The Roads to Reproduction: Comparing Life-course Trajectories in Preindustrial Eurasia

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Book Chapter

Reference

The Roads to Reproduction: Comparing Life-course Trajectories in Preindustrial Eurasia

DRIBE, Martin, MANFREDINI, Matteo, ORIS, Michel

Abstract

Marriage is, by definition, the product of human agency. It is a social construction in which individual decisions are shaped by household and wider socioeconomic contexts within the boundaries and constraints of social and cultural norms. This is the reason why marriage patterns differ markedly, for example, by geographical setting, gender, socioeconomic status, household structure, and religion. However, analytic frameworks of marriage patterns have mainly considered geography to be the most important element of differentiation, providing a simple synthesis of all the other aspects. For over two centuries, scholars have viewed marriage as a key element in the East–West divide (Engelen and Wolf 2005; Hajnal 1965; Lee and Wang 1999; Malthus 1803). For Malthus, the East was dominated by the positive check, with mortality crises and infanticide caused by excessive demographic pressure rooted in a culture of universal and early access to marriage for females, while the West regulated the access to marriage and consequently lowered fertility. For him, this pattern reflected a moral inferiority of the Eastern populations, [...]

DRIBE, Martin, MANFREDINI, Matteo, ORIS, Michel. The Roads to Reproduction: Comparing Life-course Trajectories in Preindustrial Eurasia. In: Lundh, C & Kurosu, S. Similarity in difference. Marriage in Europe and Asia, 1700-1900 . MIT Press, 2014. p. 85-116

Available at:

http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:86221

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4 The Roads to Reproduction: Comparing Life- course Trajectories in Preindustrial Eurasia

Martin Dribe, Matteo Manfredini, and Michel Oris in collaboration with Satomi Kurosu and Cameron Campbell

Marriage is, by definition, the product of human agency. It is a social construction in which individual decisions are shaped by household and wider socioeconomic contexts within the boundaries and constraints of social and cultural norms. This is the reason why marriage patterns differ markedly, for example, by geographical setting, gender, socioeconomic status, household structure, and religion. However, analytic frameworks of marriage patterns have mainly considered geography to be the most important element of differentiation, providing a simple synthesis of all the other aspects. For over two centuries, scholars have viewed marriage as a key element in the East–West divide (Engelen and Wolf 2005; Hajnal 1965; Lee and Wang 1999; Malthus 1803). For Malthus, the East was dominated by the positive check, with mortality crises and infanticide caused by excessive demographic pressure rooted in a culture of universal and early access to marriage for females, while the West regulated the access to marriage and consequently lowered fertility. For him, this pattern reflected a moral inferiority of the Eastern populations, the incapacity to control sexual appetites, especially in comparison with the Christian West (Bengtsson et al. 2004: 3; Lee and Wang 1999: ch. 2). Fifty years ago, Hajnal (1953, 1965) demonstrated the prevalence of the preventive check among European populations, and the originality of the so-called European marriage pattern of late access to marriage and frequent permanent celibacy.

Marriage and Reproduction

Plenty of studies have subsequently demonstrated the differences between Asia and Europe in family formation systems. From the pio- neering Hajnal thesis of an East–West divide between St. Petersburg

FOR PROOFREADING, INDEXING, AND PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES ONLY

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and Trieste (Hajnal 1965, 1983) to the most recent work by Engelen and Wolf (2005) on marriage and family in Eurasia (see also Thornton 2005), the differences in marriage patterns and family formation systems have often been assumed to be an essential meta-geographical dimension dividing the East from the West.

However, this schematization is overly simplistic, as has already been acknowledged in previous chapters of this volume. Indeed it often assumed a Western definition of marriage, which is hardly universal (Servais and Arrault 2000), but most of all it was based on taxonomies and simple demographic indicators. The complexity of this social institution across countries and societies has not been accounted for and neither has the plurality of factors determining different marriage patterns. The Malthus/Hajnal idea of the East–West dichotomy has there- fore been questioned by many scholars, and many elements have been added to the discussion about the East–West dichotomy. Two examples are the debates on individualism versus collectivism (Goody 1999) and civil marriage versus religious marriage (Duby 1993, 1996; Servais and Arrault 2000). In Western societies, marriage was usually viewed as an event, while in Asian populations it was rather seen as a process. This is the reason why Asian families started to plan the marriage of their younger members from childhood, while in Europe the whole process was shorter and more individualized. In most parts of Europe, marriage marked the passage to adulthood and autonomy, while in the Asian context, and to some extent also in some Southern European populations, it was seen only as a step toward adulthood defined by the constraints of family production and reproduction. What is more, in Europe, at least until the nineteenth century, marriage was a religious event, while in Asia it was a civil one, if not a simple contract, with the consequence that the role of institutions, especially ecclesiastic ones, was decisive in maintaining the European marriage pattern.

The difficulty in finding a common ground for comparing marriage patterns between East and West is evident. Comparing marriage is far more challenging than comparing births and deaths, since the role of marriage differs with family systems and thus has different meanings and different implications in different contexts. These different con- notations of marriage pose some conceptual and interpretative prob- lems in comparative analysis concerning very different contexts. The main idea of this volume is to move beyond simple schematization and classification to examine the many determinants of marriage in the two geographical contexts. In this chapter we propose a more detailed and

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The Roads to Reproduction 87

complementary approach. All societies have formal and socially accepted events sanctioning transitions from one stage of life to another.

