Intergenerational transmission of reproductive behavior during the demographic transition

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 42, Issue 4, 2012, Pages 543-569

  Jennings, Julia A ^a   Sullivan, Allison R ^b   David Hacker, J ^c  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

^c BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AGE; ARTICLE; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; FAMILY; FAMILY PLANNING; FEMALE; FERTILITY; HISTORY; HUMAN; HUMAN RELATION; INFORMATION PROCESSING; PHYSIOLOGY; POPULATION DYNAMICS; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; SEXUAL BEHAVIOR; STATISTICS; UNITED STATES;

AGE FACTORS; BIRTH INTERVALS; DATA COLLECTION; FAMILY; FERTILITY; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 21ST CENTURY; HUMANS; INTERGENERATIONAL RELATIONS; POPULATION DYNAMICS; REPRODUCTIVE BEHAVIOR; STATISTICS AS TOPIC; UTAH; WOMEN;

EID: 84861370075     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/JINH_a_00304     Document Type: Article

References (61)

1. Karl Pearson, Alice Lee, and Leslie Bramley-Moore, "Mathematical Contributions to the Theory of Evolution: VI. Genetic (Reproductive) Selection: Inheritance of Fertility in Man, and of Fecundity in Thoroughbred Racehorses," in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, A192 (1899), 2838-2843.
2. Hans-Peter Kohler, Joseph L. Rodgers, and Kaare Christensen, "Between Nurture and Nature: The Shifting Determinants of Female Fertility in Danish Twin Cohorts," Social Biology, XLIX (2002), 218-248.
3. Idem, "Is Fertility Behavior in Our Genes? Findings from a Danish Twin Study," Population and Development Review, XXV (1999), 253-288
4. David Sven Reher, Jose Antonio Ortega, and Alberton Sanz-Gimeno, "Intergenerational Transmission of Reproductive Traits in Spain during the Demographic Transition," Human Nature, XIX (2008), 23-43
5. Michael Murphy, "Is the Relationship between Fertility of Parents and Children Really Weak?" Social Biology, XLVI (1999), 122-145
6. Douglas L. Anderton et al., "Intergenerational Transmission of Relative Fertility and Life Course Patterns," Demography, XXIV (1987), 467-480.
7. Reher, Ortega, and Sanz-Gimeno, "Intergenerational Transmission of Reproductive Traits."
8. Anderton et al., "Intergenerational Transmission of Relative Fertility".
9. Murphy, "Is the Relationship between Fertility of Parents and Children Really Weak?"
10. For a convincing demonstration that European couples consciously delayed childbearing during times of economic stress, see Tommy Bengtsson and Martin Dribe, "Deliberate Control in a Natural Fertility Population: Southern Sweden, 1766-1864," Demography, XLIII (2006), 727-746
11. Katherine M. Kirk et al. estimate that 30% of the variance in the fertility of Australian women is attributable to genetic effects (" Natural Selection and Quantitative Genetics of Life-History Traits in Western Women: A Twin Study," Evolution, LV [2001], 423-435).
12. Kohler, Rodgers, and Christensen, "Is Fertility Behavior in Our Genes?" According to evolutionary models based on Ronald A. Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection in The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (Oxford, 1930), fertility and other traits subject to Darwinian selection should exhibit little standing genetic variation. Put another way, genetic variations in traits subject to strong natural selection will be eroded quickly.
13. Christopher M. Langford and Christopher Wilson, "Is There a Connection between a Woman's Fecundity and That of Her Mother?" Journal of Biosocial Science, XVII (1985), 437-443.
14. Alain Gagnon and Evelyne Heyer, "Intergenerational Correlation of Effective Family Size in Early Quebec (Canada)," American Journal of Human Biology, XIII (2001), 645-659
15. John Cleland and Christopher Wilson, "Demand Theories of the Fertility Transition: An Iconoclastic View," Population Studies, XLI (1987), 5-30
16. John E. Knodel and Etienne van de Walle, "Lessons from the Past: Policy Implications of Historical Fertility Studies," Population and Development Review, V (1979), 217-245.
17. Anderton et al., "Intergenerational Transmission of Relative Fertility," 477.
18. Reher, Ortega, and Sanz-Gimeno, "Intergenerational Transmission of Reproductive Traits"
19. Anderton and Lee L. Bean, "Birth Spacing and Fertility Limitation: A Behavioral Analysis of a 19th-Century Frontier Population," Demography, XXII (1985), 169-183.
20. Recently, Gloria L. Main has argued that increased birth spacing played an important role in reducing the fertility of New England women between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (" Rocking the Cradle: Downsizing the New England Family," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXXVII [2003], 35-58).
21. Reher, Ortega, and Sanz-Gimeno, "Intergenerational Transmission of Reproductive Traits"
22. Nan E. Johnson and C. Shannon Stokes, "Family Size in Successive Generations: The Effects of Birth Order, Intergenerational Change in Lifestyle, and Familial Satisfaction," Demography, XIII (1976), 175-187.
23. Frank J. Sulloway, Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives (New York, 1996).
24. Anderton et al., "Intergenerational Transmission of Relative Fertility".
