Pub Date : 2022-06-15DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2022.2084442
Mayra Murkens, B. Pelzer, A. Janssens
ABSTRACT The decline in infant mortality played a crucial role in the health transition in the Western World. This decline among the vulnerable new-borns was however not an evenly dispersed process. Inequalities as a result of regional differences, cultural influences or socioeconomic status shaped the paths towards low mortality rates. The role of socioeconomic status in levels of infant mortality and its decline remain highly debated. In this article, we study the development of socioeconomic disparities in infant mortality in the Dutch town of Maastricht in the period 1864–1955. This study uses unique individual-level cause of death data in order to see when changes in disease patterns took place for different socioeconomic groups. The aim is to identify socioeconomic inequalities by mapping changing epidemiological patterns over time, according to age within the first year of life. By deploying a multinomial logistic regression analysis we can trace the different timing of changes in the epidemiological regime. The results reveal that for most infants the change in mortality patterns from water- and foodborne infectious diseases towards a predominance of airborne infectious diseases occurred simultaneously with the massive decline in infant mortality from the start of the First World War onwards. Infants from the upper classes, however, appeared to have gained an earlier advantage, followed by infants from unskilled workers. Finally, from qualitative data it becomes clear that the awareness of the problematic nature of infant mortality, knowledge on infant care, hygienic practices, breastfeeding practices and the economic situation of World War I were factors aiding to the uneven decline in infant mortality.
{"title":"Transitory inequalities: how individual-level cause-specific death data can unravel socioeconomic inequalities in infant mortality in Maastricht, the Netherlands, 1864–1955","authors":"Mayra Murkens, B. Pelzer, A. Janssens","doi":"10.1080/1081602X.2022.2084442","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2022.2084442","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The decline in infant mortality played a crucial role in the health transition in the Western World. This decline among the vulnerable new-borns was however not an evenly dispersed process. Inequalities as a result of regional differences, cultural influences or socioeconomic status shaped the paths towards low mortality rates. The role of socioeconomic status in levels of infant mortality and its decline remain highly debated. In this article, we study the development of socioeconomic disparities in infant mortality in the Dutch town of Maastricht in the period 1864–1955. This study uses unique individual-level cause of death data in order to see when changes in disease patterns took place for different socioeconomic groups. The aim is to identify socioeconomic inequalities by mapping changing epidemiological patterns over time, according to age within the first year of life. By deploying a multinomial logistic regression analysis we can trace the different timing of changes in the epidemiological regime. The results reveal that for most infants the change in mortality patterns from water- and foodborne infectious diseases towards a predominance of airborne infectious diseases occurred simultaneously with the massive decline in infant mortality from the start of the First World War onwards. Infants from the upper classes, however, appeared to have gained an earlier advantage, followed by infants from unskilled workers. Finally, from qualitative data it becomes clear that the awareness of the problematic nature of infant mortality, knowledge on infant care, hygienic practices, breastfeeding practices and the economic situation of World War I were factors aiding to the uneven decline in infant mortality.","PeriodicalId":46118,"journal":{"name":"History of the Family","volume":"28 1","pages":"95 - 131"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49317467","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-10DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2022.2083001
M. L. Perner, A. Mortensen, H. Castenbrandt, A. Løkke, B. Revuelta-Eugercios
ABSTRACT The relationship between gender and mortality in nineteenth-century Europe has been highly debated. In particular, historians disagree about the manner and degree to which gender discrimination affected the mortality risk of the female population. This article contributes by examining the evidence of gendered mortality differences among children and adolescents in nineteenth-century Denmark. It makes use of both child sex ratios and mortality rates to explore the prevalence of excess female mortality. We show that the female mortality rate in Denmark was higher than that of males starting from around age four and lasting until adulthood, for the majority of the nineteenth century. This mortality gap, while initially narrow, was systematic and most pronounced in rural areas and during late adolescence. The gap was produced by a faster mortality decline among males. This pattern is clear both in time, as the gap widened during the nineteenth century, and during the life course, as the male mortality rate declined faster and reached lower levels during late childhood and early adolescence. While it is possible that various forms of gender discrimination slowed the mortality decline of females, the aggregated nature of the data limits our interpretation. However, by comparing the two mortality measures employed, we argue that in a low child-mortality setting such as Denmark, sex ratios are not always sensitive enough to measure excess female mortality in childhood. Further, since sex ratios primarily excel at measuring ‘hidden’ or unregistered mortality, they may be a suboptimal measure of mortality differences in the presence of a thorough and reliable vital registration system.