According to different social systems and periods, these turning points could constitute “sharply demarcated, highly routinized, and carefully coordinated” paths (Model, Furstenberg, and Hershberg 1976) or more autonomous and less strictly predictable routes. Among such turning points, marriage has always represented one of the most important transitions in the individual life course, both in past and in contemporary societies (Hareven and Masaoka 1988). Indeed we believe that a correct approach to comparative studies on marriage and its role across different societies and populations should begin with the fact that in almost every society marriage represents socially accepted access to reproduction, guaranteeing the biological survival and continuity of families and populations. In this respect marriage should be seen as a transition point on the “road to reproduction” and analyzed in relation to other turning points in the life course, for instance, leaving home, family formation, household headship, and property transmission (Shanahan 2000). Given the different meanings of marriage in different societies, the comparison of marriage can be misleading; thus we consider the investigation into access to legitimate reproduction to be more meaningful in conceptual terms and more coherent for comparative purposes. This is exactly what we aim in this chapter to undertake: an analysis and comparison of the paths to reproduction of some Eurasian populations. By shifting the focus from marriage to access to reproduction, we challenge the classic geographic differentiations of theoretical models of the family formation system, such as those by Hajnal (1965, 1983) and Reher (1998). In fact systems featuring early first marriage do not necessarily imply early access to reproduction, as shown by the long intervals between marriage and first birth in Asian societies (e.g., Lee and Wang 1999; Tsuya and Kurosu 2010a).

However, a more complete examination of the sequence of transition points in the access to reproduction not only constitutes a contribution to demographic and family history but also considers the relations between demography and ideology (Lee and Wang 1999: ch. 9). Alan Macfarlane (1978, l986, 1987) saw in the English family and demographic systems the cradle of individualism and the capitalist culture.

Emmanuel Todd (1985) developed a vision of individualism as an ideology that valorizes the moral autonomy against the social totality. He contrasted the family systems according to a double dichotomy of equality versus inequality and authority versus cooperation, and saw

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in such characteristics the roots of contemporary political systems, democratic versus autocratic and individualistic versus collectivist.

Almost at the same time, Jack Goody (1983) located the roots of Western individualism in Christian marriage, imposed by the church as a union between two souls, implying the mutual consent of two individuals.

The church had assumed the collective control of families regarding marriage, but differently from China, where the extended family household rather than the individual or the individual couple formed the basic decision-making unit (Lee and Wang 1999: 125). That is why we assume that China, and more generally Asian societies, was characterized by a more structured and rigidly defined path toward reproduction in which the family group played a central role. In this chapter the classic scheme of collective versus individual societies applied to the East–West dichotomy will be challenged in the light of the multiplicity of trajectories toward reproduction specific to each population studied.

Not only the number of possible life courses but also the presence or absence of one ordered path will allow us to discuss the role of family ties, household context, and social and institutional regulations in shaping the access to reproduction as well as the conclusion of a formal union.

In the end, this chapter complements the other chapters in two ways.

First, from a conceptual point of view, we shift the focus from marriage to reproduction to look at individual trajectories to first birth in order to set a new ground for the analysis and comparison of the East–West dichotomy; second, from a methodological point of view, we use life histories and life-course analysis for the study of transitions to reproduction rather than the determinants of marriage.

Sample and Variable Definitions

In the first part of the chapter, we analyze the timing of the various transition points on the road to reproduction. Thus, for each population, the age at first leaving home, age at first marriage, and age at first legitimate birth are investigated along with the proportions of the population never experiencing such events. Due to the different natures of the sources used for the different populations (see chapter 3), the definitions of those transitions and the respective populations at risk may vary somewhat across the populations.

First leaving home is here defined as the first departure—temporary or permanent—from the parental household of those individuals under

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continuous observation from the age of 10. First marriage concerns all the marriages of people in our sample populations for whom we observed the transition from never-married to married before the age of 45. In the European populations we include all the individuals whose wedding was celebrated either in the parish of residence or in the home parish of the bride, in order to solve the problem associated with the custom of European populations to marry in the bride’s parish when the marriage was between spouses living in different populations.¹ Finally, the mean ages at first birth are based only on legitimate births.

In this regard only couples under continuous observation from first marriage to first birth were considered for the calculation of mean age at first birth.

In the sections of the chapter in which we discuss mean ages, transitions are treated as independent turning points, each of which is based on a different population sample, and not as sequential events. In other words, there is no complete overlap between the three risk populations of potential leavers, spouses, and parents. For example, while mean age at first marriage is based on all the marriages in the population regardless of the place where the couple settled down after marriage, mean ages at first birth concern only those couples who established themselves in the areas under study.

