The proper age to marry: Social norms and behavior in nineteenth-century Netherlands (original) (raw)
Related papers
Historical Social Research, 2014
Marrying too old, too young, or not at all could elicit scorn from all sides: family, friends and neighbours. The same could occur when a partner was much younger or older. During modernization new societal norms on marriage are supposed to have emerged and to have become more pervasive, as individual access to and timing of marriage became less dependent on family fortunes and family strategies. In this article, life courses of more than 15,000 Dutch individuals are studied in order to answer the question: was their timing of marriage and choice of partner related to (changing) life scripts-and what social or cultural groups were the carriers of these scripts-or still predominantly determined by family dynamics?
2020
Marrying too old, too young, or not at all could elicit scorn from all sides: family, friends and neighbours. The same could occur when a partner was much younger or older. During modernization new societal norms on marriage are supposed to have emerged and to have become more pervasive, as individual access to and timing of marriage became less dependent on family fortunes and family strategies. In this article, life courses of more than 15,000 Dutch individuals are studied in order to answer the question: was their timing of marriage and choice of partner related to (changing) life scripts-and what social or cultural groups were the carriers of these scripts-or still predominantly determined by family dynamics?
Permanent Celibacy and Late Marriage in the Netherlands, 1890-1960
Population (English Edition, 2002-), 2003
Demographers usually assume that the proportion never marrying and age at marriage vary together, since permanent celibacy is held to be merely the consequence of delayed marriage. By observing a representative sample extracted from the cohorts born between 1890 and 1909 in the Netherlands, Theo E NGELEN and Jan K OK show that this is not always the case. In the first half of the nineteenth century, very high levels of permanent celibacy coexisted with early age at marriage among children of the upper social classes and in certain religious groups. Moreover, in the eastern regions of the country, marriage occurred later but no less frequently than elsewhere. Using individual data drawn from civil registration sources and population registers, the authors explore the cultural, social and economic factors that help to explain this uncommon dissociation between the two forms of marriage restraint.
2004
Introduction Hajnal’s ideas on the difference between marriage patterns in Western and Eastern Europe have been very influential in historical demographic research. According to John Hajnal, marriage patterns in Europe can be divided into two distinct groups to be found to the east and west respectively of an imaginary dividing line between St Petersburg and Trieste (Italy). To the West relatively high ages at marriage for both brides and grooms resulted in the vast majority of people living in nuclear families as a result of such marriages. Not only was the nuclear family the preferred household structure but the large differences in age between the generations made threegeneration households an infrequent phenomenon. By the time the children were ready to establish their own families the parents were usually already dead. In general, three-generation households occurred only during a short span of the family lifecycle. In the East the situation was supposed to have been rather dif...
2018
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Explaining individual ages at first marriage in a 18 th century rural market economy
2007
Using a dataset of 1,700 ages at first marriage for Roman Catholics born in the Groningen Ommelanden (The Netherlands) during the period 1721-1800 explanatory variables for the specific age at marriage have been searched for. The 18 th and early 19 th century Groningen Ommelanden fitted perfectly into Hajnal’s Western European marriage pattern with very high ages at marriage and a high celibacy. Average and median age at marriage were 2-3 years earlier for males and females born 17211770 as compared to those born 1776-1800. In nearly all groups, the age at marriage fell to a considerable extent in this period. Other variables had far less explanatory value. In this prospering market-oriented and specialised society, no proof is found for the niche hypothesis, which suggests that people postponed marriage until they acquired a position suitable to support a family. Birth order, parental family size, occupation and social class could explain only a very small part of the large differe...
The evolution of age at marriage is important for the fertility transition. As yet, not many studies have addressed the issue of the inheritance of age at first marriage. This paper focuses on the intergenerational transmission of age at first marriage from mothers to daughters in rural Holland before and during the early stages of the fertility transition. To this end, we use a detailed dataset with two generations of marriages stemming from the province of North-Holland in the Netherlands. Multilevel models are used to analyse the effect of first generation family characteristics on second generation daughtersʹ ages at first marriage. A crucial advantage compared to conventional family reconstitution studies is that we traced daughters wherever they migrated in the Netherlands. The results clearly indicate that age at first marriage was to some extent inherited from mothers to daughters. Yet, the inheritance effect is not common to all social classes and religious denominations. It is present among the working and middle classes but virtually absent among farmers. It is strong among Protestants but weak among Catholics. These findings support suggestions in the recent literature that family inheritance of reproductive behaviour is stronger in societal circumstances that leave more room for individual decision-making.
Historical Life Course Studies, 2017
This study focuses on the seasonal pattern of marriages in seven provinces of the Netherlands from 1810 to 1940. We ask whether the prevalence of May as the preferred marriage month was diminishing when industrialization changed the course of workload over the year. And if so, when did this occur, and were there differences between the regions? Given the ban on marriages during Lent and Advent, by studying the number of marriages during these months (approximated as March and December), we can determine which provinces adhered most to the religious rules, and how this pattern developed over time. In doing so, we have an excellent demographic measure for secularization. The analysis is based on the LINKS dataset which currently includes almost 2 million marriages that were contracted in seven Dutch provinces: Groningen, Drenthe, Overijssel, Gelderland, Noord-Holland, Zeeland and Limburg. The main conclusion of this study is that although Dutch society substantially transformed (eco...