{"title":"Gendered mortality of children and adolescents in nineteenth-century Denmark. Exploring patterns of sex ratios and mortality rates","authors":"M. L. Perner, A. Mortensen, H. Castenbrandt, A. Løkke, B. Revuelta-Eugercios","doi":"10.1080/1081602X.2022.2083001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2022.2083001","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The relationship between gender and mortality in nineteenth-century Europe has been highly debated. In particular, historians disagree about the manner and degree to which gender discrimination affected the mortality risk of the female population. This article contributes by examining the evidence of gendered mortality differences among children and adolescents in nineteenth-century Denmark. It makes use of both child sex ratios and mortality rates to explore the prevalence of excess female mortality. We show that the female mortality rate in Denmark was higher than that of males starting from around age four and lasting until adulthood, for the majority of the nineteenth century. This mortality gap, while initially narrow, was systematic and most pronounced in rural areas and during late adolescence. The gap was produced by a faster mortality decline among males. This pattern is clear both in time, as the gap widened during the nineteenth century, and during the life course, as the male mortality rate declined faster and reached lower levels during late childhood and early adolescence. While it is possible that various forms of gender discrimination slowed the mortality decline of females, the aggregated nature of the data limits our interpretation. However, by comparing the two mortality measures employed, we argue that in a low child-mortality setting such as Denmark, sex ratios are not always sensitive enough to measure excess female mortality in childhood. Further, since sex ratios primarily excel at measuring ‘hidden’ or unregistered mortality, they may be a suboptimal measure of mortality differences in the presence of a thorough and reliable vital registration system.","PeriodicalId":46118,"journal":{"name":"History of the Family","volume":"27 1","pages":"679 - 701"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46078937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-19DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2022.2075426
K. Thompson, F. Portrait
ABSTRACT Height and labor market outcomes appear to be related to one another. The taller people are, the more likely they are to have better jobs and to earn more money. This is especially the case for men. However, whether height is causally related to labor market outcomes is an open question, which instrumental variable (IV) analysis may help to answer. To our knowledge, no study has yet used IV analysis to test these relationships in a historical context. The present study addressed this gap, by examining height’s relationship to occupational status and intergenerational mobility in a sample of Dutch men, birth years 1850 through 1900. Data were drawn from: the Historical Sample of the Netherlands, providing life course information on the research person; the Heights and Life Courses Database, providing information on the research person’s height at conscription; and the Male Kin Height Database, providing information on the average height of the research person’s full brothers. This combination of data sources yielded a sample of 1,465 men. Height z-score’s relationships to occupational status (characterized as HISCAM score), and to intergenerational mobility (characterized as the difference between research person’s HISCAM score and father’s HISCAM score) were examined. The average of brothers’ heights z-score was used as an instrumental variable. In terms of results, one standard deviation increase in height was associated with a 1.370 increase in HISCAM score (95% CI: 0.310–2.429), and a 1.127 increase in intergenerational mobility score (95% CI: −0.114–2.368). As Dutch men were growing taller and had greater abilities to choose their occupations, it appeared that tallness was associated with a better job, and increased intergenerational occupational mobility. This study thus offered preliminary evidence that height and labor market outcomes were perhaps causally related during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
{"title":"Height, occupation, and intergenerational mobility: an instrumental variable analysis of Dutch men, birth years 1850-1900","authors":"K. Thompson, F. Portrait","doi":"10.1080/1081602X.2022.2075426","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2022.2075426","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Height and labor market outcomes appear to be related to one another. The taller people are, the more likely they are to have better jobs and to earn more money. This is especially the case for men. However, whether height is causally related to labor market outcomes is an open question, which instrumental variable (IV) analysis may help to answer. To our knowledge, no study has yet used IV analysis to test these relationships in a historical context. The present study addressed this gap, by examining height’s relationship to occupational status and intergenerational mobility in a sample of Dutch men, birth years 1850 through 1900. Data were drawn from: the Historical Sample of the Netherlands, providing life course information on the research person; the Heights and Life Courses Database, providing information on the research person’s height at conscription; and the Male Kin Height Database, providing information on the average height of the research person’s full brothers. This combination of data sources yielded a sample of 1,465 men. Height z-score’s