The influence of modern city life on marriage in Ghent at the turn of the twentieth century: Cultural struggle and social differentiation in demographic behavior

Journal of Family History

Volumn 32, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 433-458

  Van De Putte, Bart ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEUVEN   (Belgium)

^b GHENT UNIVERSITY   (Belgium)

Author keywords

Conformism; Cultural change; Disciplining; Distinction; Imitation; Marriage; Nineteenth century

Indexed keywords

EID: 34548707011     PISSN: 03631990     EISSN: 15525473     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0363199007305765     Document Type: Article

References (99)

1. Andrew Cherlin, "The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage," Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (2004): 848-61.
2. Emiel Lamberts, "Belgium, since 1830," in History of the Low Countries, ed. Hans Blom and Emiel Lamberts (New York: Berghahn, 1999), 313-86.
3. Louise Tilly and Joan Scott, Women, Work, and Family (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1978), 189-90.
4. Nan Van Zutphen, Sociale geschiedenis van het fletsen te Leuven, 1880-1900 (Leuven: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 1980).
5. Koen Matthijs, De mateloze negentiende eeuw. Bevolking, huwelijk, gezin en sociale ve randering (Leuven: Universitaire Pers Leuven, 2001);
6. and Bart Van de Putte, Partnerkeuze in de 19de eeuw. Klasse, geografische afkomst, romantiek en de vorming van sociale groepen op de huwelijksmarkt (Leuven: Universitaire Pers Leuven, 2005).
7. Anthony Giddens and Christopher Pierson, Conversations with Anthony Giddens: Making Sense of Modernity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998).
8. Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage, 1992).
9. Andrew Miles, Social Mobility in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England (Houndmills, UK: Macmillan, 1999);
10. Van de Putte, Partnerkeuze in de 19de eeuw;
11. and Bart Van de Putte and Andrew Miles, "A. Class Scheme for Historical Occupational Data: The Analysis of Marital Mobility in Industrial Cities in 19th Century Flanders and England," Historical Methods 2 (2005): 61-92.
12. This is not to say that this was the sole cleavage in Ghent society. For example, the cleavage between natives and migrants also remained strong; Bart Van de Putte, "Homogamy by Geographical Origin: Segregation, in 19th Century Flemish Cities (Leuven, Aalst and Ghent)," Journal of Family History 3 (2003): 364-90.
13. Pierre Bourdieu, La Distinction, critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1979), 279.
14. Ibid.
15. Els Witte, Jan Craeybeckx, and Alain Meynen, Politieke Geschiedenis van België van 1830 tot heden (Brussels: VUB Press, 1990), 58.
16. Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (New York: Basic Books, 1975), 227.
17. Peter Scholliers, '"Vreugde heerst aan de dis.' Een essay over de huisvrouw en de voeding van arbeiders in de politieke economie van België (1840-1940)" in Voeden en Opvoeden (Brussels: VUB Press, 1999), 74;
18. and Eliane Gubin, "Home, Sweet Home: L'image de la femme au foyer en Belgique et au Canada avant 1914," Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis 3-4 (199.1): 564.
19. Ernest Burgess and Harvey Locke, The Family: From Institution to Companionship (New York: American Book Company, 1945).
20. Mary Shanley, "The History of the Family in Modem England," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society A (1979): 740-50.
21. Cherlin, "The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage," 848-61.
22. A "restoration" assumes that there once was a period of patriarchy. For the urban lower classes, this was not necessarily that outspoken. In the domestic mode of production, women were productive alongside their husbands, although they remained assistants. But women had clear power sources at their disposal. They managed the provision of food and decided how to allocate most of the family's few resources (Tilly and Scott, Women, Work, and Family, 44-54).
23. Wally Seccombe, Weathering the Storm: Working-Class Families from the Industrial Revolution to the Fertility Decline (London: Verso, 1993), 59.
24. Jan De Maeyer, "Relatie en huwelijk in de Moderne Tijd (ca. 1800-ca. 1950): kerkelijke standpunten en strategieën," in Levensrituelen. Het huwelijk, ed. Roger Burggraeve, Michel Cloet, Karel Dobbelaere, and Lambert Leijsen (Leuven: Universitaire Pers Leuven, 2000), 41.
25. Paul Servais, "The Church and the Family in Belgium, 1850-1914," Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis 3-4 (2001): 640.
26. Scholliers, '"Vreugde heerst aan de dis'"; and Patricia Van den Eeckhout, "Family Income of Ghent Working-Class Families ca. 1900," Journal of Family History 2 (1993): 87-110.
27. Eric Vanhaute, "Breadwinner Models and Historical Models: Transitions in Labour Relations and Labour Markets in Belgium, 19th-20th Centuries," in The Welfare State: Past, Present, Future, ed. Henrik Jensen (Pisa, Italy: Edizioni Plus, 2002), 59-76.