As for the proportions never-married and never having a first birth, we need to observe individuals up to the age of 45, which means that these calculations are based on a different population from that used for studying the timing of the transitions. Naturally this creates a selection bias in contexts in which migration was frequent, such as in Scania, or in which large gender differentials in marriage emigration were present, such in Shimomoriya and Niita, because only people forming a family in the place of origin are included. It is impossible to assess the impact of this possible bias because we lack the data to follow people after migration, but we certainly expect the population to be positively selected in terms of socioeconomic status as low-status people normally were more likely to leave (see Dribe 2000 for a discussion for Scania and chapter 8 here for east Belgium).

In addition to studying transition points separately, we also analyze the actual sequences from leaving home to reproduction of all the individuals who experienced a first birth and who were originally observed in their parental home. Again, this could create a selection bias because children leaving home early and migrating out of the parish of residence will be less likely to be included than those leaving

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home before marriage. In the section on trajectories, data are not available for the Chinese populations due to the triennial periodic updating of the Chinese registers, preventing us from reconstructing the precise and detailed sequence of the transitions for the populations of Liaoning and Shuangcheng.²

Analyses by socioeconomic status are carried out using three categories—high, medium, and low socioeconomic status—for all the populations investigated. We use this simple subdivision as a common ground when analyzing and discussing the results of the different populations. In general terms, this categorization represents a socioeconomic hierarchy within each population, which normally reflects a relative gradient in living standards. However, the basis for the classification depends on the quality of the sources and on the nature of the information available in each setting. In fact, in some contexts, the data could refer to either the household head or every single household member, and they could include information about occupation (e.g., in Belgium and Sweden), landholding size (Japan and Sweden),³ or family tax (Italy). Thus there are some difficulties in formulating clear hypoth- eses on socioeconomic differences in the transition as they refer to different economic and social contexts. For example, the higher socioeconomic status category is formed by farmers with land above sub- sistence level in Sweden, by white-collar workers in Belgium, and by the bourgeoisie, but also by some sharecroppers (landless farmers), in Italy. In this regard the lower socioeconomic status group is probably the most homogeneous category across the populations, as it normally includes the poorest strata of the rural population: the landless.

For Shuangcheng and Liaoning the socioeconomic status is catego- rized according to institutional affiliation and individual occupation.

Low status was defined by a hereditary affiliation with one of the reg- istered populations in Liaoning or Shuangcheng on which the state imposed special restrictions or obligations. Medium status was defined as including everyone in the remaining regular populations who did not hold a salaried official position. High status was defined as including individuals in regular positions who held salaried official positions.

Notwithstanding these differences, we used parental socioeconomic status at age 10 for leaving home, household, or individual socioeconomic status at marriage, and household or husband’s status for first birth.⁴ The drawback to the analysis of socioeconomic differentials in the patterns of transition to reproduction lies in the low numbers for

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some socioeconomic groups. In table 4.7 socioeconomic groups with fewer than forty observations are italicized.

Marriage and Living Arrangements in the Studied Populations Despite its social structure, Scania had a very coherent family system that resembled a kind of ideal type, with 90 percent of the domestic groups being nuclear. As in east Belgium, southern Swedish peasants had a late and neolocal marriage, which necessarily implied that marriage was the decisive step in the formation of a new household.

However, people in Sart and the Pays de Herve usually remained in the parental home until marriage, while Scanians left home in adoles- cence or early adulthood, moving from farm to farm in order to accu- mulate social and monetary capital (Alter and Oris 1999a; Dribe 2000;

Dribe and Lundh 2005a; Neven 2003).

In Casalguidi, the Tuscan village, more than half of the domestic groups belonged to the simple-family type, but more than one-third, involving half the total population, were complex. These differences were closely associated with the occupation of the household head.

Wealthier sharecroppers tended to live in complex domestic groups, the size and composition of which were controlled by landowners. A household was sometimes formed neolocally, especially among day laborers, sometimes by the fission or fusion of existing households but most often by the transmission of headship from an elderly father to a son.

The Japanese villages of Shimomoriya and Niita in the Ou region were similar in this regard, but with an even more distinctive pattern.

No fewer than 36 percent of the households in Shimomoriya and Niita consisted of stem families. However, the Italian and Japanese settings differed in two important ways. First, the age at marriage was late in the former and early in the latter. Second, the presence of servants was not a real issue in Tuscany, since sharecroppers found the necessary labor within their own complex households; alternatively, they hired low-status peasants as day laborers. In the Japanese population, however, domesticity existed, with the peculiarity that servants were usually married, not single as was the case in Europe.⁵ In Shimomoriya and Niita, where the population was declining, it was vital to assure a sufficiently large labor force and an optimal size of the household and marriage played an important role in this (Kurosu, Tsuya, and Hamano 1999; Nagata 1998). Another important characteristic of the Japanese

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stem-family system was that marriage was either virilocal (wives moved into husbands’ parental households) or uxorilocal (husbands moved into wives’ parental households). Different marriage strategies (when and whom to marry) characterized the two types of living arrangement after marriage.