relationships to occupational status (characterized as HISCAM score), and to intergenerational mobility (characterized as the difference between research person’s HISCAM score and father’s HISCAM score) were examined. The average of brothers’ heights z-score was used as an instrumental variable. In terms of results, one standard deviation increase in height was associated with a 1.370 increase in HISCAM score (95% CI: 0.310–2.429), and a 1.127 increase in intergenerational mobility score (95% CI: −0.114–2.368). As Dutch men were growing taller and had greater abilities to choose their occupations, it appeared that tallness was associated with a better job, and increased intergenerational occupational mobility. This study thus offered preliminary evidence that height and labor market outcomes were perhaps causally related during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.","PeriodicalId":46118,"journal":{"name":"History of the Family","volume":"28 1","pages":"278 - 308"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41411462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-08DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2022.2071322
Isabelle Cherkesly, R. Kippen
ABSTRACT Between 1840 and 1853, 4,068 Irish convict women arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, now known as Tasmania. The lives of these convicts were governed by the penal system. Convicts were kept under constant observation. While still under sentence, convicts had to follow the strict rules of the penal government. A way out of this system was through marriage. Early on, the penal government had emphasized the role of marriage to reform convicts. Although marriage was a key event in the life of convicts, no study has yet to focus on this event. In this paper, marriage patterns of Irish convict women are studied using a mixed methods approach. This study provides a better understanding of how women met their spouses and which women could marry. Three critical aspects of marriage are highlighted. First, being under incarceration or being prohibited by the law reduced access to the marriage market. Second, women who were perceived as more fertile and of a better character had a higher chance of finding a spouse. Third, women with longer sentences or who were pregnant out of wedlock had a higher incentive for marriage than most. Overall, three factors were key to marriage in Tasmania: access, value, and desire.
{"title":"Marriage patterns of Irish convict women in nineteenth-century Tasmania","authors":"Isabelle Cherkesly, R. Kippen","doi":"10.1080/1081602X.2022.2071322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2022.2071322","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Between 1840 and 1853, 4,068 Irish convict women arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, now known as Tasmania. The lives of these convicts were governed by the penal system. Convicts were kept under constant observation. While still under sentence, convicts had to follow the strict rules of the penal government. A way out of this system was through marriage. Early on, the penal government had emphasized the role of marriage to reform convicts. Although marriage was a key event in the life of convicts, no study has yet to focus on this event. In this paper, marriage patterns of Irish convict women are studied using a mixed methods approach. This study provides a better understanding of how women met their spouses and which women could marry. Three critical aspects of marriage are highlighted. First, being under incarceration or being prohibited by the law reduced access to the marriage market. Second, women who were perceived as more fertile and of a better character had a higher chance of finding a spouse. Third, women with longer sentences or who were pregnant out of wedlock had a higher incentive for marriage than most. Overall, three factors were key to marriage in Tasmania: access, value, and desire.","PeriodicalId":46118,"journal":{"name":"History of the Family","volume":"28 1","pages":"37 - 66"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41870143","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-05DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2022.2067209
D.B.G.W. Lyna
ABSTRACT Challenging the optimistic thesis on female Asian agency in the early modern Dutch empire, this article studies widows’ socio-legal position in the cross-cultural setting of colonial Sri Lanka. Normative legislation and judicial records on stepfamilial feuds from eighteenth-century Dutch Sri Lanka allow us not only to understand how both litigating parties tried to work the Roman-Dutch legal system to get a favorable verdict, but also to unveil the underlying societal expectations of widows and stepchildren. Whereas in the Dutch Republic husbands often used prenuptial agreements or last wills to make their wives principal heirs or give them usufruct (thus increasing the customary half of ab intestato inheritances), Sri Lankan case-studies indicate that such legal documents were also used to reduce life choices of widows. Prenups and last wills drafted up and signed by their late husbands tied these women to their primary role as caretaker of both their own children as well as those of previous marriages. Further stipulations could even tie them quite literally to the parental house, which they were not allowed to leave for a longer period of time without losing their inheritance. These rules of engagement put additional strain on already fraught relationships between stepmothers and first-marriage children. The only structural solution for both parties was that the stepmother married another man, freeing both herself and the stepchildren of a difficult balancing act.
