Faml 160 Marriage & Family Author: Lauer Isbn: 9781260580365

To the west of the Hajnal line, shown in scarlet, the Western European wedlock design arose. The blue lines mark areas of Western Europe that did not conform to Western Europe'due south marriage pattern

The Western European marriage design is a family and demographic pattern that is marked by insufficiently late marriage (in the middle twenties), especially for women, with a generally small age difference betwixt the spouses, a pregnant proportion of women who remain unmarried, and the establishment of a neolocal household later on the couple has married. In 1965, John Hajnal posited that Europe could exist divided into two areas characterized by a different patterns of nuptiality. To the westward of the line, marriage rates and thus fertility were comparatively low and a significant minority of women married late or remained single and most families were nuclear; to the e of the line and in the Mediterranean and particular regions of Northwestern Europe, early marriage and extended family unit homes were the norm and loftier fertility was countered past high mortality.^{[1] [2]}

Overview [edit]

The shift toward this "Western European Matrimony Pattern" does not have a articulate beginning, but information technology certainly had get established by the stop of the sixteenth century on most of the shores of the Due north Body of water. A matrimony pattern where couples married comparatively late in life (and particularly late for the bride), on average in the middle twenties after and setting upwards a nuclear household, all of this preceded past time working as servants or apprentices. Also, a significant proportion of women married afterwards their twenties and ten–20% of women never married.^{[3] [iv] [v]}

Furnishings [edit]

The pattern of belatedly and non-universal spousal relationship restricted fertility massively, especially when it was coupled with very low levels of childbirth out of wedlock. Nativity control took place by delaying marriage more than than suppressing fertility within it. A woman'south life-phase from menarche (which was generally reached on average at 14 years, at about 12 years for elite women^{[6] [7]}) to the birth of her first child was unusually long, averaging ten years.^{[8] [nine]}

Compared to other cultures [edit]

This marriage pattern varied across fourth dimension and space and class; noblewomen certainly married early, but they were a small minority. The comparatively belatedly historic period at marriage for women and the minor age gap between spouses is rather unusual; women married as adults rather than as dependents, ofttimes worked before marriage and brought some skills into the marriage, were less likely to be exhausted by constant pregnancy, and were about the same age equally their husbands ^{[10] [eleven]}

To the westward of the Hajnal line, near half of all women aged 15 to 50 years of historic period were married at any given fourth dimension while the other one-half were widows or spinsters; to the eastward of the line, almost seventy percent of women in that age subclass were married at any given fourth dimension while the other thirty pct were widows or nuns.^[12] The matrimony records of Western and Eastern Europe in the early 20th century illustrate this pattern vividly; w of the Hajnal line, only 25% of women aged 20–24 were married while to the east of the line, over 75% of women in this age group were married and less than 5 pct of women remained single. Outside of Europe, women could exist married even before and even fewer would remain celibate; in Korea, practically every adult female l years of age had been married and spinsters were extremely rare, compared to 10–25% of women in western Europe age l who had never married.^[3]

Variation within Western Europe [edit]

Where in the mid-1500s in England, approximately eight percent of women remained unmarried the inference would be that that figure was either the same or lower in the previous several centuries;^[thirteen] marriage in Medieval England appears to be a robust establishment where over 90% of women married and roughly lxx% of women aged xv to 50 years were married at any given time while the other thirty% were unmarried or widows.^[fourteen] In Yorkshire in the 14th and 15th centuries, the age range for most brides was between 18 and 22 years and the age of the grooms was similar; rural Yorkshire women tended to ally in their late teens to early twenties while their urban counterparts married in their early to middle twenties. In the 15th century, the average Italian bride was xviii and married a groom 10–12 years her senior. An unmarried Tuscan woman 21 years of historic period would be seen as past marriageable historic period, the criterion for which was 19 years, and easily 97 percent of Florentine women were married by the age of 25 years while 21 years was the average age of a gimmicky English bride.^{[15] [xvi]}

