in historic Europe (Cambridge, 1983), 65, 69Google Scholar. The formation rules of the contrasting joint household systems are: (a) earlier marriage for men and rather early marriage for women (mean ages at first marriage are under 26 for men and under 21 for women); (b) a young married couple often start life together in a household of which an older couple are in charge; and (c) households with several married couples may split to form two or more households, each containing one or more couples.

3 Also see his ‘European marriage patterns in perspective’, pp. 101–43Google Scholar in Glass, D. V. and Eversley, D. E. C. eds., Population in history (London, 1963).Google Scholar

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6 A historian from Canada, David Levine, has developed a Marxisant version of the model in a number of studies; see Reproducing families: the political economy of English population history (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar. Emmanuel Todd, a French sociologist, is responsible for the most sweeping elaboration: The explanation of ideology: family structure and social systems, trans. David, Garrioch (Oxford, 1985).Google Scholar

7 In The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, trans Talcott, Parsons (New York, 1958; orig. pub. 1904–1905)Google Scholar, Weber, of course, used the aphorisms of Benjamin Franklin to exemplify post-Calvinist capitalist ethics.

8 Warren, Sanderson, ‘Quantitative aspects of marriage, fertility and family limitation in nineteenth-century America: another application of the Coale specifications’, Demography 16 (1979), 339–58.Google Scholar

9 Cases included are Sturbridge (1780–1799), Northampton (1750–1799), Nantucket (1780–1839), Deerfield (1781–1800), and Hingham (1781–1800) in Massachusetts; middle colony Quakers (1756–1785); Prince George's County Maryland (1750–1800); and Virginia gentry women (1800–1839). From Table 1 (pp. 88–9) in Wells, Robert V., ‘The population of England's colonies in America: old English or new Americans?’, Population Studies 46 (1992), 85–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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11 If the birth record begins in 1700, and the first tabulated marriage cohort begins in 1720, it is obvious that no one who married over age 30 in the 1720–1729 period can enter the calculation. The way around this bias is to organize the early data by birth cohorts. There is, as Steven Ruggles has shown, an opposite bias in studies of marriage age based on the linkage of birth to marriage records; the calculation is biased downward because those who migrate before marriage are typically lost to observation; see his ‘Migration, marriage and mortality: correcting sources of bias in English family reconstitutions’, Population Studies 46 (1992), 507–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Nor is this difficulty novel. The English radical William Godwin correctly observed that the Hingham, Massachusetts, ratio of marriages to births, which Malthus had cited in favour of his argument for early marriage in America, was well within the values reported for western European populations. However, the child-woman ratio for the town was not attained nationally by the white population until 1870, after more than a half-century of declining child-woman ratios. Godwin was right about the numbers, but quite wrong about the larger picture. Malthus made an empirical mistake, but had the explanation more correctly: an object lesson, if a bit dangerous, for historical demographers today. See Smith, Daniel Scott, ‘Underregistration and bias in probate records: an analysis of data from eighteenth-century Hingham, Massachusetts’, William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser. 32 (1975), 102–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 As Hajnal notes, a high householder rate for young married men is compatible with a stem-household formation system in which the older couple retires at the time of marriage of the heir.

14 Steven, Ruggles, Prolonged connections: the rise of the extended family in nineteenth-century England and America (Madison, Wisc., 1987), 3–12.Google Scholar

15 Seward, Rudy Ray, The American family: a demographic history (Beverly Hills, 1978), Table 3.6 (p. 86)Google Scholar. For the censuses between 1850 and 1870, Seward had to infer generational depth from a combination of surnames and age differences among household members. It seems likely that the 1880 figure is closer to the mark than the inferred percentages for the 1850 to 1870 censuses.

16 See my ‘Historical change in the household structure of the elderly in economically developed societies’, in Fogel, Robert W. et al. eds., Aging: stability and change in the family (New York, 1981), 107.Google Scholar

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19 This phrase, from Genesis 2:24, was repeated in the Anglican marriage ceremony. See The book of common prayer, 1559, ed. John, Booty (Washington, D.C., 1976).Google Scholar

20 The fact that contracts of indentured servants made in England were purchased by others in America make it very unlikely that there would be a kinship tie between master and indentured servant.

21 In England, the average for 62 communities, 1574–1821, was 106.6 males per 100 females; Peter, Laslett, ‘Mean household size in England since the sixteenth century’, in Laslett, ed., Household and family in past-time (Cambridge, 1972), Table 4.13 (p. 152).Google Scholar

22 Galenson, David W., White servitude in colonial America: an economic analysis (New York, 1981), Tables 2.1, 2.2 (pp. 24–5)Google Scholar. It is likely that males were more willing than were females to become servants in America because the latter had to serve for a shorter period; ibid., Table 7.1 (p. 104).