{"title":"Restrained freedom? Widows, blended families and inheritance in eighteenth-century urban Sri Lanka","authors":"D.B.G.W. Lyna","doi":"10.1080/1081602X.2022.2067209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2022.2067209","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Challenging the optimistic thesis on female Asian agency in the early modern Dutch empire, this article studies widows’ socio-legal position in the cross-cultural setting of colonial Sri Lanka. Normative legislation and judicial records on stepfamilial feuds from eighteenth-century Dutch Sri Lanka allow us not only to understand how both litigating parties tried to work the Roman-Dutch legal system to get a favorable verdict, but also to unveil the underlying societal expectations of widows and stepchildren. Whereas in the Dutch Republic husbands often used prenuptial agreements or last wills to make their wives principal heirs or give them usufruct (thus increasing the customary half of ab intestato inheritances), Sri Lankan case-studies indicate that such legal documents were also used to reduce life choices of widows. Prenups and last wills drafted up and signed by their late husbands tied these women to their primary role as caretaker of both their own children as well as those of previous marriages. Further stipulations could even tie them quite literally to the parental house, which they were not allowed to leave for a longer period of time without losing their inheritance. These rules of engagement put additional strain on already fraught relationships between stepmothers and first-marriage children. The only structural solution for both parties was that the stepmother married another man, freeing both herself and the stepchildren of a difficult balancing act.","PeriodicalId":46118,"journal":{"name":"History of the Family","volume":"27 1","pages":"596 - 617"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48695799","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2022.2067579
J. Kok
ABSTRACT Early-life experiences can have lasting effects on health across multiple generations. The pathways of these transgenerational transmissions are difficult to explore, because of the complex interactions of social and biological factors involved. This study explores the potential role of one such pathway – inherited epigenetic modifications to gene expression – by controlling for shared environmental factors. It uses a database constructed from descendant genealogies of six lineages from Texel Island, The Netherlands. Heights and life spans of respectively 2761 and 3279 19-year old boys are related to the early-life experiences of themselves, parents and grandparents. Adversity in early-life is studied through trauma and food deprivation. Adversity has clear effects, especially on heights, but few of these effects were transmitted to children and grandchildren.
{"title":"Transgenerational effects of early-life experiences on descendants’ height and life span. An explorative study using Texel Island (Netherlands) genealogies, 18th-21st centuries","authors":"J. Kok","doi":"10.1080/1081602X.2022.2067579","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2022.2067579","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Early-life experiences can have lasting effects on health across multiple generations. The pathways of these transgenerational transmissions are difficult to explore, because of the complex interactions of social and biological factors involved. This study explores the potential role of one such pathway – inherited epigenetic modifications to gene expression – by controlling for shared environmental factors. It uses a database constructed from descendant genealogies of six lineages from Texel Island, The Netherlands. Heights and life spans of respectively 2761 and 3279 19-year old boys are related to the early-life experiences of themselves, parents and grandparents. Adversity in early-life is studied through trauma and food deprivation. Adversity has clear effects, especially on heights, but few of these effects were transmitted to children and grandchildren.","PeriodicalId":46118,"journal":{"name":"History of the Family","volume":"28 1","pages":"417 - 433"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45842455","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1080/1081602x.2022.2056228
M. Moran
ABSTRACT This article examines the relationship between patrician stepmothers and stepdaughters in early modern Florence. With the high rate of remarriage, stepfamilies were not uncommon though the intimate workings of these complex family relationships are often difficult to reconstruct. The account book and correspondence of Maddalena Ricasoli reveal that enduring bonds between stepmothers and stepdaughters could develop and last beyond the death of the male figure who brought them together. Both Maddalena Ricasoli and her stepdaughter, Maria Arrigucci Carducci, worked together to divide family assets in the aftermath of Filippo Arrigucci’s death in the mid-sixteenth century. Maddalena’s niece, Cassandra Ricasoli, also strategically formed complicated female kinship ties to her own stepmother and half-siblings after her father’s remarriage as well as to her aunt Maddalena and Maddalena’s stepdaughter, Maria Carducci. These case studies suggest that women incorporated stepmothers and stepdaughters into their female networks and reveal a more inclusive conception of the early modern family that moved beyond the patriline.