25. Murphy, "Is the Relationship between Fertility of Parents and Children Really Weak?"
26. Pearson, Lee, and Bramley-Moore, "Mathematical Contributions."
27. For the emphasis in earlier studies, see Michael Dunlop Young and Peter Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London (London, 1957)
28. K. Hawkes et al., "Grandmothering, Menopause, and the Evolution of Human Life Histories," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, XCV (1998), 1336-1339.
29. Ruth Mace and Rebecca Sear, "Are Humans Cooperative Breeders?" in Eckart Voland, Athanasios Chasiotis, and Wulf Schiefenhoevel (eds.), Grandmotherhood: The Evolutionary Significance of the Second Half of Female Life (Piscataway, 2005), 143-159.
30. Sear, Mace, and Ian A. McGregor, "The Effects of Kin on Female Fertility in Rural Gambia," Evolution and Human Behavior, XXIV (2003), 25-42.
31. Sear and Paul Matthews, "The Impact of Kin on Female Fertility: A Systematic Review," paper presented at the meeting of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (Marrakesh, Morocco, 2009)
32. Evolutionary biologists have argued that changing patterns of kin availability may be a significant factor in fertility transitions
33. Lesley Newson et al., "Why Are Modern Families Small? Toward an Evolutionary and Cultural Explanation for the Demographic Transition," Social Psychology Review, IV (2005), 360-375.
34. On the declining level of family help during the Fertility Decline in the United States, see Susan E. Short, Frances K. Goldscheider, and Berna M. Torr, "Less Help for Mother: The Decline in Coresidential Female Support for the Mothers of Young Children, 1880-2000," Demography, XLIII (2006), 617-629.
35. In a valuable review of thirtynine studies examining the influence of kin on fertility, Sear and David Coall note that paternal kin have a more consistent pronatal effect on fertility than maternal kin do; their findings suggest that maternal kin can act at times to protect women from maternal depletion (" How Much Does Family Matter? Cooperative Breeding and the Demographic Transition," Population and Development Review, XXXVII [2011], 81-112)
36. G. William Skinner, "Conjugal Power in Tokugawa Japanese Families: A Matter of Life or Death," in Barbara Diane Miller (ed.), Sex and Gender Hierarchies (New York, 1993), 236-270.
37. Wang Feng et al., "Household Organization, Co-Resident Kin, and Reproduction," in Noriko O. Tsuya et al. (eds.), Prudence and Pressure: Reproduction and Human Agency in Europe and Asia, 1700-1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 2010), 67-96.
38. Patrilocal marriage rules prevalent in East Asia dictated that women were much more likely to have lived with their parents-in-law than with their parents. The neolocal family-formation pattern characteristic of West European populations limits the potential for studies based on co-residence to find a significant effect of kin on fertility. Nonresident kin residing in the same village or area, however, might have played a significant role in child care, economic assistance, and reproductive decisions. Although the results reported by Feng et al. for Sart, Belgium, in "Household Organization," indicated a positive relationship between fertility at higher order births and the presence of both parents, Sart women spent their reproductive lives "almost exclusively in simple family households" (71).
39. Bean, Dean L. May, and Mark Skolnick, "The Mormon Historical Demography Project," Historical Methods, XI (1978), 45-53.
40. Bean, Geraldine P. Mineau, and Anderton, Fertility Change on the American Frontier: Adaptation and Innovation (Berkeley, 1990), 69-106.
41. Bean et al., "The Geneaological Society of Utah as A Data Source for Historical Demography," Population Index, XLVI (1980), 6-19.
42. Bean, Mineau, and Anderton, Fertility Change on the American Frontier, report similar trends but slightly different estimates
43. Coale and Trussell's m parameter was negative or zero in all birth cohorts before 1855, and it did not exceed 0.2-typically considered the threshold of the onset of parity-dependent control in the population as a whole-until the 1875 to 1879 birth cohort. Although the population included in the UPDB had a few unusual features- including its frontier location, high levels of membership in the LDS, and relatively late adoption of parity-dependent fertility control-the benefits of the UPDB data outweigh concerns about the population's representativeness. Precise data on birth spacing by parity in the early United States are rare. No other datasets document birth intervals throughout the decades of most rapid fertility decline. Some researchers, however, have used genealogical data to study birth spacing in the early stages of the decline.
44. Main's "Rocking the Cradle" may well be the most significant effort to date. Other significant research includes Robert V. Wells, "Family Size and Fertility Control in Eighteenth-Century America: A Study of Quaker Families," Population Studies, XLVI (1971), 85-102.
45. Daniel Scott Smith, "Population, Family and Society in Hingham, Massachusetts, 1635-1880," unpub. Ph.D. diss (University of California, Berkeley, 1973).