23 Ann, Kussmaul, Servants in husbandry in early modern England (New York, 1981), 4, 145.Google Scholar

24 Morgan, Edmund S., American slavery, American freedom: the ordeal of colonial Virginia (New York, 1975), 126–8.Google Scholar

25 Steinfeld, Robert J., The invention of free labor: the employment relation in English and America law and culture, 1350–1870 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991), 122–72Google Scholar; Bernard, Elbaum, ‘Why apprenticeship persisted in Britain but not in the United States’, Journal of Economic History 49 (1989), 337–49.Google Scholar

26 Figures are from McCusker, John J. and Menard, Russell R., The economy of British America, 1607–1789 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1985), pp. 103, 136, 172, 203.Google Scholar

27 Counting slaves as members of their owners' households leads to very high figures for mean household size, as for example that of 43.6 on the island of Tobago in 1770 or 9.5 in South Carolina in 1790. However, mean household size for whites in the latter case was only 5.5; see Rossiter, W. S., A century of population growth (Washington, 1909)Google Scholar. See also Wells, Robert V., The population of the British colonies in America before 1776 (Princeton, 1975), 300.Google Scholar

28 Malthus, Thomas Robert, An essay on the principle of population, as it affects the future improvement of society (New York, 1960; orig. pub. 1798), pp. 9, 11–12.Google Scholar

29 See, most notably, Yasukichi, Yasuba, Birth ratesGoogle Scholar, and Richard, Easterlin, ‘Population change and farm settlement in the northern United States’, Journal of Economic History 36 (1976), 45–75Google Scholar. Variations in the availability of land are not the entire story of American fertility differentials and decline. For a review of the issues, see my ‘“Early” fertility decline in America: a problem in family history’, Journal of Family History 12 (1987), 73–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Domar, Evsey D., ‘The causes of slavery or serfdom: a hypothesis’, Journal of Economic History 30 (1970), 18–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar. for the value of the Domar hypothesis as a framework for early American history, see Solow, Barbara L., ‘Slavery and colonization’, in Solow, ed., Slavery and the rise of the Atlantic system (New York, 1991), 21–43, esp. pp. 35–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 For the argument and a discussion of the migration mechanism, see my ‘A Malthusian-frontier interpretation of United States demographic history before c. 1815’, in Woodrow, Borah, Jorge, Hardoy, and Stelter, Gilbert A. eds., Urbanization in the Americas: the background in comparative perspective (Ottawa, 1980), 15–24.Google Scholar

32 Smith, D. S., ‘“All in some degree related to each other”: a demographic and comparative resolution of the anomaly of New England kinship’, American Historical Review 94 (1989), 44–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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35 Ester, Boserup, The conditions of agricultural growth: the economics of agrarian change under population pressure (Chicago, 1965).Google Scholar

36 The high sex ratio among overseas immigrants ensured that female marriage ages were reduced more dramatically than male; see Jacques, Henripin, La population Canadienne au debut du XVllle siècle (Paris, 1954), 96Google Scholar; Hubert, Charbonneau et al. , Naissance d'une population: les Francois établis au Canada au XVIIe siècle (Montreal, 1987), 71Google Scholar; McInnis, R. M., ‘The fall in fertility in nineteenth-century Canada’ (unpublished paper for IUSSP conference on the peopling of the Americas, Veracruz, Mexico, 1992), 10Google Scholar; and Robert, Ross, ‘The age at marriage of white South Africans, 1700–1951’, in Christopher, Fyfe and David, McMaster eds., African historical demography (Edinburgh, 1981), vol. ii., 487–98.Google Scholar

37 David, Levine, Family formation in an age of nascent capitalism (New York, 1977), 16, 61.Google Scholar

38 See Gutmann, Myron P., Toward the modern economy: early industry in Europe, 1500–1800 (New York, 1988), 115–93Google Scholar; Spagnoli, Paul G., ‘Industrialization, proletarianization, and marriage: a reconsideration’, Journal of Family History 8 (1983), 230–47CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Lehning, James R., ‘Nuptiality and rural industry: families and labour in the French countryside’, Journal of Family History 8 (1983), 333–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gullickson, Gay L., Spinners and weavers of Auffay: rural industry and the sexual division of labour in a French village, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 1986), 129–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ulrich, Pfister, ‘Proto-industrialization and demographic change: the canton of Zurich revisited’, Journal of European Economic History 18 (1989), 629–62Google Scholar. More studies have shown that protoindustrialization was associated with population growth than with earlier and more universal marriage. Migration is the obvious source of population increase for small localities. While variation in the number of marriages correlates with price changes indicating protoindustrial activity, these relationships could be driven by migration into and out of the localities so affected rather than by the incidence of marriages in the currently unmarried population. See also Continuity and Change 8 (2), the special issue on protoindustrialization.

