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}
Pub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2022.2070521
Mauro Carboni
ABSTRACT Dowering maidens was a common concern in Renaissance and Early Modern Italian cities. As urban society recognized in un-dowered young women a potential threat to its moral and social stability, what had been a pious private effort became the business of specialized agencies, with the establishment of dowry funds. This paper examines the development of marriage endowment systems from the Florentine Monte delle doti, which in the main underwrote the marriage arrangements of the elite, to the Bolognese Monte del matrimonio, which was tailored to give respectable lower income families an opportunity to assemble dowries for young girls by investing their own savings. Finally, it focuses on the broad diffusion of charitable dowry funds, which dispensed dotal bequests through careful selection and scrutiny of recipients. Helping fathers to dower their daughters, dowry funds acted as a powerful stabilizing force, shoring up the pillar of early modern Italian society, the family, where it was weakest, i.e. among the urban lower classes. At the same time, they were innovative institutions, bridging kinship, charity, and finance.
摘要在文艺复兴时期和意大利近代早期的城市中，少女下葬是一个普遍关注的问题。由于城市社会认识到没有嫁妆的年轻妇女对其道德和社会稳定构成潜在威胁，原本虔诚的私人努力变成了专门机构的业务，设立了嫁妆基金。本文考察了婚姻捐赠制度的发展，从佛罗伦萨的Monte delle doti到博洛尼亚的Monte del marriaio，前者主要为精英阶层的婚姻安排提供担保，后者旨在为受人尊敬的低收入家庭提供机会，通过投资自己的积蓄为年轻女孩筹集嫁妆。最后，它侧重于慈善嫁妆基金的广泛传播，这些基金通过仔细选择和审查接受者来分配遗产。嫁妆基金帮助父亲为女儿做嫁妆，成为一股强大的稳定力量，支撑着意大利早期现代社会的支柱——家庭，而家庭是最薄弱的，即城市下层阶级。同时，它们也是创新机构，将亲属关系、慈善和金融联系在一起。
{"title":"Financing marriage in early modern Italy: innovative dowry funds in Florence and Bologna","authors":"Mauro Carboni","doi":"10.1080/1081602X.2022.2070521","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2022.2070521","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Dowering maidens was a common concern in Renaissance and Early Modern Italian cities. As urban society recognized in un-dowered young women a potential threat to its moral and social stability, what had been a pious private effort became the business of specialized agencies, with the establishment of dowry funds. This paper examines the development of marriage endowment systems from the Florentine Monte delle doti, which in the main underwrote the marriage arrangements of the elite, to the Bolognese Monte del matrimonio, which was tailored to give respectable lower income families an opportunity to assemble dowries for young girls by investing their own savings. Finally, it focuses on the broad diffusion of charitable dowry funds, which dispensed dotal bequests through careful selection and scrutiny of recipients. Helping fathers to dower their daughters, dowry funds acted as a powerful stabilizing force, shoring up the pillar of early modern Italian society, the family, where it was weakest, i.e. among the urban lower classes. At the same time, they were innovative institutions, bridging kinship, charity, and finance.","PeriodicalId":46118,"journal":{"name":"History of the Family","volume":"27 1","pages":"221 - 242"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45069486","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 : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2022.2075425
M. Wasserman
ABSTRACT To die in peace, pre-modern Catholics first had to settle their debts. They did so in debt declarations, recorded in testaments, which allowed dying men and women to indicate their creditors and debtors. We investigate a sample of 422 testaments from seventeenth-century Buenos Aires to demonstrate that debts were at the base of the local economy, and to discover some features about credit allocation. Our unique sources allow for a reconstruction of the heterogeneous ways of formalizing debts in the absence of a banking system, and show that non-notarized loans relied on reciprocity. Debt declarations recorded at the end of the life cycle allow for a reconstruction of the use of credit in everyday life.
