Mimetic appetite for marriage in nineteenth-century flanders: Gender disadvantage as an incentive for social change

Journal of Family History

Volumn 27, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 101-127

  Matthijs, Koen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEUVEN   (Belgium)

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EID: 0347199492     PISSN: 03631990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/036319900202700203     Document Type: Review

References (72)

1. J. Hajnal, "European Marriage Patterns in Perspective," in Population in History, ed. D. V. Glass and D. E. Eversley (London: Edward Arnold, 1965), 101-43.
2. Hajnal's basic claim was never thoroughly negated. Both aspects - marriage intensity and age at first marriage - are often empirically linked: either early, frequent marriages or late, few marriages. In fact, all combinations are possible. See S. C. Watkins, "Spinsters," Journal of Family History 9, no. 4 (1984): 310-25;
3. L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (London: Weidenfeld, 1977);
4. R. B. Dixon, "Late Marriage and Non-Marriage as Demographic Responses: Are They Similar?" Population Studies 32, no. 3 (1978): 449-66;
5. J. R. Lehning, "Nuptiality and Rural Industry: Families and Labor in the French Countryside," Journal of Family History 8, no. 4 (1983): 333-45;
6. J. R. Lehning, "The Timing and Prevalence of Women's Marriage in the French Department of the Loire, 1851-1891," Journal of Family History 13, no. 3 (1988): 307-27.
7. Sometimes, the Malthusian marriage pattern is also mentioned because this pattern boils down to the practical fulfillment of what Thomas Malthus recommended: without consciously limiting the number of births within the marriage but still keeping the number of offspring in balance with the economic subsistence possibilities. See T. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; reprint, London: Penguin, 1985).
8. G. Alter, "New Perspectives on European Marriage in the Nineteenth Century" Journal of Family History 16, no. 1 (1991): 1-5.
9. F. Van Poppel, "Marriage as a Farewell to Youth: Regional and Social Differentiation in the Age at Marriage in the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands," Pedagogica Historia 29, no. 1 (1993): 93-123.
10. At the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries, marriages are "few" and "late." The backgrounds to this are of course not the same as those of the Early Modern period. Today, better education, the high level of employment outside the home, and changed ideas about marriage play a major role in the postponement and cancellation of marriage.
11. If a married woman has an average of four children, 10,000 women will have 40,000 children. If 15 percent of them do not marry and remain childless, this number falls by 6,000.
12. A. L. Coale and S. C. Watkins, The Decline of Fertility in Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986).
13. Hajnal, "European Marriage Patterns."
14. Van Poppel, "Marriage as a Farewell to Youth."
15. H. Van Dijk, De modernisering van Europa: Twee eeuwen maatschappijgeschiedenis (The Modernization of Europe: Two Centuries of Social History) (Utrecht: Het Spectrum, 1994), chaps. 2-7.
16. See, for instance, P. Laslett, The World We Have Lost (London: Methuen, 1965), as well as nineteenth-century "classical" sociologists such as T. Tonniës and E. Durkheim.
17. W. Goode describes this concisely as follows: "Kinfolk or immediate family can disregard the question of who marries whom, only if a marriage is not seen as a link between kin lines, only if no property, power, lineage, honor, totemic relationships, and the like are believed to flow from the kin lines through the spouses to their offspring." See W. Goode, War Revolution and Family Patterns (New York: Free Press, 1970), 42.
18. The marriage certificate establishes the marriage in law. As well as information about the date and place of the solemnization of the marriage, it contains all kinds of information about the bride and groom themselves, their parents, and the witnesses. The registration of births, marriages, and deaths began in Belgium on June 17, 1796. For all kinds of reasons, some entries from the beginning of our study period may be unreliable. During the Dutch period (1815-1830), the registration system was perfected. The Civil Code (Article 109) of the independent Belgium, which was grafted onto the Napoleonic Code (1804), took over the existing registration practices. Apart from a limited number of adjustments, little changed in the content of the marriage certificates in the nineteenth century. Comparability is made more difficult at the beginning of the nineteenth century because the Republican calendar was in use during the period from 1792 to 1805.