In China, both in Liaoning and in Shuangcheng, the family system was similar to that of the Tuscan sharecroppers. Indeed married sons stayed in their parental household while daughters were distributed around when they married. The prevalence of complex-family households was much higher because married sons and even cousins often remained together in the household after the deaths of senior household members. Thus, in Liaoning, 62 percent of the domestic units belonged to this type and almost 38 percent of the household members were kin, but non-stem, while this proportion only reached 10 percent in Shimomoriya and Niita in Japan and 5 percent in northern Italy (Bengtsson et al. 2004: 100). In Shuangcheng, a slightly smaller proportion of households were complex: 52 percent. Marriage was also universal for females, but regardless of gender, it was never important for household formation, an almost irrelevant concept in our Chinese populations (Bengtsson et al. 2004: 97). A Chinese household was a sustain- able institution, with a vertical hierarchical organization and usual transmission of the headship from the dead father to the oldest son.

The fusion of existing households was extremely rare. Households divided, but usually only upon the death of senior members, and even when they did divide, the resulting households were often complex, consisting of sets of married brothers. Such a sense of stability was reinforced by the absence of servants or of any form of life-cycle service, which was definitely unnecessary in domestic units formed by five adult members on average (Bengtsson et al. 2004: 99).

Transitions to Reproduction

Table 4.1 displays the mean ages at first leaving home, first marriage, and first birth, computed for the seven populations and for men and women separately. In general, the figures show less variation across populations in age at first birth than in leaving home or first marriage.

Populations that seemed quite distant in terms of the family formation system were more similar in the timing of first birth. Despite this con- vergence, it is quite clear that the Asian populations started their reproduction earlier than the European ones.

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Table 4.1 Mean ages and standard deviations at different transitions in seven Eurasian study populations, 1716–1913 Study population

MenWomen First leaving homeFirst marriageFirst legitimate birthFirst leaving homeFirst marriageFirst legitimate birth MeanStandard deviationNMeanStandard deviationNMeanStandard deviationNMeanStandard deviationNMeanStandard deviationNMeanStandard deviationN Scania,17.83.82,26528.05.080731.06.066618.14.22,21925.65.01,12827.85.9754 1825–1894 Sart,29.06.21,57330.35.71,53330.85.21,07127.06.41,47627.15.81,77627.25.21,213 1812–1899 Pays de Herve,29.16.61,36131.16.21,24431.55.568428.06.91,31629.16.11,42628.25.4692 1846–1899 Casalguidi,23.58.353627.66.259728.45.348724.06.283224.85.775625.34.5448 1819–1859 Shimomoriya and Niita,19.58.244418.65.474823.95.055715.35.261114.73.370819.74.2322 1716–1870 Liaoning,———20.47.849,08226.57.519,046———18.54.39,49025.26.026,229 1789–1909 Shuangcheng,———21.67.318,39123.15.34,739———203.68,50224.75.411,961 1870–1913 Sources: Scania: Population registers (husförhörslängder) and church records of vital events linked to poll-tax registers (mantalslängder) (see chapter 7); Sart and Pays de Herve: Popula- tion registers (see chapter 8); Casalguidi: Parish registers linked to the Status Animarum (see chapter 9); Shimomoriya and Niita: local population register (NAC) (see chapter 10); Liaoning: Banner household registers (see chapter 11); Shuangcheng: Banner household registers (see chapter 11). The Scania data are from the Scanian Economic Demographic Database (SEDD), the data of Liaoning are from the China Multi-Generational Panel Dataset, Liaoning (CMGPD-LN), and the data of Shuangcheng are from China Multi-Generational Panel Dataset Shuangcheng (CMGPD-SC).

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The general picture described above is obviously a consequence of the different meanings attached to marriage in the different populations. In those areas where it marked a transition to adulthood, such as in the European villages, it also represented the access to reproduction, which usually occurred soon after marriage. In contrast, in those populations in which marriage was seen as only a step on the road to adulthood, such as in the Asian populations, the association between marriage and reproduction was weaker, especially when compared with the populations in Italy and Belgium.⁶

However, regarding leaving home, there were also large variations within Europe. In the Belgian populations, but also among the women in Casalguidi, it was common practice to stay at home until marriage, while in Scania, people generally left home well before marriage to work as servants in another household (see Dribe 2000).

Also in Shimomoriya and Niita, men and women left the parental home at a very young age, especially females, but for a very different reason. In fact, in Japan, the mean age at leaving home was higher than the mean age at first marriage for both males and females. This pattern is probably due to inheriting sons and daughters, who married virilocally or uxorilocally, and frequently remained in the parental home for a while after marriage before leaving home for service (Kurosu 2004).

Generally speaking, but especially in relation to first marriage and first birth, women experienced life-course transitions earlier than men, although they followed similar transitional patterns and their between- population variability was only slightly higher than that of men. The clear-cut divide between the Asian and the European populations is still visible, with the former populations showing lower figures for each of the turning points considered. This difference was particularly striking for marriage, for which the female populations of China and Japan showed a mean age at first marriage of between 15 and 20 years, compared with 25 to 29 for the European populations. The variability across populations was again least for first births, with the mean ages of women ranging from 20 years in Shimomoriya and Niita to 28 years in the Pays de Herve and Scania.

Having described the timing of single transitions, we now turn to analyzing their frequency in terms of proportions never-married and never having had a first birth at the age of 45. Table 4.2 clearly shows the contrast between the universal marriage pattern in Japan and China and the selective access to marriage in the European countries. However,

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there were also pronounced differences between the sexes, with the sole exception of the Pays de Herve.