28. Catharina Lis, "Proletarisch wonen in Westeuropese steden in de 19de eeuw: van wildgroei naar sociale controle," Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis 34 (1977): 325-79.
29. Koen Matthijs, "Mimetic Appetite for Marriage in Nineteenth-Century Flanders: Gender Disadvantage as an Incentive for Social Change," Journal of Family History 2 (2002): 101-27.
30. Walter Van Dongen, Nieuwe krijtlijnen voor gezien, markt en maatschappij. Een geïntegreerde benadering (Leuven: Garant, 1993), 153;
31. and George Alter, "Work and Income in the Family Economy: Belgium, 1853 and 1891," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (1984): 255-76.
32. Van den Eeckhout, "Family Income of Ghent Working-Class Families ca. 1900"; and Tilly and Scott, Women, Work, and Family.
33. Cherlin, "The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage."
34. Matthijs, "Mimetic Appetite for Marriage in Nineteenth-Century Flanders."
35. John Gillis, For Better, for Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
36. Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family, 15.
37. Koen Matthijs, "Demographic and Sociological Indicators of Privatisation of Marriage in the 19th Century in Flanders," European Journal of Population A (2003): 375-412.
38. Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family, 16.
39. Giddens and Pierson, Conversations with Anthony Giddens, 139.
40. Cherlin, "The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage."
41. See in particular Matthijs, "Mimetic Appetite for Marriage in Nineteenth-Century Flanders"; Matthijs, "Demographic and Sociological Indicators of Privatisation of Marriage"; and Gillis, For Better, for Worse.
42. John Knodel, Demographic Behavior in the Past: A Study of Fourteen German Village Populations in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988);
43. Kevin McQuillan, "Economic Structure, Religion, and Age at Marriage: Some Evidence from Alsace," Journal of Family History A (1989): 331-46, 341;
44. Frans van Poppel, Trouwen in Nederland. Een historisch-demografische studie van de 19de- en vroeg-20ste eeuw (The Hague: Landbouwuniversiteit, 1992), 198;
45. Michael Mitterauer and Reinhard Sieder, The European Family: Patriarchy to Partnership from the Middle Ages to the Present (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 65;
46. and Jürgen Schlumbohm, "Social Differences in Age at Marriage: Examples from Rural Germany during the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries," in Historiens et Populations. Liber Amicorum Etienne Hélin (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 1991), 593-607.
47. Thimo De Nijs, In veilige haven: het familieleven van de Rotterdamse gegoede burgerij, 1815-1890 (Nijmegen, the Netherlands: Uitgave SUN Uitgeverij, 2001).
48. Erik Beekink, Aat Liefbroer, and Frans van Poppel, "Changes in Choice of Spouse as an Indicator of a Society in a State of Transition: Woerden, 1830-1930," Historical Social Research (1998): 235.
49. Frans van Poppel, Aat Liefbroer, and Wendy Post, "Age Preferences of Spouses: Trend Differences by Social Class in Nineteenth-Century Netherlands" (paper presented at the Entretiens de la Société de Démographie Historique, Paris, November 1996), 10.
50. H. Verwey-Jonker, "De man/vrouw relatie: een machtsbalans," in Gezinsgeschiedenis. Vier eeuwen gezin in Nederland, ed. Gerrit Kooy (Assen, the Netherlands: Van. Gorcum, 1985), 152;
51. Frans van Poppel and Jan Nelissen, "The Proper Age to Marry: Social Norms and Behavior in Nineteenth-Century Netherlands," History of the Family 1 (1999): 51-76;
52. and Gillis, For Better, for Worse, 187.
53. Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 (New York: Harper & Row 1977), 303;
54. van Poppel, Liefbroer, and Post, "Age Preferences of Spouses," 12; and Michel Cloet and Hans Storme, "Relatie en huwelijk in de Nieuwe Tijd," in Burggraeve, Cloet, Dobbelaere, and Leijsen, Levensrituelen, 19.
55. Also for the progressive and liberal factions of the elite; see Anne Jacquemin, "Modernisation de la nuptialité et différaciation sociale dans une métropole urbaine. Liège entre 1840 et 1890," in Dix essais sur la démographie urbaine de la Wallonie au XIXe siècle, ed. Claude Desama and Michel Oris (Brussels: Crédit communal, 1998).
56. Michelle Perrot, "Personages en rolverdeling," in Geschiedenis van het persoonlijk leven. Van de Franse Revolutie tot de Eerste Wereldoorlog, ed. Alain Corbin, Georges Duby, Michelle Perrot, and Frans de Haan (Amsterdam.: Agon, 1989), 121;
57. and Van den Eeckhout, "Family Income of Ghent Working-Class Families ca. 1900."
58. Jesse Battan, "The 'Rights' of Husbands and the 'Duties' of Wives: Power and Desire in the American Bedroom, 1850-1910," Journal of Family History 2 (1999): 165-86. Bouchard gave a similar but more subtle description:
