Suchergebnisse

Inhabitants of the province of Limburg are often considered to differ from the Dutch in general. The seasonal pattern of marriages and conceptions provides us with insights in the intimate details of the lives of historical actors, and thus allows us to see whether or not this hypothesis is correct. In the entire country, the choice of marriage month is clearly determined by the changing seasonal duties in agriculture. So, May, between sowing and harvesting, and the month in which labor contracts changed, was favorite. In Limburg, however, most marriages were contracted slightly earlier, in April. The Catholic Church did not allow marriages during Lent and Advent. This we find in the low number of marriages in March and December, most notably in the Catholic province of Limburg. Conceptions followed approximately the same pattern, although Limburg Catholics were less obedient in this respect. In general, one has to conclude that the traditions governing the date of marriage and conception were consistent in time, be it that the 20th century came with slight changes. And Limburgers were absolutely Dutch with only a few provincial deviations.

"On average, more than one fifth of the 19th century Nijmegen brides were pregnant at the date of marriage. In a society where extramarital sexuality was explicitly forbidden, and where the success of marriage restriction depended on following that rule, this finding is remarkable. Obviously, the cultural life script that allowed sexuality only within marriage was not a script all inhabitants lived up to. A remarkable secondary finding is that the protestant population had a much higher proportion of bridal pregnancies than the Roman Catholic population, although both the Protestant and the Roman Catholic clergy strongly opposed sexual activities, unless within marriage. Therefore, when bridal pregnancy among Protestant couples was twice as high as among Catholics, this points either at a stricter control by the Catholic clergy, or at more deviance among Protestant youngsters. In any case, when studying cultural life scripts on sexuality, it is always important to note that it can be countered by human agency." (author's abstract)

Phyllis Moen and Elaine Wethington were absolutely right when they called family strategies "the intuitively appealing metaphor for family response to structural barriers". This appeal probably explains the avalanche of studies on the subject since the 1970s and especially since the 1980s. The last contribution, to my knowledge, is a collection of articles edited by Laurence Fontaine and Jurgen Schlumbohm in 2000. I will not even try to outline the vast historiography. This paper focuses on another problem. It is an attempt to show that concepts built on appealing metaphors lose much of their appeal in empirical research for the simple reason that their application tends to be more complicated than expected. In the following pages an example of such an experience is presented. Within the virtual walls of the Dutch National Research Institute for Economic and Social History, the N.W. Posthumus Institute, we have been struggling with family strategies since 1994. Now that we are about to publish the third volume on the subject, it is time to evaluate what we have accomplished.

East is east and west is west? : population checks in Europe and China -- Nuptiality : one concept, two realities -- Illegitimate births and bridal pregnancy : deviations from societal rules -- Infant mortality : "the massacre of the innocents" -- Fertility : Malthusian reality or proactive behavior?