Between 10 and 24 percent of European men and women never experienced marriage, although the gender balance of the never- married differed from population to population. As for females, we move from the higher figures of never-married women in Scania and the Pays de Herve (over 20 percent) to the lower proportions in Casa- lguidi and Sart (10–14 percent). In Asia, in contrast, only small fractions (0–3 percent) of women had never been married by the age of 45.

For men, too, there were lower celibacy rates in Asia than in Europe, although marriage for Asian men was by no means as universal as for Asian women. Indeed, in Liaoning, the proportion of never-married men was at the same level as in Scania, around 12 percent. Once again, East and West appear less distant as far as access to reproduction is concerned on account of the weaker link between marriage and reproduction in Liaoning, Shuangcheng, and Shimomoriya and Niita. Most impressive, however, were the very high proportions of men and women who remained excluded from the reproductive process.

Between 12 and 30 percent of men had not yet experienced a first birth at age 45. In this regard the East–West divide appears less clear-cut, especially for the Chinese populations, whose figures are highly similar to, if not higher than, the respective values in the European populations

Table 4.2

Proportions never-married and never having had a first birth in seven Eurasian study populations, 1716–1913

Study population

Men Women

First marriage

First legitimate

birth First

marriage

First legitimate birth

% N % N % N % N

Scania 12.8 384 22.1 384 20.5 414 26.3 414

Sart 18.2 1,485 24.0 1,485 14.0 1,444 17.5 1,444

Pays de Herve 24.2 1,345 30.6 1,345 24.3 1,394 30.4 1,394

Casalguidi 17.1 558 19.5 549 10.3 521 15.5 502

Shimomoriya

and Niita 4.6 347 12.4 347 1.0 193 11.4 193

Liaoning 12.3 25,131 28.1 9,744 0.3 5,435 9.7 5,256

Shuangcheng 10.4 7,776 18.1 3,563 3.1 3,571 4.8 2,951

Sources: See table 4.1.

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(18–28 percent). Among women, the difference between the Asian and the European populations is much more marked and the overall pattern more varied, with proportions of childless women ranging from 5 percent in Shuangcheng to over 30 percent in the Pays de Herve.

Studies of childlessness for both contemporary and historical populations have showed that only about 3 to 5 percent of all couples suffer from permanent sterility, and that this proportion increases with age (Toulemon 1996; see also Knodel and Wilson 1981; Morgan 1991). The proportions of childless and never-married women in the range between 5 and 20 percent are normal, increasing at a higher mean age at first marriage (Rowland 2007). In this regard the implied levels of childlessness within marriage in our populations seem reasonable, perhaps with the exception of Sart (3.5 percent) and, more strikingly, the Chinese population of Shuangcheng (1.0 percent), although this latter figure is almost certainly an underestimate. Generally speaking, the Asian populations of Liaoning and Shimomoriya and Niita have higher levels of childlessness in marriage than the European populations. This could be due to the strong selectivity of the European marriage pattern, which is in contrast to the universal and nonselective marriage pattern in Asia. In Europe the high frequency of prenuptial sexual relations (see table 4.6) might have been part of a trial and error process, used to discard those individuals who were unable to conceive (Alter 1988).

From Transitions to Trajectories

In this section we move from transitions to trajectories, studying how leaving home, first marriage, and first birth were ordered. Our ambi- tion is to identify the existence of one or more characteristic paths to reproduction in the different populations. We define a spectrum of different possible trajectories from living in the parental home to experiencing a first birth. In table 4.3, as well as in table 4.7, we use the abbreviations lh for leaving home, fm for first marriage, and fb for first birth. A minus (–) means a succession of events, while a slash (/) between two events implies simultaneity. Thus lh – fm – fb means that the individual first leaves the parental home, thereafter marries for the first time, and finally enters parenthood for the first time. In cases in which exact dates are not available, we can only see whether the transitions happened within the same year, such as in the case of Shimo- moriya and Niita and, to some extent, Casalguidi and Scania. Because

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Table 4.3 Distribution of all possible trajectories from living in the parental home to experiencing a first legitimate birth in five Eurasian study populations, 1716–1899 (%) Trajectory

MenWomen ScaniaSartPays de HerveCasalguidiShimomoriya and NiitaScaniaSartPays de HerveCasalguidiShimomoriya and Niita lh – fm – fb59.45.95.315.220.351.64.23.212.712.7 lh – fb – fm0.40.90.50.60.00.50.40.30.50.0 fm – lh – fb0.06.814.41.27.90.07.517.00.88.7 fm – fb – lh0.011.217.83.113.30.011.315.27.113.0 fb – fm – lh0.01.32.46.80.00.02.06.00.00.0 fb – lh – fm0.00.20.30.00.00.00.80.60.00.0 lh/fm – fb12.933.119.915.510.126.734.220.565.637.3 fb – lh/fm0.22.61.30.00.00.23.82.21.10.0 fm – fb21.034.732.557.042.913.130.228.712.224.2 fb – fm0.43.15.20.60.01.25.46.10.00.0 Other5.70.20.30.05.66.80.20.10.04.0 Total100.0100.0100.0100.0100.0100.0100.0100.0100.0100.0 N5059596183235575741,096683378322 Sources: See table 4.1. Notes: lh = first leaving home; fm = first marriage; fb = first birth.