While the average age at starting time marriage had climbed to 25 years for women and 27 years for men in England and the Low Countries by the end of the 16th century,^[17] and the percentage of unmarried Englishwomen rose from less than x% to most 20% by the mid-17th century and their average age at first marriage rose to 26 years at the same time,^[18] there was notwithstanding great variation inside Britain alone; while Lowland Scotland saw patterns similar to England, with women married in the heart twenties after a menstruation of domestic service, the high nativity rate of Highland Scotland and the Hebrides imply a lower historic period of marriage for the bride, mayhap similar to Gaelic Republic of ireland,^[19] where Brehon Constabulary stated that women became legally marriageable at 15 years and men at 18 years.^[xx] Similarly, between 1620 and 1690 the boilerplate age of first marriage for Swedish women was roughly 20 years, approximately 70% of Swedish women aged betwixt 15 and fifty years were married at any one time, and the proportion of single women was less than x%, but by the end of the 18th century it had risen to roughly 27 years and remained high with the celibacy rate as a result of falling babe bloodshed rates, declining famines, decreasing available land and resource for a growing population, and other factors.^[14] Similarly, Ireland's age of marriage in 1830 was 23.8 for women and 27.47 for men where they had one time been 21 and 25, respectively, and but about 10% of adults remained unmarried;^[21] in 1840, they had respectively risen to 24.iv and 27.7;^{[22] [23]} in the decades after the Great Famine, the historic period of marriage had risen to 28–29 for women and 33 for men and every bit much as a third of Irishmen and a fourth of Irishwomen never married due to chronic economic bug that discouraged early marriage.^[24]

Background [edit]

Artifact [edit]

The beginnings of this marriage pattern might be plant as early as the fourth dimension of the Roman Empire. Julius Caesar, writing in the first century B.C, wrote that while the Germanic tribes to the northward of the empire were communal with their land, living under the Sippe kinship organisation, the homesteads were largely separate from each other, dissimilar the closer proximity in Roman towns. And Tacitus, writing a century and a half afterward, also observed these many private households among the Germanic tribes, although there was public ownership of pastures and controlled use of the forests.^[25]

Anglo-Saxon kinship terms were generally very basic; the aforementioned word is used for the titles of nephew and grandson, likewise for the term for granddaughter and niece. Based on this, the nuclear household seems to be the norm. Also, since the Church forbade marrying within a given degree of kinship, the mutual people were probably further discouraged from keeping elaborate kinship networks; United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland but had so many people and most everybody on the island was related to some caste and perhaps the distant relations had to be forgotten or nigh all marriages would exist within the prohibited degrees.^[26]

In whatsoever case, while nuclear residences might have been the norm for families, the extended family unit was undeniably important for the Anglo-Saxons; As with many other Germanic tribes, if a fellow member of a family was wronged or injured in any style, the Kentish Laws outlines the restrictions of feuds and reparations to the victim of the offense; kindreds were to take charge of reparation and they could (with a few exceptions, for example, when the conflict was too close in blood-line) conform either for vengeance or for the payment of compensation to the kin of the killed.^[27] In addition, Anglo-Saxon women, like those of other Germanic tribes, are marked as women from the age of twelve onward, based on archaeological finds, implying that the age of marriage coincided with puberty.^[28]

Middle Ages [edit]

Christianity and manorialism [edit]

The rising of Christianity created more incentives to keep families nuclear; the Church building instituted matrimony laws and practices that undermined large kinship groups. From every bit early equally the quaternary century, the Church discouraged any practise that enlarged the family, like adoption, polygamy, taking concubines, divorce, and remarriage. The Church building severely discouraged and prohibited consanguineous marriages, a marriage blueprint that has constituted a means to maintain kinship groups (and thus their ability) throughout history; Canon law followed civil law until the early on ninth century, when the Western Church increased the number of prohibited degrees from iv to 7.^[29] The church also clipped the ability of parents to retain kinship ties through arranged marriages by forbidding unions in which the helpmate did not conspicuously agree to the union. These rules were not necessarily followed unanimously nor did all cultures across Europe evolve toward nuclear families, but by the latter one-half of the Heart Ages the nuclear household was dominant over well-nigh of Northwestern Europe^[30] and where in the former indigenous religions, women married betwixt 12 and xv years of age (congruent with puberty) and men married in their centre twenties, as Christianity expanded men married increasingly earlier and women married increasingly after^[31]