{"title":"Stepmothers and stepdaughters in early modern Florence","authors":"M. Moran","doi":"10.1080/1081602x.2022.2056228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602x.2022.2056228","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the relationship between patrician stepmothers and stepdaughters in early modern Florence. With the high rate of remarriage, stepfamilies were not uncommon though the intimate workings of these complex family relationships are often difficult to reconstruct. The account book and correspondence of Maddalena Ricasoli reveal that enduring bonds between stepmothers and stepdaughters could develop and last beyond the death of the male figure who brought them together. Both Maddalena Ricasoli and her stepdaughter, Maria Arrigucci Carducci, worked together to divide family assets in the aftermath of Filippo Arrigucci’s death in the mid-sixteenth century. Maddalena’s niece, Cassandra Ricasoli, also strategically formed complicated female kinship ties to her own stepmother and half-siblings after her father’s remarriage as well as to her aunt Maddalena and Maddalena’s stepdaughter, Maria Carducci. These case studies suggest that women incorporated stepmothers and stepdaughters into their female networks and reveal a more inclusive conception of the early modern family that moved beyond the patriline.","PeriodicalId":46118,"journal":{"name":"History of the Family","volume":"27 1","pages":"575 - 595"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44645102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-17DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2022.2051581
M. Szołtysek, Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia, Bartosz Ogórek, S. Gruber
ABSTRACT Although recent findings suggest that gender-discriminatory practices unduly increased female mortality rates during infancy and childhood in historical Europe, especially in Southern and Eastern Europe, there is little research on the conditions that triggered these practices. Relying on child sex ratios (the number of boys per hundred girls in a particular age group) as a cumulative measure of sex-differential mortality around birth, infancy, and childhood, this article explores whether the notion of patriarchy – i.e., varying degrees of sex- and age-related social inequalities – helps to explain the variation in such discriminatory practices. For our analysis, we rely on the NAPP/Mosaic census database, which provides detailed information on more than 300 populations in historical Europe and western Siberia. Using a range of harmonised variables from the combined Mosaic and NAPP data, our results show that the Patriarchy Index, a recently developed composite measure of gendered and generational power relations in marital and family dynamics, is positively associated with child sex ratios across Europe. More specifically, we find that patrilocal norms, a low female age at marriage, and a direct measure of son preference – namely, the prevalence of having a boy as the last child – are strongly correlated with higher child sex ratios.
{"title":"Family patriarchy and child sex ratios in historical Europe","authors":"M. Szołtysek, Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia, Bartosz Ogórek, S. Gruber","doi":"10.1080/1081602X.2022.2051581","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2022.2051581","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Although recent findings suggest that gender-discriminatory practices unduly increased female mortality rates during infancy and childhood in historical Europe, especially in Southern and Eastern Europe, there is little research on the conditions that triggered these practices. Relying on child sex ratios (the number of boys per hundred girls in a particular age group) as a cumulative measure of sex-differential mortality around birth, infancy, and childhood, this article explores whether the notion of patriarchy – i.e., varying degrees of sex- and age-related social inequalities – helps to explain the variation in such discriminatory practices. For our analysis, we rely on the NAPP/Mosaic census database, which provides detailed information on more than 300 populations in historical Europe and western Siberia. Using a range of harmonised variables from the combined Mosaic and NAPP data, our results show that the Patriarchy Index, a recently developed composite measure of gendered and generational power relations in marital and family dynamics, is positively associated with child sex ratios across Europe. More specifically, we find that patrilocal norms, a low female age at marriage, and a direct measure of son preference – namely, the prevalence of having a boy as the last child – are strongly correlated with higher child sex ratios.","PeriodicalId":46118,"journal":{"name":"History of the Family","volume":"27 1","pages":"702 - 735"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48555423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-13DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2022.2055611
Bartosz Ogórek, M. Szołtysek
ABSTRACT Our testing of the relationship between child sex ratios (CSRs) and demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural diversity across nearly 300 districts of interwar Poland around 1931 yields a picture more complicated than common explanations of high masculinization of offspring. In line with existing literature, we found district-level CSRs to be positively associated with the extent of agriculture but negatively related to the relative spread of female employment outside farming and less hierarchical gender and generational household arrangements. At the same time, several of the classical modernization variables (e.g. industrialization, urbanization, female literacy or fertility) either did not result in lower sex ratios or turned out irrelevant. In this article, we attempt to reconcile these diverging results by putting them in the context of the country’s relative backwardness, the specific labor demands created by modernization, and the structure of the agricultural labor market. Altogether, our results add a new stimulus to study gender discrimination in infancy and childhood in East-Central European context and to contemplate universal explanations thereof.