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our research is inscribed in a global project on marriage in Eurasia, we decided only to consider the trajectories that ended in a first legitimate birth, that is to say, recognized and socially legitimized access to reproduction.⁷ Moreover the sample is formed by individuals who were first observed in their parental home and for whom we also observe a first birth. Thus the proportions can differ between tables 4.3 to 4.7 and the tables used above to describe transition means and proportions.

Our analysis of the different populations highlights four different patterns of transition to reproduction, which were essentially based on the different types of household formation system: a nuclear model with life-cycle servants, a nuclear model without life-cycle servants, a stem-family model with both virilocal and uxorilocal living arrangements after marriage, and finally a joint-family model with only a virilocal arrangement.

In Scania, about 60 percent of men and a little more than 50 percent of women had their first legitimate birth after leaving home and marrying. This indicates the predominance of the life-cycle servant system in Scania, where a majority of young people left home before marriage to work as servants in another household. However, due to the possible selection bias in the sample, these figures probably underestimate the true proportions of people following the common trajectories lh – fm – fb. Thus, in Scania, the proportion of people leaving home before marriage was actually even higher (see Dribe 2000). About 13 percent of men and 27 percent of women left home and married in the same year to form a new household, independent from the parental family, while 21 percent of men and 13 percent of women did not leave the parental home before marriage but took over headship upon marriage, usually while making a retirement agreement with their parents or parents-in-law to take over the farm (see Dribe and Lundh 2005b).

The eastern Belgian rural populations were also characterized by two main trajectories and several minor pathways. The most common path to reproduction for men (32–35 percent) was to stay home and have the first birth in the native household (fm – fb). For women, the picture is similar, with about 30 percent never leaving home before their first marriage and first birth. In the rural areas of eastern Belgium, children had to stay at home to take over the farm. In the Pays de Herve, this just involved a transfer of the leasehold contract from the parents to the new couple (Neven 2003), while in Sart, where most of the (poor) land belonged to peasants, more complicated bargaining

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was needed within the sibling group to deal with the egalitarian inheri- tance system (Servais 2003).

Alternatively, people often left home upon marriage, settled down elsewhere, and then had a first birth (about 20 percent of the males in the Pays de Herve and 33 percent in Sart). Again, the female pattern is very similar: from about 20 percent in the Pays de Herve to 35 percent in Sart left home upon marriage and then had a first birth.

Two minor pathways, more frequent in the Pays de Herve, can be also mentioned. Between 11 and 18 percent of men followed the path fm – fb – lh—leaving the parental house only after having had their first child—while 7 to 14 percent followed fm – lh – fb. They both reflected the difficulties many young couples faced in finding a house and land to rent to settle down and establish an independent household just after their marriage (Neven 2003). The neolocal rule, which is an essential characteristic of the nuclear family system, was not immediately respected and a stem-family phase was part of the road to legitimate reproduction for 53 percent of the males and 49 percent of the females in Sart, and respectively 65 and 61 percent in the Pays de Herve.

However, the cohabitation with parents was only temporary, although life expectancy was high and rising in these populations (Oris et al.

2005). The Walloon phrase “marriage needs household” was ultimately respected.

Another alternative path was a sort of controlled revolt against the social rule that entailed the birth of the first child before marriage, namely an illegitimate first birth. The family and society were never- theless strong enough to force those “deviant” young people to return to the “right road,” that is, to marry. The access to legitimate reproduction took this unconventional form for about 7 to 9 percent of men and 12 to 15 percent of women. All the paths described above can be seen as expressions of a nuclear family system without extensive family life-cycle service. Fewer than 7 percent of the males and 5 percent of the females left the parental household as a first transition.

In the Tuscan population of Casalguidi and in Shimomoriya and Niita in northeast Japan, the roads to standard access to reproduction show both similarities and differences, positioning the Italian population in between those of Asia and those of Northern Europe. While in Scania and Belgium the differences between men and women were rather limited, here the patterns were clearly gendered. Among men, the virilocal complex-family model—fm – fb—was dominant in Casa- lguidi (57 percent). The same virilocal model was also dominant

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in Shimomoriya and Niita (43 percent). In a variation of this latter path, men left the native household after having had their first child to form their own household as a branch household (fm – fb – lh, 13 percent). An alternative path was lh – fm – fb (and the similar lh / fm – fb), which involved about 30 percent of those who fathered a first legitimate child. In the Japanese case, lh/fm–fb identifies uxorilocal marriages, men who left home and married into their wives’ parental households.

While concerning only a minority of men in Casalguidi and in Shi- momoriya and Niita, leaving home upon marriage and then having a baby was by far the dominant pattern among Italian women (66 percent). This was also the most frequent pattern in Shimomoriya and Niita, although less dominant than in Casalguidi (37 percent). In these populations, women moved while men stayed, and the other trajectories observed in both Casalguidi and Shimomoriya and Niita (lh – fm – fb, 13 percent) or only in Shimomoriya and Niita (fm – lh – fb, 9 percent) merely confirm this general rule. Conversely, almost one woman in four stayed at home in the Japanese villages (fm – fb) and another 13 percent left only after their first birth (fm – fb – lh). These cases refer to women who married uxorilocally.