59. Undeniably, in this sphere women suffered a sort of violence, at least of a psychological nature; but most accommodated themselves to it, and a number of them did not even resent it as such, having internalized the prevailing model or norm.. (Gérard Bouchard, "Through the Meshes of Patriarchy: The Male/Female Relationship in the Saguenay Peasant Society [1860-1930]," History of the Family A [1999]: 403)
60. Kris Bulcroft and Richard Bulcroft, "The Social Construction of the North American Honeymoon, 1880-1995," Journal of Family History A (1999): 462-91.
61. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800, 666.
62. Women did not necessarily experience this step as a regretful event. Not having to work gave them many advantages. And they might have been very willing and active in the construction of a romanticized and privatized family life (Matthijs, "Mimetic Appetite for Marriage in Nineteenth-Century Flanders"; and Matthijs, "Demographic and Sociological Indicators of Privatisation"). Yet, this probably implied that their dependency became stronger. For an illustration of the difficult position of women in this paradoxical companionate family model, see Jennifer Lloyd, "Conflicting Expectations in Nineteenth-Century British Matrimony: The Failed Companionate Marriage of Efie Gray and John Ruskin," Journal of Women's History 2 (1999): 86-109.
63. Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family, 148-49, 228.
64. Tilly and Scott, Women, Work, and Family, 191.
65. Martine Segalen, "The Industrial Revolution: From Proletariat to Bourgeoisie," in A History of the Family: The Impact of Modernity, vol. 2, ed. Andre Burguière, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Martine Segalen, and François Zonabend (Cambridge: Polity, 1996), 387;
66. Stephanie Coontz, "Historical Perspectives on the Family," Journal of Marriage and the Family 2 (2000): 284;
67. Michael Anderson, "What Is New about the Modern Family?" in Time, Family and Community: Perspectives on Family and Community History, ed. M. Drake (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 84;
68. Eliane May, "The Pressure to Provide: Class, Consumerism, and Divorce in Urban America, 1880-1920," Journal of Social History 2 (1978): 190;
69. and Camarina Lis, "Gezinsvorming en vrouwenarbeid tijdens een versnellingsfase in de ontwikkeling van het kapitalisme, 1750-1850," Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis (1984): 391.
70. Peter Borscheid, "Romantic Love or Material Interest: Choosing Partners in Nineteenth-Century Germany," Journal of Family History 2 (1986): 157.
71. Gillis, For Better, for Worse, 259;
72. Young and Willmott gave an extreme formulation of this point of view: "The husband was not only mean with money. He was callous with sex. ... He was harsh to his children. He was violent when drunk, which was often." The lower-class man was "a sort of absentee husband, sharing with his wife neither responsibility nor affection, partner only of the bed"; Michael Young and Peter Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1986), 18-19.
73. Tilly and Scott, Women, Work, and Family, 191.
74. Tilly and Scott, Women, Work, and Family.
75. Both variants, romantic love versus less controlled marriages between comrades, imply the rise of same-age marriages.
76. Mind, furthermore, that much more can be said, for example about the gender differences in. the willingness to adopt specific marriage patterns (Matthijs, "Mimetic Appetite for Marriage in Nineteenth-Century Flanders").
77. Scholliers, '"Vreugde heerst aan de dis.'"
78. Ibid., 74.
79. Bart Van de Putte and Andrew Miles, "A Class Scheme for Historical Occupational Data: The SOCPO-Scheme Codes the HISCO-Codes," in HISCO: Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations, ed. Marco Van Leeuwen, Ineke Maas, and Andrew Miles (Leuven: Universitaire Pers Leuven, 2002).
80. HISCO is a functional classification distinguishing among occupations on the basis of the tasks associated with the occupations. Each occupational group gets a five-digit code (e.g., 75400 for weaver). Other information, for example on employment status, is stored in separate codes. A list of hiscodes coded into SOCPO can be found in Van de Putte and Miles, "A Class Scheme for Historical Occupational Data." For an extended list, e-mail bart.vandeputte@ugent.be.
81. At this moment, no classification, of women's first names has been made. Yet, I do not expect differences in the language of the first name according to the sex of the child.
82. In contrast to partner selection research, it is not necessary to control for group sizes. Individuals can be selected many times as a witness. In theory, there is therefore no problem in terms of availability of, for example, middle-class witnesses. Furthermore, the Ghent social structure, understood as the relative size of each SP level, did not change dramatically during the nineteenth century.
83. Of course, the registration of no occupation, housewife, and so on remains a social construction that might change throughout time and might be different for every class. Nevertheless, I assume that this indicator at least measures the norm, of having an occupation or not. Therefore, this variable at least gives insight into the willingness to adopt the breadwinner model.
84. Matthijs, De mateloze negentiende eeuw.
85. Mainly for reasons of space limitations. But I also think that no matter what possible alternative explanation there may be, changes in these indicators as such mark the presence of a marriage pattern. For multivariate analyses of some of these indicators, I refer to Van. de Putte, Partnerkeuze in de 19de eeuw.
86. As such, social origin is the most logical variable to use if one wants to examine social differentiation because it is the parents who decide on name giving. But given a reasonable amount of intergenerational immobility and the possibility that variants were used in birth and marriage certificates (and, consequently, individuals could choose their name within a limited range of possibilities, that is, whether to Frenchify it), one might observe social differentiation by social position. And I do observe this. The same evolution and differentiation are visible if I classify the names by the social position of the groom (data not shown). It is difficult to interpret the time effect. If the parents chose, then this would indicate that the increased distinction started somewhat earlier than the observation of demographic class formation. Anyway, it is in the period in which demographic class formation became visible that also this form of Frenchification became visible, even though the socialization of these marrying couples into a specific class culture may have started somewhat earlier.
87. The period 1800-1830 is not included in the analysis. Because this effect is caused by different administrative rules, it does not make sense to analyze it. To some extent, it could even disturb the measurement of the effects of the other variables.
88. For the variables not included in the interaction terms, the main effects show the estimates for the total group.
89. I use social position because it is the marrying generation that probably chose the language. If I use social origin as the basis of comparison, I observe the same pattern. The percentage of French marriage certificates are 1.6 percent, 1.9 percent, 3 percent, 5.1 percent, and 52.3 percent respectively for the unskilled, semiskilled, skilled, middle class, and elite in the period 1891-1913.
90. For this analysis, I use the social position of the groom rather than his social origin. Because the first witness is often the father of one of the spouses, usually the groom, it does not make sense to use social origin as the basis of comparison. In the regression analysis, I control for this family witness effect.
91. In my view, these witnesses, all men "without occupation," probably belonged to the elite. The fact of "not having an occupation" does not mean the same as the contemporary concept "unemployed." These witnesses were mainly persons who did not even need to have an occupation. I measured the percentage of witnesses without occupation by the social position of the groom. There was a clear social gradation: for the unskilled and semiskilled, only 2 percent of the witnesses were "without occupation"; for the skilled, this percentage was 3 percent; whereas for the middle class, it was 4.7 percent; and for the elite, 7 percent.
92. I excluded the witnesses "without occupation" from the analysis.
93. Van den Eeckhout, "Family Income of Ghent Working-Class Families ca. 1900"; and Vanhaute, "Breadwinner Models and Historical Models."
94. Van den Eeckhout, "Family Income of Ghent Working-Class Families ca. 1900."
95. Alter, "Work and Income in the Family Economy."
96. Van de Putte, Partnerkeuze in de 19de eeuw.
97. As a result of these developments, the coale-nuptiality index Im increased from 0.36 in. 1846 to about 0.5 in 1910 (see ibid.).
98. The evolution of the proportion of older-husband, older-woman, and same-age marriages is clearly related to the evolution of the age at marriage. The lower the age at marriage, the more chance one had to marry a same-age partner. Controlling for the age distribution is perhaps not necessary, because the decline of the age at marriage might also for substantial reasons be related to the increase of same-age marriages; both are the product of the new marriage pattern of urgent (perhaps romantic), early marriage with age peers. Nevertheless, also controlling for this age distribution reveals an increase of same-age marriages. Furthermore, also controlling for other factors such as migration does not explain the increase of same-age marriages. The same goes for the evolution of the age at marriage. For an extensive description of all this, see ibid.
99. Tilly and Scott, Women, Work, and Family; see also Shanley, "The History of the Family in Modern England."