19. K. Matthijs, De mateloze negentiende eeuw. Bevolking, huwelijk, gezin en sociale verandering (The Excessive Nineteenth Century: Population, Marriage, Family, and Social Change) (Leuven: Universitaire Pers, 2001), 68-72.
20. F. Van Poppel, Trouwen in Nederland. Een historisch-demografische studie van de 19de-en vroeg-20ste eeuw (Marriage in the Netherlands: A Historical Demographic Study of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries) (The Hague: Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, 1992), 164.
21. The extent to which prospective brides attach importance to their own profession (or status) or to that of their father depends on the esteem in which these professions are held. The higher their own profession and the lower that of their father, the more women will make the most of their own profession on the marriage market. However, if the father has a highly valued profession, the woman will make more of her background.
22. For a discussion of the way in which these problems were resolved, see Matthijs, De mateloze 19de eeuw.
23. For more information, see Matthijs, De mateloze negentiende eeuw.
24. For more information about the backgrounds, calculation method, and interpretation of the Coale indices, see Coale and Watkins, The Decline of Fertility in Europe, appendix B.
25. R. Lesthaeghe, "Vruchtbaarheidscontrole, nuptialiteit en sociaal-economische verandering in België" (Fertility Control, Nuptiality, and Socioeconomic Change in Belgium), Bevolking en Gezin (Population and Family) 2 (1972): 251-305.
26. The average ages at first marriage can present a misleading picture of the actual developments for various reasons. The number of marriage solenmizations by age is, after all, not dependent solely on the age-specific marriage probability but on the available numbers of marriageable people by generation and by age. Differences between groups regarding age at first marriage can indicate genuine differences as well as differences in the age structure of the popu lation. In the same sense, differences in average marriage ages by social level can be a consequence of actual differences as well as of the unequal age structure of marriageable people by professional group.
27. 2 values vary between 0 and 100 percent, where 100 percent indicates perfect agreement.
28. Van Poppel, Trouwen in Nederland.
29. C. Vandenbroeke, "Karakteristieken van het huwelijks- en voortplantingspatroon. Vlaanderen en Brabant, 17de-19de eeuw" (Characteristics of the Marriage and Reproduction Pattern: Flanders and Brabant, Seventeenth-Nineteenth Centuries), Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 2, no. 2 (1976): 107-45.
30. E. W. Hofstee, Korte demografische geschiedenis van Nederland van 1800 tot heden (Brief Demographic History of the Netherlands, 1800 to the Present) (Haarlem: Fibula-Van Diskoeck, 1981).
31. The same phenomenon also occurs with the development in fertility; see, for instance, A. L. Coale and R. Treadway, "A Summary of the Changing Distribution of Overall Fertility, Marital Fertility, and the Proportion Married in the Provinces of Europe," in The Decline of Fertility in Europe, ed. A. L. Coale and S. C. Watkins (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 31-181
32. and J.-C. Chesnais, The Demographic Transition: Stages, Patterns, and Economic Implications: A Longitudinal Study of Sixty-Seven Countries Covering the Period 1720-1984 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1992), 283.
33. This is also emphasized by D. R. Weir, "Rather Never Than Late: Celibacy and Age at Marriage in English Cohort Fertility," Journal of Family History 4 (1984): 340-54.
