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Family Control, Bridal Pregnancy, and Illegitimacy
An Event History Analysis in Leuven, Belgium, 1846–1856
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Extract
Extramarital pregnancy and illegitimate childbearing have been interpreted by historians as well as sociologists basically in terms of deviant behavior and lack of social control (Tranter 1985; Blaikie 1995). While society has looked at procreation outside marriage as a moral lapse, social science has regarded it in terms of deviancy, as “something which interrupted the proper functioning of social processes, and revealed a failure of social control, the control of individual behavior by family and kin, by political and educational authority” (Laslett 1980a: 1–2).Within this framework, interpretations of the “illegitimacy explosion” of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries have almost invariably referred toweakening social control as a result of industrialization, urbanization, and migration. In the 1970s, the debate on the rise of illegitimacy was centered on Edward Shorter's contention that women's emancipation produced rising extramarital sexual activity. This article does not reopen that dispute (see Shorter 1971, 1975: 255–68; Tilly et al. 1976; Lee 1977; Fairchilds 1978; Alter 1988). Rather, it starts from the common ground underlying the different interpretations, which associates adolescent extramarital pregnancy with social isolation. Scholars have argued that migration and new living and working conditions often led to separation from the family and local community. This change would have resulted in the collapse of traditional social control, making premarital intercourse more likely.
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