Course:History 344 Nasty Families/Family structure/Fertility

During the course of the Stuart age and continuing from the seventeenth into the eighteenth centuries, the English landed class began a steady transformation in its family composition and formation.(1) From the period of 1600 to 1750, and in particular after the period of 1640 the fertility rates among the upper gentry had dropped “from well above 5 children to a low of about 3.8 children born per ever-married offspring”.(2) Additionally, same sex children born for every member of the previous generation had also fallen from being over 1.6 down to the much lower figure of 0.8.(3) For those who remarried, the mean became 0.5 children down from 0.8 from the generation before.(4) These startling numbers show a shift in English society as the age of marriage steadily rose and women were waiting to have kids as a form of natural-birth control.(5) Women, who before would have tried to conceive with a sense of urgency at the beginning of a marriage, were now waiting for over a year to begin having kids.(6) (BN: These figures could be clarified a bit. Also, in an age before birth control pills, how were they waiting?)

Fertility was entirely dependent on the age of the mother in the 17th and early 18th century as other forms of birth control were not widely practiced and late marriage was a conscious form of birth control that women were using.(7) The times were changing and accelerated birthrates that had been necessary to sustain the population were no longer necessary thanks to medical advancements and better quality of life for those children that were born into the gentry class in England. Remarriage, coupled with the more relaxed pace that woman chose to have children soon became the norm and the family unit became smaller as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries progressed.(8) (BN: Could be more specific about the medical advancements and improved quality of life).

The English Gentry were marrying later and families were being restructured based on changes in English society. The median age at which the upper landed class married rose from 24 to between 28 and 29 for men while women were getting married between the ages of 19 and 23.(9) This is quite a jump from earlier times where women almost always were married in their teenage years. Part of the reason for the rising ages in nuptiality was that the economy was shifting towards one that was becoming increasingly dependent on the market. Larger consolidated tenancies were leased out to the few yeoman who were responsible maintaining and farming that land.(10) The wages of these successful yeomen were paid by the land gentry and those prosperous land owners who could afford to do so. These gentry, however, had many bills and wages that they owed to their neighbours and also to their yeoman workers and any extra income would be better spent by reinvesting in the market or kept to provide subsistence for their family.(11) Excess children had become just that, excess, they were a gamble and could potentially drain a family of funds that could be better spent elsewhere to help maintain a gentry family’s esteemed place in society.(12) BN: OK, but should clarify what the yeomen were.

1 Daniel C. Quinlan and Jean A. Shackelford, “Economy and English Families, 1500-1850,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 24, no. 3 (1994): 436, http://www.jstor.org/stable/206680.

2 Ibid., 436.

3 Ibid., 436.

4 Ibid., 436.

5 Henry Kamen, Early modern European society (New York: Routledge,2001) 22, http://books.google.ca/books?id=iHRUe0-bmF8C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.

6 Ibid., 22.

7 Ibid., 22.

8 Quinlan, "Economy and English Families, 1500-1850," 436.

9. Ibid., 436.

10. Ibid., 438.

11. Ibid., 438.

12. Ibid., 438-439.