46. These studies demonstrate the importance of increased birth spacing at the onset of the U.S. fertility decline, suggesting that the strategies of UPDB couples were not unique to LDS members on the Utah frontier.
47. Douglas C. Ewbank, "The Marital Fertility of American Whites before 1920," Historical Methods, XXIV (1991), 141-170.
48. Ansley J. Coale and James T. Trussell, "Model Fertility Schedules: Variations in the Age Structure of Childbearing in Human Populations," Population Index, XL (1974), 185-258.
49. The selection criteria favor fertile women from comparatively healthy families. Given the assumptions that a woman's health affected her fecundity and that mothers' and daughters' health were correlated, the intergenerational correlation coefficients shown in Tables 1 and 2 are biased downward. Unfortunately, even greater bias would result from reliance on women with incomplete reproductive histories. Event-history analysis, applied in the latter part of the article, allows us to rely on daughters with incomplete birth histories. In "Intergenerational Transmission of Reproductive Traits," Reher, Ortega, and Sanz-Gimeno reported a correlation coefficient of 0.115 in children ever born and noted that typical estimates in most studies fell in the range 0.060 to 0.200.
50. Langford and Wilson in "Is There a Connection?" reported a 0.097 correlation coefficient between mothers' and daughters' age of marriage.
51. For occupational differentials in nuptiality during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Catherine A. Fitch, "Transitions to Marriage in the United States, 1850-2000," unpub. Ph.D. diss. (University of Minnesota, 2005).
52. Hacker, "Economic, Demographic, and Anthropometric Correlates of First Marriage in the mid Nineteenth-Century United States," Social Science History, XXXII (2008), 307-345
53. The bivariate correlation between index women and their mothers' age at last birth could have been due to a genetic similarity in the age at menopause. The cohort results shown in Table 2, however-which indicate no significant mother-daughter correlations in age at last birth among early, natural-fertility birth cohorts and significant correlations in later birth cohorts known to be practicing parity-dependent control-strongly suggests that the correlation in age at last birth was related to the intergenerational transmission of behavioral practices.
54. On the importance of birth spacing in the Utah population, see Anderton, "Starting, Stopping, and Spacing during the Early Stages of Fertility Transition-Comment," Demography, XXVI (1989), 467-470
55. Idem and Bean, "Birth Spacing And Fertility Limitation"
56. Bean, Mineau, and idem, Fertility Change on the American Frontier
57. Reher, Ortega, and Sanz-Gimeno, "Intergenerational Transmission of Reproductive Traits."
58. Index women who died before age forty-five or whose husbands died before index women reached that age were censored at the date of either the index woman's or her husband's death. A small proportion of mothers and mothers-in-law may well have had to take care of young children of their own, especially in the case of first-born index women, born relatively early in their mothers' childbearing years. We might expect, therefore, that firstborn index women received relatively less help from their living mothers than higher-birthorder index women. Although less restrictive than the selection criteria used for the bivariate correlations above, the model universe remains biased toward women in healthier families. The likely result is to understate the significance of intergenerational transmission of fertility.
59. The interaction of the relative fertility of mothers (and of mothers-in-law) and the index woman's birth order were tested, since higher-birth-order women tend to come from mothers with higher relative fertility. The interaction terms were not significant, and model fit did not improve in terms of the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC).
60. The interactions between living mothers (and mothers-in-law) and the index women's birth cohort were tested to explore the potential role of increasing longevity over time. The interaction terms for mothers-in-law were not significant, and model fit did not improve in terms of the BIC. The interaction terms for mothers were significant for most birth intervals, but the size of the coefficient was small. Since the model fit did not improve in terms of the BIC, the interaction terms were not included in the models presented herein. The interactions between living mothers (and mothers-in-law) and index women's birth order were also tested, since higher-birth-order women are less likely to have a living mother than lowerbirth-order women. The interaction terms were not significant, and the model fit did not improve in terms of the BIC. Sear and Matthews, "The Impact of Kin on Female Fertility."
61. Some exploratory analyses using sibling shared frailty terms (with reduced sample sizes and Weibull models) suggest that this transmission extends to sisters as well. However, computational constraints involved with the estimation of these models using the full dataset prevent direct comparison with the Cox models presented herein. The investigation of shared effects within sibling sets remains a topic for future analysis.