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Remarriage in a pre-transitional Italian community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2007

MARCO BRESCHI ,
MATTEO MANFREDINI  and
ALESSIO FORNASIN
MARCO BRESCHI
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Sassari.
MATTEO MANFREDINI
Affiliation:
Department of Genetics, Anthropology and Evolution, University of Parma.
ALESSIO FORNASIN
Affiliation:
Department of Statistics, University of Udine.
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Abstract

The article explores the roles of household compositional factors and socio-economic status on widowhood and remarriage. By using micro-level data from a nineteenth-century Italian community for the period 1819–1859, we found evidence of the very predominant role of household structure in the decision to remarry for both widows and widowers. In particular, the interplay between the presence of a supportive family network and the presence of coresiding children from previous marriages stood out as the key factors. The presence of children aged 12 and under promoted the search for a new bride for widowers, whilst the presence of children of any age, especially young ones, decreased the chances of remarriage for widows.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , December 2007 , pp. 407 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

END NOTES

1  Bacci, M. Livi, ‘On the frequency of remarriage in nineteenth century Italy: methods and results’, in Dupâquier, J., Hélin, E., Laslett, P., Livi Bacci, M. and Segner, E. eds., Marriage and remarriage in populations of the past (London, 1981)Google Scholar.

2  See, among others, Knodel, J., Demographic behavior in the past: a study of fourteen German village populations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Cambridge, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wrigley, E. A., Davies, R. S., Oeppen, J. E. and Schofield, R. S., English population history from family reconstitution 1580–1837 (Cambridge, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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10  In these latter cases insufficient information was provided on relationships within the household to enable the structure of the household to be determined.

11  The amount required to pay corresponded roughly to 70 kg of wheat on average for the highest class, and to less than 4 kg for the lowest one. However, some very poor families might be allowed to pay in instalments.

12  When the data-entry began, all the parish books – Status Animarum and registers of births, marriages and deaths – were kept in the parish archives of the church of Casalguidi. Today they are filed in the Diocesan Historical Archives of the city of Pistoia.

13  The linkage technique is described in Manfredini, M., ‘L'utilizzo degli Status Animarum nelle riconstruzioni nominative: miglioramenti informativi qualitativi: il caso di Madregolo (1629–1914)’, Bollettino di Demografia Storica 24/25 (1996), 113–29Google Scholar.

14  The number of tax brackets changed over the period studied. There were six levels between 1819 and 1848, seven in 1849 and ten in 1850. Finally, beginning in 1851, the number of categories rose to fourteen. However, these changes concerned almost exclusively the two poorest tax categories which were divided into more sub-groups. In conjunction with the necessity to have a large number of observations for each tax group, these variations made it impossible for us to adopt a finer classification of social status by amount of tax paid. It would be impossible in fact to identify movements within the Low-Tax category for those who married before 1848 and who were widowed later. At present the family tax registers are kept in the Historical Archive of the community of Serravalle Pistoiese.

15  Unfortunately, the Status Animarum was drawn up at Easter while the tax register was compiled in the autumn or in January. Since we defined as ‘poor’ those households listed in the Status Animarum but not recorded on the tax registers, the imperfect synchrony of the two sources may have overestimated their number. Some of the unlinked households may in fact have been taxed. However, the proportion of households recorded on the tax registers but not found on the Status Animarum is very low, under 5 per cent.

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17  For some marriages reconstructed from the Status Animarum it is impossible to determine the marital status of non-local spouses coming to Casalguidi (see Section 3).

18  Breschi, M., La popolazione della Toscana dal 1640 al 1940: un'ipotesi di ricostruzione, (Florence, 1990)Google Scholar.

19  Livi Bacci, ‘On the frequency of remarriage’, 355.

20  Other consequences such as emigration and the survival of orphans have been investigated earlier, see M. Breschi and M. Manfredini, ‘Parental loss and kin networks: demographic repercussions in a rural Italian village’, in R. Derosas R. and M. Oris eds., When dad died: individuals and families coping with distress in past societies, (Bern, 2002); M. Breschi and M. Manfredini, ‘Individual and family mobility: first results from an analysis on two Italian rural villages’, in D. Barjot and O. Faron eds., Migrations, cycle de vie et marchè du travail, Cahiers des Annales de Demographie Historique 3 (2002), 43–64.

21  Obviously, married women living in an untaxed household cannot have had their tax burden reduced after the husband's death, but only unchanged or increased. However, we argue that this latter possibility was mainly due to widows joining other households after the husband's death. In the Status Animarum it is not always easy to understand who joined whom in a fusion of family groups since we do not have information on addresses. However, we believe that the families of widows who did not join other households after their spouse's death were particularly disadvantaged. It was, in fact, to be expected that there would be powerful incentives for widows to join other households – rejoining, for example, their parents' family – and this fact would have obviously masked, in terms of the tax paid by the family, the possibly dramatic economic consequences for a woman when she was widowed.

22  Among the large number of works on this issue see Bideau, A., ‘A demographic and social analysis of widowhood and remarriage: the example of the Castellany of Thoissey-en-Dombes, 1670–1840’, Journal of Family History 5 (1980), 28–43CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; C. A. Corsini, ‘Why is remarriage a male affair? Some evidences from Tuscan villages during the eighteenth century’, in Dupâquier et al. eds., Marriage and remarriage; Poppel, F. van, ‘Widows, widowers and remarriage in nineteenth century Netherlands’, Population Studies 49 (1995), 421–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A. Schiaffino, ‘Quelques données sur le remarriage dans un milieu urbain’, Dupâquier et al. eds., Marriage and remarriage.

23  A. Bideau and A. Perrenoud, ‘Remariage et fécondité: contribution à l'etude des mécanismes de récuperation des populations anciennes’, in Dupâquier et al. eds., Marriage and remarriage.

24  Usually, the emigration of young children was not sufficient to reduce the social stigma attached to remarrying widows, who would still be seen as ‘cruel mothers’ who did not care for their own infants. The situation would be different if it was older children who left.

25  M. d'Amelia, ‘Le autonomie riconosciute’, in Rimanere vedovi: storia, dati, problemi della nuova vedovanza in Italia, Famiglia Oggi, 8–9 (1997).

26  Derosas, R., ‘A family affair: marriage, mobility, and living arrangements in nineteenth-century Venice’, in van Poppel, F., Lee, J., and Oris, M. eds., The road to independence: leavers and stayers in the household in Europe (Bern, 2003)Google Scholar.

27  Tittarelli, ‘Choosing a spouse’, 276.

28  Blom, ‘The history of widowhood’, 194–200.

29  Van Poppel, ‘Widows, widowers and remarriage’, 423–6.