Despite the fact that we lack trajectories for the Chinese populations, it is evident that the transition sequences were very homogeneous. The transitions followed largely traditional norms according to which sons remained in their native household as long as one of their parents was alive, and daughters left their parents’ households when they married and moved into their husbands’ households (Lee and Campbell 1997).

Some individuals might have left home at the death of the household head or other senior family members, when such events precipitated the fission of the native household into nuclear or extended smaller households. However, this was not a well-defined stage at a specific point in the life cycle of individuals, and it is not directly comparable with leaving home as defined in this chapter (Campbell and Lee 1999).

Moreover household division was a collective process in which the families that had made up a large, multiple-family household sepa- rated and formed their own households. While some individuals were annotated in the registers as leaving the region without permission, such departures were rare and tended to occur for idiosyncratic reasons (Campbell and Lee 2001).⁸

The results above provide only limited support for the idea that Asian societies had more structured and ordered trajectories than those

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The Roads to Reproduction 101

in Europe. While the Japanese population shows quite a wide variety of trajectories, both Scania and Casalguidi appear to be societies with highly ordered life courses. Taken together, the picture emerging is one of considerable similarities between Asia and Europe, but also one of marked internal variability.

Socioeconomic Differences in Pathways to Reproduction

Disaggregation by socioeconomic status further addresses the question of internal variability of family systems. Table 4.4 displays the mean ages at transitions in the different populations. Considering first leaving home, it is clear that the higher the socioeconomic status, the later people—both men and women—left the parental home, which could be connected to a higher demand for domestic labor in the more well- off households (see Dribe 2000 for an analysis of Scania).

For first marriage, the picture is more complex with considerable differences between the Asian and the European populations, at least for men. In the Belgian and Italian populations, men and women from higher socioeconomic groups married later than those from a low- status background. The same picture has also been found among women in the Asian populations, while for men the situation was the other way around, with high-status men marrying earlier than low- status men. In Scania, the socioeconomic differences in age at first marriage were quite small, even though it seems that high-status people married earlier than low-status people did, which deviates from the pattern in the other European populations.

The socioeconomic pattern of early transitions in the lower social classes was less clear and homogeneous for first births. In this case the Italian and Belgian populations followed the same pattern as that described for first marriage with the exception of high-status women in Sart.⁹ In Scania, women from wealthier backgrounds had earlier access to reproduction than the poorest ones, and the same was true for both men and women in the Asian populations, although the socioeconomic differences were, in some cases, rather small.

Taken together, it seems clear that the timing of life-course transitions varied a great deal by socioeconomic status within each of the different populations. It is difficult to find a unifying pattern. Generally speaking, a higher socioeconomic status seems to have been connected to a later transition to reproduction in Europe (at least in Belgium and Italy) but to an earlier start to reproduction in Asia.

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Table 4.4 Mean ages at different transitions by socioeconomic status in seven Eurasian study populations, 1716–1913 Type of trajectory

MenWomen

Higher socioeconomic status Medium socioeconomic status Lower socioeconomic status Higher socioeconomic status Medium socioeconomic status Lower socioeconomic status

MeanNMeanNMeanNMeanNMeanNMean First leavinghome Scania20.738217.268417.21.19920.935317.767225.6 Sart31.05330.573227.478328.2828.051126.5 Pays de Herve30.47730.881526.047530.51529.956726.4 Casalguidi25.69124.427620.916924.115124.339823.5 Shimomoriya and Niita20.27319.832617.04516.713215.244012.1 Liaoning——————————— Shuangcheng——————————— First marriage Scania27.95228.111428.064124.87825.712625.6 Sart32.4530.848529.01.02730.04328.158126.5 Pays de Herve31.75231.163728.926130.82129.762127.6 Casalguidi29.112227.330627.113525.714024.535024.6 Shimomoriya and Niita18.016618.853118.85115.015614.651114.2 Liaoning19.33,44020.443,04020.62,60219.21,85218.37,01417.7 Shuangcheng20.41,14521.11,82421.715,43221.165920.61,23719.7 First birth Scania30.37530.510730.420226.66928.310427.9 Sart32.72531.347929.737325.2328.116527.1 Pays de Herve33.33331.138030.212530.51129.023927.6 Casalguidi29.911128.824927.610826.17425.021024.7 Shimomoriya and Niita23.012224.139824.63719.37619.922719.9 Liaoning24.41,71426.716,49926.683123.81,87425.222,96026.1 Shuangcheng22.640922.157123.43,75923.8595231,12824.8 Sources: See table 4.1.