The rise of manorialism in the vacuum left after the Fall of Rome might also have weakened the ties of kinship at the same fourth dimension that the Church had curtailed the power of clans; as early on as the 800s in northern France, families that worked on manors were small, consisting of parents and children and occasionally a grandparent. The Church and State had get allies in erasing the solidarity and thus the political power of the clans; the Church sought to replace traditional religion, whose vehicle was the kin group, and substituting the authorisation of the elders of the kin group with that of a religious elder, the presbyter. At the same time, the male monarch's rule was undermined by revolts on the role of powerful, communal kin groups, whose conspiracies and murders threatened the ability of the land and, once manorialism had get established, also threatened the demand of manorial lords for obedient, compliant workers; in the westward, manorialism was unsuccessful in establishing itself in Frisia, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the East of England, and the south of Iberia and Italy.^{[32] [33]}

Indeed, Medieval England saw union historic period as variable depending on economical circumstances, with couples delaying marriage until the early twenties when times were bad and the average age falling to the tardily teens after the Black Decease, when at that place were labor shortages;^[34] by appearances, marriage of adolescents was non the norm in England.^[13] The sudden loss of people from the plague resulted in a glut of lucrative jobs for many people and more people could afford to marry young, lowering the age at marriage to the late teens and thus increasing fertility.^[35]

The beginnings of consensual marriage [edit]

About 1140, Gratian established that according to canon law the bonds of matrimony should be determined by mutual consent and non consummation, voicing opinions like to Isaac's opinion of forced marriages; marriages were made by God and the blessing of a priest should just be fabricated after the fact. Therefore, a man and a woman could hold to marry each other at even the minimum age of consent- fourteen years for men, twelve years for women- and bring the priest subsequently the fact. Merely this doctrine led to the problem of clandestine marriage, performed without witness or connection to public establishment.^[36] The opinion of the parents was however important, although the final conclusion was not the conclusion to be made by the parents,^[37] for this new consent by both parties meant that a contract between equals was drawn rather than a coerced consensus.^[38]

Patriarchy remained in some form or another, including the necessity of the dowry by young women. To adjourn hush-hush marriages and remind young couples of parental power, the Medieval Church encouraged prolonged courting, arrangements and monetary logistics, informing the community of the wedding, and finally the formal substitution of vows.^[39] While in the South a adult female's dowry was viewed as split from her husband's wealth, in the Northwest the dowry was "bridal"; a woman's dowry merged with her married man's wealth and would abound or shrink depending on circumstances and to which she had rights in widowhood,^[40] an attractive incentive for women to earn money. And the chance for women to earn coin in the one hundred and fifty years afterwards the Black Decease was attractive, with less competition for jobs; equally much equally half of women in the North willingly worked to earn money for marriage while their Southern contemporaries were married or widows before turning to work and unmarried immature women only worked equally a last resort, lest her accolade be put at gamble.^[41]

Early on Mod Europe [edit]

The average age at first marriage had gradually risen once again past late sixteenth century; the population had stabilized and availability of jobs and land had lessened. In the final decades of the century the age at union had climbed to averages of 25 for women and 27 for men in England and the Low Countries as more people married afterward or remained unmarried due to lack of money or resources and a turn down in living standards, and these averages remained high for almost ii centuries and averages across Northwestern Europe had done likewise.^[42] Because of its sacramental nature, marriage was increasingly held to be indissoluble, and sexual relations exterior of marriage were viewed equally illicit. Christian Europe banned polygamy and divorce, and attempted to prohibit any form of sexual relationship that was not marriage, such as concubine or premarital sexual practice, termed fornication. Women were generally expected to bring a dowry when they married, which ranged from a few household appurtenances to a whole province in the example of the high nobility. Remarriage after the death of a spouse was acceptable for both men and women, and very mutual, though men remarried faster than women. Virtually issues regarding wedlock and many other aspects of family life came under the jurisdiction of church courts and were regulated by an increasingly elaborate legal organization termed canon law. The ethics for marriage were non followed in many instances: powerful individuals could often persuade church courts to grant annulments of marriages they needed to end; men, including priests and other church leaders, had concubines and mistresses; young people had sexual practice before marriage and were forced into marriages that they did not want. However, these ideals and the institutions established to enforce them remained important shapers of men's and women'south agreement of and place within a family.^[43]