39 Greven, Philip J. Jr, Four generations: population, land and family in colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, N.Y., 1970)Google Scholar; Smith, Daniel Scott, ‘The demographic history of colonial New England’, Journal of Economic History 32 (1972), 176–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

40 Pope, Clayne L., ‘Households on the American frontier: the distribution of income and wealth in Utah, 1850–1900’, in Galenson, David W. ed., Markets in history: economic studies of the past (New York, 1989), 164–70Google Scholar; Jeremy, Atack and Fred, Bateman, To their own soil: agriculture in the antebellum North (Ames, Iowa, 1987), 92–101.Google Scholar

41 Elliott, Vivien Brodsky, ‘Single women in the London marriage market: age, status, and mobility’, in Outhwaite, R. B. ed., Marriage and society: studies in the social history of marriage (New York, 1982), 81–100Google Scholar. Even more suggestive in the doubts it raises about the familial mechanisms behind a Malthusian homeostatic regime is Elliott's finding that paternal death forced young women to migrate to London as servants and thereby delayed their entry into marriage. Some 64 per cent of migrant women had lost their fathers by the time of marriage compared to 47 per cent of women native to the high-mortality environment of the city. This micro-level result conflicts, of course, with the Malthusian homeostatic logic that connects higher mortality to the opening of economic niches and thus to earlier marriage of men and, implicitly, consequently of women, and thereupon to a subsequent increase in fertility and population growth. It should be noted that most of the empirical studies of both the Malthusian and the protoindustrial models have dealt with short-term fluctuations and long-term trends rather than individual-level behaviour.

42 Helena, Chojnacka, ‘Nuptiality patterns in an agrarian society’, Population Studies 30 (1976), 203–26Google Scholar; Coale, Ansley J., Barbara, Anderson and Erna, Harm, Human fertility in Russia since the nineteenth century (Princeton, 1979), 147–78.Google Scholar

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46 Of course, here is another of the unstated assumptions behind the Malthusian model: marriage was preferable to remaining single and earlier marriage better than later. No doubt this assumption has some validity, since the options open to the unmarried, particularly spinsters, were quite bleak.

47 A valuable comparative study of slavery and serfdom is provided by Peter, Kolchin, Unfree labor: American slavery and Russian serfdom (Cambridge, Mass., 1987)Google Scholar. Also see Peter, Laslett, ‘Household and family on the slave plantations of the U.S.A.’, in his Family life and illicit love in earlier generations: essays in historical sociology (Cambridge, 1977), 233–60.Google Scholar

48 For an interesting exception, see Hughes, Sarah S., ‘Slaves for hire: the allocation of black labor in Elizabeth City County, Virginia, 1782–1810’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. 35 (1978), 260–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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50 Klein, Herbert S., African slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (New York, 1986), 168–77.Google Scholar

51 Ralph, Shlomowitz, ‘The squad system on postbellum cotton plantations’, in Burton, Orville Vernon and McMath, Robert C. Jr eds., Towards a new South ? Studies in post-civil war Southern communities (Westport, Conn., 1980), 265–80Google Scholar; and Shaffer, John W., Family and farm: agrarian change and household organization in the Loire valley, 1500–1900 (Albany, N.Y., 1982).Google Scholar

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53 Gunnlaugsson, Gísli Ágúst, Family and household in Iceland, 1801–1930 (Uppsala, 1988)Google Scholar, and ‘Living arrangements of the elderly in a changing society: the case of Iceland, 1890–1930’, (paper presented at the 1991 SSHA meeting, New Orleans, published in Continuity and Change 8 (1), 1993, pp. 103–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 Steven, Ruggles, ‘Living arrangements of the elderly in America, 1880–1980’Google Scholar, and Richard, Wall, ‘Elderly persons and the members of their households in England and Wales from pre-industrial times to the present day’ (papers presented at the New Orleans meetings of the Social Science History Association, 1991).Google Scholar

55 See my ‘The curious history of theorizing about the history of the Western nuclear family’, Social Science History 17 (3), 1993, 325–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 See my ‘Parental power and marriage patterns: an analysis of historical trends in Hingham, Massachusetts’, Journal of Marriage and the Family 35 (1973), 419–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Muriel, Nazzari, Disappearance of the dowry: women, families, and social change in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1600–1900 (Stanford, 1991).Google Scholar

57 For an emphasis on the long-run development of such values, see North, Douglass C., Institutions, institutional change and economic performance (Cambridge, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar