State institutions as mediators between religion and fertility: A comparison of two Swiss regions, 1860-1930

Religion and the Decline of Fertility in the Western World

Volumn , Issue , 2006, Pages 147-176

  Praz, Anne Françoise ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA   (Switzerland)

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EID: 77955040683     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.1007/1-4020-5190-5_8     Document Type: Chapter

References (15)

1. The author wishes to thank the editors Frans van Poppel and Renzo Derosas for their careful reading and their constructive comments. For the creation of the data files and their exploitation with event history analysis, the assistance of Michel Oris was invaluable. We are also grateful to George Alter and Jan van Bavel for their help in checking the technical sections of the text.
2. A recent collective book (Janssens 2006) addresses in detail this particular disaggregation problem and discusses more generally the integration of gender in the study of the first fertility transition.
3. The families in which one of the parents dies or who leave the village before the woman has reached age 50, but for which we know the date of the parents' marriage (Leboutte 1988:358).
4. During the two first periods, the villages were completely homogeneous with respect to religious affiliation. In the third period, a very slight religious heterogeneity occurred in the two industrialized villages because of the arrival of a few workers and managerial staff in the factories. These families, identified by baptism registers, left the villages during the post-war crisis.
5. For event history analysis of fertility based on intervals between events in women's reproductive lives, see Van Bavel (2004a), Alter (1988:25-35, 175), Gutmann and Alter (1993:160-163), Alter and Oris (1999:12-14) and Neven (2003:38-45, 399-408).
6. However, when the Protestant sample is divided into four periods instead of two, the "tradecraftsmen and civil servant" category is marked off by fertility slightly but significantly lower for the period 1860-1878. But this differentiation process does not carry on, contrasting with what we observe in the Catholic sample.
7. Archives de l'évêché de Fribourg. We find the first mention of premarital "onanism" in the 1908 report for Portalban-Delley, and only in the 1928 report for Broc. The suspicion that "onanism" also concerns married couples only appears in the 1915 report for Portalban-Delley and in the 1935 report for Broc; this astonishingly late mention, given the generalization of contraception in this village, leads us to take these testimonies with caution.
8. We selected all articles containing the topic gender in the Bulletin pédagogique, published in Fribourg since 1872, and in two corresponding periodicals for the canton of Vaud, that merged during the period: L'Ecole, published in Lausanne between 1873 and 1901, and L'Educateur, an educational periodical distributed in French-speaking protestant Switzerland and published from 1866. For the school manuals, our content analysis concentrated on two reading books, one published in Fribourg, the other in Vaud, and used for children of the age of 8-12 from around 1900 until the end of the twenties.
9. We explored the following sources: annual reports of the cantonal governments, messages presenting the school laws, correspondence between cantonal and local administrations. Our content analysis systematically compiled the terms and phrases supporting the arguments in favor of the necessity of education and regular school attendance.
10. We managed to ascertain for 576 children the attendance at the following post-primary schools: apprentissages (professional training for which a course of study with classes and exams existed in the canton during the period), école normale (for future primary school teachers), école secondaire (one or two years after primary school, in various courses of study - general, commercial, science/arts), collège or lycée (science/art course of study).
11. In their study of the Canadian fertility transition, Gauvreau and Gossage use the same correlation between education, Protestantism and lower fertility: a higher level of children's school attendance has a significant and negative effect on fertility levels in the Protestant province of Ontario, although not in Catholic Quebec (Gauvreau and Gossage, 2001). However, the gender difference was not explored.
12. " (⋯) ayez l'intention de réaliser la fin principale du mariage: l'intention de donner des saints à l'Eglise et des élus au ciel en recevant avec joie et reconnaissance tous les enfants qu'il plaira à Dieu de vous donner." Abbé Etienne Descloux, Préparation au mariage - Conseils à la jeunesse, Fribourg 1907, p. 36.
13. Compte-rendu de l'administration du Conseil d'Etat du canton de Fribourg, 1867, p. 31 (minutes of the government of the canton of Fribourg).
14. After 1918, when a climate of fierce anti-communism reduced the attraction of socialism, and when patriotic and populationist ideas gained in importance, the same political forces adopted repressive measures against the neo-Malthusian movement.
15. "A vous parler franchement, je me suis plus d'une fois occupé de la mortalité de mes paroissiens, à laquelle un pasteur vigilant peut quelque chose; mais jamais des causes de leur fé condité auxquelles il ne peut rien. Vous devez savoir d'ailleurs que nous autres ministres protestants, ne nous permettons point de péné trer dans les mystères du sanctuaire conjugal." Sir Francis d'Ivernois, "Enquête sur les causes patentes ou occultes de la faible proportion des naissances à Montreux/Vaud", Bibliothèque universelle, Genève, mai 1837, p. 10.