So many Englishmen began migrating en masse to North America that the marriage prospects for unmarried Englishwomen dwindled and the average historic period of first marriage rose for Englishwomen. In addition, there was a abrupt rise in the pct of women who remained unmarried and thus decreased fertility; an Englishwoman marrying at the average age of 26 years in the tardily 17th century who survived her childbearing years would comport an average of v.03 children while an Englishwoman making a comparable marriage in the early 19th century at the boilerplate age of 23.five years and surviving her childbearing years would conduct on average 6.02 children, an increase of about 20 percent.^{[44] [xviii]}

From 1619 to 1660 in the archdiocese of Canterbury, England, the median age of the brides was 22 years and nine months while the median age for the grooms was 25 years and 6 months, with boilerplate ages of 24 years for the brides and near 28 years for the grooms, with the nearly common ages at marriage being 22 years for women and 24 years for men; the Church dictated that the age when 1 could marry without the consent of one's parents was 21 years. A large majority of English language brides in this time were at least nineteen years of age when they married, and but one helpmate in a m was thirteen years of age or younger.^[45]

William Shakespeare'due south drama Romeo and Juliet puts Juliet's historic period at simply short of fourteen years; the idea of a woman marrying in hugger-mugger at a very early age would take scandalized Elizabethans. The common conventionalities in Elizabethan England was that motherhood earlier 16 was unsafe; popular manuals of health, likewise as observations of married life, led Elizabethans to believe that early on marriage and its consummation permanently damaged a young woman'southward health, impaired a young man'south physical and mental development, and produced sickly or stunted children. Therefore, 18 came to be considered the earliest reasonable age for maternity and 20 and xxx the ideal ages for women and men, respectively, to marry. Shakespeare might also have reduced Juliet'due south age from xvi to fourteen to demonstrate the dangers of marriage at too young of an age; that Shakespeare himself married Anne Hathaway when he was just eighteen (very unusual for an Englishman of the time) might hold some significance.^[46]

Come across also [edit]

• Demographic transition
• Hajnal line
• Marriage
• Medieval singlewomen
• Nuclear family
• Extended family
• Kinship

References [edit]