34. The fact that age at first marriage among women fell sooner than among men had an unusual sociodemographic consequence: between 1840 and 1870, the average difference in the age at first marriage between brides and bridegrooms increased. This difference can of course be the result of very different developments. Nonetheless, this increase is interesting because, at first sight, it is not in line with expectations. If age at first marriage declines, all other things being equal, this leads almost "automatically" to smaller age differences. After all, age at first marriage does have a legal as well as a social lower limit, and for this reason, a fall in age at first marriage leads to an "accumulation" of marriages among the young age categories and, in this way, to smaller age differences. See B. Van de Putte, "The Age Gap between Spouses: Romantic Love and Partner Selection in the Nineteenth Century in Leuven" (Leuven: Department of Sociology, Research Report from the Department of the Family, Population and Health Care, GB/2001-12, 2001). According to Shorter, wide age differences between marriage partners indicate that the partners (and/or their parents) assign great importance to economic and instrumental affairs, while minor differences would indicate more emphasis on emotions, love, and physical attraction. See E. Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (New York: Basic Books, 1975), 154. Since a long-term wave of romanticization took place in the nineteenth century, the difference in average marriage age between bride and bridegroom should decrease, according to Shorter. But the Flemish data presented in this study contradict this theory: the difference in age at first marriage between brides and bridegrooms increased (everywhere). In Leuven, this was between 1840 and 1860; in Aalst and Bierbeek, this was between 1840 and 1880. However, this has to be examined more closely because, as already mentioned, decreasing age differences can be the result of all kinds of developments, including developments that have little to do with changes regarding age homogamy.
35. S. Dentith, Society and Cultural Forms in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Macmillan, 1998), 152.
36. The actual population includes all people - both Belgians and non-Belgians - present at the time of the census, irrespective of their usual place of residence. In addition to those present whose usual residence is in the municipality, the actual population also includes those who are only residing in the municipality for a short time or are passing through. The legal population includes all people whose usual place of residence is in the municipality. This does not include those only staying in the municipality for a short time or just passing through. The temporarily absent, by contrast, are included.
37. If marriageable men and women have problems finding the "right" partner locally, they can look outside local boundaries. This aspect of territorial homogamy or heterogamy can (in part) be examined via the change in the proportion of geographically homogamous marriages - that is, marriages in which both partners have their official place of residence in the same municipality. Notwithstanding the fairly wide difference between Leuven and Aalst in terms of the gender ratio of young marriageable people, the proportion of geographically homogamous marriages appears to stay more or less the same over the entire period under study. For most of the nineteenth century, the proportion of geographically homogamous marriages in Leuven and in Aalst was between 80 and 85 percent. In Bierbeek, these figures were 65 to 75 percent, which is associated with the smaller marriage market. These figures are not given here; they are available on request from the author.
38. For a good summary, see F. Van Poppel and J. Nelissen, "The Proper Age to Marry: Social Norms and Behavior in Nineteenth-Century Netherlands," The History of the Family 4, no. 1 (1999): 51-76.
39. The standard deviation is an indicator that shows the extent to which the ages at first marriage differ from one another and differ from the average.
40. The figures for the change in standard deviation of the age at first marriage of bridegrooms and brides by region can be obtained on request from the author.
41. The figures by region are not given here; they can be obtained on request from the author.
42. These results fit in fairly well with those of Dutch research; see M. Kalmijn, "Bruid, bruidegom en bruiloft. Sociale en economische achtergronden van het huwelijkspatroon" (Bride, Bridegroom, and Marriage: Social and Economic Backgrounds to the Marriage Pattern), in De levensloop van de Utrechtse bevolking in de 19de eeuw (Lifecycle of the Population of Utrecht in the Nineteenth Century), ed. K. Mandemaekers and O. Boonstra (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1995), 86-102.
43. See also Van Poppel, Trouwen in Nederland.
44. Van Poppel, Trouwen in Nederland.
45. Van Poppel and Nelissen, "The Proper Age to Marry."
46. K. Lynch, "The European Marriage Pattern in the Cities: Variations on a Theme by Hajnal," Journal of Family History 16, no. 1 (1991): 79-96.
47. As Shorter puts it, "The lower classes who labored in the laundries and sweatshops of the bourgeoisie . . . didn't have any property to preserve. They owned no great patrimonies to be transmitted, and so they were free to pursue individual rather than family objectives once the idea of doing so had occurred to them - which is to say, once they were able to shake free of communal controls upon their intimate lives." See Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family, 261.