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Having examined the timing of the transitions to adulthood, we now turn to the proportions who were never-married and childless (table 4.5). As for marriage, the emerging picture is quite fragmented. In all cases but Casalguidi, permanent celibacy among men was higher in lower socioeconomic groups. In the Asian populations, the proportion of never-married men in the lowest social group was almost 24 percent in Shimomoriya and Niita, 18 percent in Shuangcheng, and 11 percent in Liaoning. These figures are similar to, or even higher than, those observed in the European populations. Thus a clear hierarchy was present in Scania, Shimomoriya and Niita, Liaoning, and Shuangcheng, where the lowest social status had the highest probability of still being unmarried at age 45. For women, the pattern was quite different. In the Belgian populations, a higher socioeconomic status meant higher celibacy rates, showing a pattern opposite to that of men. In the Asian populations of Liaoning and Shimomoriya and Niita, universal marriage among women made socioeconomic differences negligible, while in Shuangcheng, just as in the Belgian populations, a higher socioeconomic status implied higher celibacy rates.

Thus in east Belgium, both in Sart and in the Pays de Herve, men in the lower status group were clearly disadvantaged, showing the highest proportions of never-married men, while women from the lower classes were least likely to remain single. The explanation is that immediately in between Sart and the study villages in the Pays de Herve was the city of Verviers, which was the heart of a textile agglomeration with a high demand for female labor, especially maids and servants. Consequently, for the study populations of Sart and the Pays de Herve, the sex ratio on the marriage market was to the dis- advantage of males, especially in the lower socioeconomic groups (Alter and Oris 1999a; Neven 2003). In Casalguidi, the high-status group had the highest rates of final celibacy for both men and women.

The anomaly of the Italian case is due to the presence of sharecroppers. This peculiar group of farmers was somehow pressed by landowners to maintain a steady balance between farm size and household labor force, a constraint that led the household head to discourage the marriages of adult members without allowing them to leave the family group. The renewal of the contract and thus the reproduction of the socioeconomic status were closely connected to the ability of sharecropping households to manage carefully the access to marriage and hence to control the size and composition of the household (Gill 1983; Poni 1978).

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4.5 Proportions never-married and never having had a first birth by socioeconomic status in seven Eurasian study populations, 1716–1913 Type of trajectory

MenWomen Higher socioeconomic status

Medium socioeconomic status

Lower socioeconomic status

Higher socioeconomic status

Medium socioeconomic status

Lower socioeconomic status %N%N%N%N%N%N First marriage Scania5.37510.310716.820218.8697.610419.9241 Sart19.511314.196627.640631.82220.411410.21,200 Pays de Herve24.812522.21,00033.222045.74638.143016.8918 Casalguidi33.311613.230412.313818.5817.626510.8175 Shimomoriya and Niita1.4703.925623.8210.0401.41430.010 Liaoning7.722,84012.3265,65418.119,1090.97,6620.220,2590.01,369 Shuangcheng2.620,46312.322,63310.9202,0248.11,3355.94141.91,335 First birth Scania6.77521.51,00028.222018.86926.910428.2241 Sart24.811320.396632.840645.52250.011414.31,200 Pays de Herve28.012529.01,00039.522043.54643.343023.7918 Casalguidi36.011616.730413.213826.38112.326515.8175 Shimomoriya and Niita5.77011.725642.92110.04012.61430.010 Liaoning9.727828.58,90129.95653.21569.84,77110.9329 Shuangcheng5.221110.026119.73,0911.41473.72435.22,561 Sources: See table 4.1.

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As far as access to legitimate reproduction was concerned, the pattern was quite similar but not exactly the same. If we look at the proportions of the population who remained childless at the age of 45, the pattern observed is strongly affected by socioeconomic status. The richer you were, the greater were your chances of becoming a father.

The divide between the wealthy and the poor was most profound in Scania and in the Asian populations, but a little weaker in the Belgian populations. Only in Casalguidi do we see the opposite: as a consequence of differential celibacy by socioeconomic status, the risk of never having a child was higher in the high-status group.

For females, the picture was more complicated. In the Chinese populations and in Scania, the pattern was similar to that of men, whereby a higher socioeconomic status implied lower chances of being childless at the age of 45. However, in Shimomoriya and Niita, Casalguidi, and east Belgium, the probability of not having had a first birth was much higher in the middle- and higher status groups. Especially in the Belgian and Italian cases, the very high proportion of women who did not participate in the reproductive process was remarkable, and points to a high degree of reproductive control among the wealthier members of these populations.

Generally speaking, we have found evidence of broad differences in the timing of life-course transitions between Europe and Asia. Men and women married earlier in the East than in the West, and while men showed quite high celibacy rates in both the East and the West, women married universally in the East but not in the West. These patterns fit the well-known generalizations of marriage patterns in Europe and Asia in preindustrial times. However, in disaggregating by socioeconomic status, we find that there are considerable similarities between Europe and Asia in the sense that socioeconomic status mattered a great deal for transitions to reproduction in all the populations. Hence the way in which socioeconomic status affected transitions differed greatly within both Europe and Asia, due largely to the different meanings attached to the various socioeconomic groups in the different geographical contexts. Thus it is impossible to find a simple relation- ship between socioeconomic status and transitions to reproduction that is valid across all populations, or even across populations within Europe and Asia, respectively. There were also important interactions between gender and socioeconomic status in the populations studied, indicating the highly diverging contexts faced by men and women of the same socioeconomic status in different parts of Eurasia.