1. ^ Hajnal, John (1965): European marriage pattern in historical perspective en D.V. Glass and D.E.C. Eversley, (eds.) Population in History, Arnold, Londres.
2. ^ Kertzer, David I and Marzio Barbagli. 2001. The history of the European family. New Haven: Yale University Printing. p xiv
3. ^ ^{a b} Hajnal, John (1965). "European union pattern in historical perspective". In D.V. Glass and D.E.C. Eversley (ed.). Population in History. Arnold, Londres. pp. 101–143.
4. ^ Coontz, Stephanie. 2005. Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage. New York City: Viking Press, Penguin Group Inc. p 125-129.
5. ^ De Moor, Tine; van Zanden, Jan Luiten (2010). "Girl power: the European matrimony blueprint and labour markets in the North Sea region in the belatedly medieval and early mod period". The Economic History Review. 63 (1): 1–33 [p. 17]. doi:ten.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00483.x.
6. ^ "Average age of Menarche in History". MUM.
7. ^ Hajnal, John (1965): European marriage blueprint in historical perspective en D.5. Glass and D.Eastward.C. Eversley, (eds.) Population in History, Arnold, Londres. 123
8. ^ Seccombe, Wally (1992). A Millennium of Family Change, Feudalism to Capitalism in Northwestern Europe. Verso. pp. 184–186. ISBN0-86091-332-5.
9. ^ Amundsen, Darrel; Dreis, Carol Jean (1973). "The Age of Menarche in Medieval Europe". Man Biology. 45 (three): 363–369. JSTOR 41459883.
10. ^ Rock, Linda. 2010. Kinship and Gender. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. Pg. 227
11. ^ Coontz, 2005. Pg. 129
12. ^ Kertzer 2001; 224–225
13. ^ ^{a b} Hanawalt, Barbara A. (1986). The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England. Oxford University Press. pp. 95–100. ISBN0-19-503649-2.
14. ^ ^{a b} Palm, Lennart; Schott, Raphaëlle (2001). "Le changement caché du système démographique suédois à "50'Époque de la Grandeur"". Annales de démographie historique. 2 (102): 141–172.
15. ^ Philips, Kim M. 2003. Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, C.1270-c.1540. Manchester University Printing. Pg 37
16. ^ De Moor, Tine and Jan Luiten van Zanden. 2009. p 16-18
17. ^ De Moor, 2009; 17
18. ^ ^{a b} Cressy, David (1997). Birth, Wedlock, and Death : Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England. Oxford Academy Press. p. 285. ISBN0-xix-820168-0.
19. ^ A. Lawrence, "Women in the British Isles in the sixteenth century", in R. Tittler and Northward. Jones, eds, A Companion to Tudor Britain (Oxford: Blackwell John Wiley & Sons, 2008), ISBN 1405137401, p. 384.
20. ^ Ginnell, Laurence (1894). The Brehon Laws: A Legal Handbook: Chapter I.
21. ^ Lee, Joseph J. (2008). The Modernization of Irish gaelic Society, 1848–1918. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. p. 3. ISBN978-0-7171-6031-0.
22. ^ Mokyr, Joel (2013). Why Ireland Starved: A Quantitative and Analytical History of the Irish Economy, 1800–1850. Routledge Press. p. 72. ISBN978-0-415-60764-3.
23. ^ O'Neill, Kevin (2003). Family and Farm in Pre-Famine Ireland: The Parish of Killashandra. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 180. ISBN0-299-09840-0.
24. ^ Nolan, Janet (1989). Ourselves Alone: Women's Emigration from Republic of ireland, 1885–1920. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 74–75. ISBN0-8131-1684-8.
25. ^ Gies, Frances and Joseph. 1989. Marriage and Family in the Center Ages. Harper Perennial. Pg. 31–32
26. ^ Hanawalt, Barbara A. (1986). The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England. Oxford University Printing. pp. 79–83. ISBN0-nineteen-503649-2.
27. ^ Hines, John. 1997. The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration Flow to the Eighth Century. Boydell Printing. Pgs. 214–215.
28. ^ Green, Dennis Howard and Siegmund, Frank. 2003. The Continental Saxons from the Migration Period to the Tenth Century. Boydell Press. Pg. 107
29. ^ Bouchard, Constance B., 'Consanguinity and Noble Marriages in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries', Speculum, Vol. 56, No. two (Apr. 1981), pp. 269–70
30. ^ Greif, Avner (2006). "Family Structure, Institutions, and Growth: The Origin and Implications of Western Corporatism". American Economic Review. 96 (2): 308–312. JSTOR 30034664.
31. ^ Herlihy, David. 1985. Medieval Households. Harvard University Printing. Pgs. 17–19
32. ^ Heather, Peter. 1999. The Visigoths from the Migration Menses to the Seventh Century: An Ethnographic Perspective. Boydell & Brewer Ltd. Pgs 142–148
33. ^ Mitterauer, Michael. 2010. Why Europe?: The Medieval Origins of Its Special Path. University of Chicago Printing. Pg. 53–57
34. ^ Hanawalt, Barbara A. (1986). The Ties That Spring: Peasant Families in Medieval England. Oxford Academy Press. pp. 96. ISBN0-19-503649-two.
35. ^ Lehmberg, Stanford E. and Samantha A. Meigs. 2008. The Peoples of the British Isles: A New History: From Prehistoric Times to 1688. Lyceum Books. Pg. 117
36. ^ De Moor 2009. Pg five–half dozen
37. ^ Huijgen, Carolien. 2010. Family formation and union patterns: A comparison betwixt Sri Lanka and Europe. University of Utrecht. 31 November 2011.<igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/>
38. ^ De Moor 2009. Pg vi
39. ^ Coontz, Stephanie. 2005. Union, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Dear Conquered Wedlock. New York City: Viking Printing, Penguin Group Inc. Pg 107
40. ^ De Moor, 2009. Pg eight
41. ^ De Moor 2009. Pgs eleven–12
42. ^ De Moor, 2009. Pg 17
43. ^ Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. (2011). Gender in History: Global Perspectives (2nd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. p. 37. ISBN978-one-4051-8995-8.
44. ^ Wrigley, Due east. A. (1997). English Population History from Family unit Reconstitution 1580–1837. Cambridge University Printing. pp. 135–139.
45. ^ Laslett, Peter (1965). The World Nosotros Take Lost. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 82.
46. ^ Franson, J. Karl (1996). "'Too Presently Marr'd': Juliet's Age equally Symbol in 'Romeo and Juliet'". Papers on Language & Literature. 32 (3): 244.

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_pattern

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