48. C. Tilly, "Demographic Origins of the European Proletariat," in Proletarianization and Family History, ed. D. Levine (Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 1984), 1-85.
49. The illustrations concerning the change in age at first marriage of bridegrooms with "cultural" and "economic" professions are not shown here; they can be obtained on request from the author.
50. The historical/cultural foundation for this appetite for marriage had already been laid. Its specific form and content are evaluated in very different ways in the literature of family history. See, for instance, Ph. Ariès, De ontdekking van het kind. Sociale geschiedenis van school en gezin (The Discovery of the Child: Social History of School and Family) (1973; reprint, Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1987);
51. Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family;
52. L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (London: Weidenfeld, 1977);
53. F. Mount, The Subversive Family: An Alternative History of Love and Marriage (London: Cape, 1982);
54. A. Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism: The Family, Property and Social Transition (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1978);
55. D. Haks, Huwelijk en gezin in Holland in de 17de en 18de eeuw. Processtukken en moralisten over aspecten van het laat 17de-en 18de-eeuwse gezinsleven (Marriage and Fam ily in Holland in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Records and Moralists on Aspects of Late Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Family Life) (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1982);
56. R. A. Houlbrooke, The English Family 1450-1700 (London: Longman, 1984).
57. For a summary of this process, see S. Dentith, Society and Cultural Forms in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Macmillan, 1998), 128-55;
58. B.Caine and G. Sluga, Gendering European History (London: Leicester University Press, 2000), 32-54;
59. L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-1850 (London: Hutchinson, 1987).
60. A. De Regt, "Arbeiders, burgers en boeren: gezinsleven in de negentiende eeuw" (Laborers, Commoners, and Farmers: Family Life in the Nineteenth Century), in Familie, huwelijk en gezin in West-Europa (Family, Marriage, and Family in Western Europe), ed. T. Zwaan (Amsterdam/Heerlen: Boom/Open Universiteit, 1993), 193-218.
61. H. Cunningham, Het kind in het westen. Vijf eeuwen geschiedenis (The Child in the West: Five Centuries of History) (Amsterdam: Van Gennep, 1997), 163-93.
62. J. Gillis, "Making the Family: The Invention of Family Times(s) and the Reinvention of Family History," Journal of Family History 21, no. 1 (1996): 4-21.
63. E. Roberts, The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1973).
64. For a good summary, see Gillis, "Making the Family";
65. see also J. Bender and D. Wellbery, eds., Chronotypes: The Construction of Time (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991).
66. Gillis, "Making the Family."
67. G. Duby and M. Perrot, Geschiedenis van de vrouw. Deel 3. De negentiende eeuw (History of the Woman: Part 3. The Nineteenth Century), ed. G. Fraisse and M. Perrot (Amsterdam: Agon, 1993).
68. J. Tosh, The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History (London: Longman, 2000).
69. Families and family members constantly exchange and deal in material and symbolic goods and services. The way in which this takes place differs and evolves depending on the political, economic, social, and cultural backgrounds and development. Family conduct therefore changes along with ecological and economic circumstances. See, for instance, J. Kok, "Collectieve strategie en individuele levensloop" (Collective Strategy and Individual Lifecycle), in Samen wonen, samen werken ? Vijf essays over de geschiedenis van arbeid en gezin (Living Together, Working Together? Five Essays on the History of Work and the Family), ed. M. Baud and T. Engelen (Hilversum: Verloren, 1994), 97-121;
70. W. Seccombe, A Millennium of Family Change: Feudalism to Capitalism in Northwestern Europe (London: Verso, 1992), 166-99;
71. R. Schofield, "The Impact of Scarcity and Plenty on Population Change in England," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 14 (1983): 268-91.
72. This process also takes place at the microlevel; see, for example, P. Borscheid, "Romantic Love or Material Interest: Choosing Partners in Nineteenth-Century Germany" Journal of Family History 11, no. 3 (1986): 157-68.