{"title":"‘Missing girls’ in interwar Poland: child sex ratios and their correlates across multiple borderlands","authors":"Bartosz Ogórek, M. Szołtysek","doi":"10.1080/1081602X.2022.2055611","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2022.2055611","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Our testing of the relationship between child sex ratios (CSRs) and demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural diversity across nearly 300 districts of interwar Poland around 1931 yields a picture more complicated than common explanations of high masculinization of offspring. In line with existing literature, we found district-level CSRs to be positively associated with the extent of agriculture but negatively related to the relative spread of female employment outside farming and less hierarchical gender and generational household arrangements. At the same time, several of the classical modernization variables (e.g. industrialization, urbanization, female literacy or fertility) either did not result in lower sex ratios or turned out irrelevant. In this article, we attempt to reconcile these diverging results by putting them in the context of the country’s relative backwardness, the specific labor demands created by modernization, and the structure of the agricultural labor market. Altogether, our results add a new stimulus to study gender discrimination in infancy and childhood in East-Central European context and to contemplate universal explanations thereof.","PeriodicalId":46118,"journal":{"name":"History of the Family","volume":"27 1","pages":"764 - 790"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47301153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-12DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2022.2061556
Siska van der Plas, W. Ruberg
ABSTRACT This article discusses the representation of parents who killed their children in Dutch newspapers in 1960–1989. It concludes that infanticidal women were portrayed as irrational, ill, pathetic, and passive, as well as not fully responsible for their crimes. When they displayed emotions in court and proved their love for their children, journalists pitied them, thus underlining a traditional image of femininity and motherhood. Fathers, however, were initially depicted as cold-blooded and responsible for their selfish acts. Rationality took centre stage in these stories, which meant the press allocated more moral responsibility to fathers. If men showed emotions during the trial and there was proof of good fatherhood, they were described with more compassion. From the 1980s journalists demonstrated more sympathy for fathers’ sense of powerlessness, dovetailing with new ideals of fatherhood. This confirms Joan Scott’s notion of gender as a binary opposition, but shows how femininity, rather than masculinity, was the ideal and demonstrates how views on parenthood interact with (changing views on) gender in images of perpetrators of infanticide.
{"title":"‘An astonishing human failure’. The influence of gender on the image of perpetrators of infanticide in the courtroom and crime reporting in the Netherlands, 1960-1989","authors":"Siska van der Plas, W. Ruberg","doi":"10.1080/1081602X.2022.2061556","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2022.2061556","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article discusses the representation of parents who killed their children in Dutch newspapers in 1960–1989. It concludes that infanticidal women were portrayed as irrational, ill, pathetic, and passive, as well as not fully responsible for their crimes. When they displayed emotions in court and proved their love for their children, journalists pitied them, thus underlining a traditional image of femininity and motherhood. Fathers, however, were initially depicted as cold-blooded and responsible for their selfish acts. Rationality took centre stage in these stories, which meant the press allocated more moral responsibility to fathers. If men showed emotions during the trial and there was proof of good fatherhood, they were described with more compassion. From the 1980s journalists demonstrated more sympathy for fathers’ sense of powerlessness, dovetailing with new ideals of fatherhood. This confirms Joan Scott’s notion of gender as a binary opposition, but shows how femininity, rather than masculinity, was the ideal and demonstrates how views on parenthood interact with (changing views on) gender in images of perpetrators of infanticide.","PeriodicalId":46118,"journal":{"name":"History of the Family","volume":"28 1","pages":"17 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47653834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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