{"title":"Debts facing death. Discovering everyday credit practices through testaments in seventeenth-century Buenos Aires","authors":"M. Wasserman","doi":"10.1080/1081602X.2022.2075425","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2022.2075425","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT To die in peace, pre-modern Catholics first had to settle their debts. They did so in debt declarations, recorded in testaments, which allowed dying men and women to indicate their creditors and debtors. We investigate a sample of 422 testaments from seventeenth-century Buenos Aires to demonstrate that debts were at the base of the local economy, and to discover some features about credit allocation. Our unique sources allow for a reconstruction of the heterogeneous ways of formalizing debts in the absence of a banking system, and show that non-notarized loans relied on reciprocity. Debt declarations recorded at the end of the life cycle allow for a reconstruction of the use of credit in everyday life.","PeriodicalId":46118,"journal":{"name":"History of the Family","volume":"27 1","pages":"350 - 369"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49400373","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 : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2022.2080244
Christiaan van Bochove, J. Zuijderduijn
ABSTRACT Research suggests that until recently families in history could only avoid episodes of poverty if they put money aside. By helping to smooth consumption over the family life cycle, finance could prevent impoverishment, and is also likely to have had an effect on family life. Saving may have influenced cohabitation structures and the timing and incidence of birth, marriage, and death. That families depended on finance is underlined by the fact that some financial institutions and instruments were specifically developed to help families to smooth consumption over the life cycle. Families’ demand for finance thus also shaped financial institutions and instruments. This Introduction provides an overview of how families’ demand for finance shaped financial institutions and instruments, and how finance may have helped families to prevent episodes of poverty, and explains how the contributions to this special issue tie into this.
{"title":"Years of plenty, years of want? An introduction to finance and the family life cycle","authors":"Christiaan van Bochove, J. Zuijderduijn","doi":"10.1080/1081602X.2022.2080244","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2022.2080244","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Research suggests that until recently families in history could only avoid episodes of poverty if they put money aside. By helping to smooth consumption over the family life cycle, finance could prevent impoverishment, and is also likely to have had an effect on family life. Saving may have influenced cohabitation structures and the timing and incidence of birth, marriage, and death. That families depended on finance is underlined by the fact that some financial institutions and instruments were specifically developed to help families to smooth consumption over the life cycle. Families’ demand for finance thus also shaped financial institutions and instruments. This Introduction provides an overview of how families’ demand for finance shaped financial institutions and instruments, and how finance may have helped families to prevent episodes of poverty, and explains how the contributions to this special issue tie into this.","PeriodicalId":46118,"journal":{"name":"History of the Family","volume":"27 1","pages":"201 - 220"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43605310","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 : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2022.2072931
Tony Kenttä, Kristina Lilja, Dan Bäcklund
ABSTRACT It is difficult for households to match a low and fluctuating income with their expenditures. One short-term strategy for managing cash-flow problems is to turn to one’s social networks for support. This article describes and analyses the borrowing and lending of small loans (corresponding to one-two days of pay) among low-income earners and the role these loans had in the household economy. By analysing the detailed weekly reports in the Swedish cost of living survey 1913/14, it is possible to explain when and why households borrowed and lent. This was after a period of rising real wages in Sweden, yet surpluses were still small and a public safety net had only begun developing. More than half of the studied 118 workers and 105 lower officials, respectively, borrowed small sums. However, most just borrowed once or a few times over the year. To give a loan was less common than borrowing. Some lenders likely felt obliged to give loans to less well-off borrowers. Other households engaged in reciprocal borrowing and lending of small loans. Small loans were mostly used to handle income shortfalls and not expenditures shocks. Consequently, larger income fluctuations led to more borrowing among workers, unlike the level of household income. Being in a vulnerable position in the life-cycle with young children also increased the risk of borrowing among both workers and lower officials. However, income from adolescents did not seem to have mitigated cash-flow problems as older children increased household borrowing too. Lending declined after the start of WWI. This means that the source underestimates annual lending during peacetime conditions. However, the demand for loans remained largely constant, forcing workers in need to seek out other sources of credit. Still, households’ social networks played an important part in an incessant struggle to make ends meet.
{"title":"The necessity of small loans: the borrowing and lending among low-income earners in early 20th century Sweden","authors":"Tony Kenttä, Kristina Lilja, Dan Bäcklund","doi":"10.1080/1081602X.2022.2072931","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2022.2072931","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT It is difficult for households to match a low and fluctuating income with their expenditures. One short-term strategy for managing cash-flow problems is to turn to one’s social networks for support. This article describes and analyses the borrowing and lending of small loans (corresponding to one-two days of pay) among low-income earners and the role these loans had in the household economy. By analysing the detailed weekly reports in the Swedish cost of living survey 1913/14, it is possible to explain when and why households borrowed and lent. This was after a period of rising real wages in Sweden, yet surpluses were still small and a public safety net had only begun developing. More than half of the studied 118 workers and 105 lower officials, respectively, borrowed small sums. However, most just borrowed once or a few times over the year. To give a loan was less common than borrowing. Some lenders likely felt obliged to give loans to less well-off borrowers. Other households engaged in reciprocal borrowing and lending of small loans. Small loans were mostly used to handle income shortfalls and not expenditures shocks. Consequently, larger income fluctuations led to more borrowing among workers, unlike the level of household income. Being in a vulnerable position in the life-cycle with young children also increased the risk of borrowing among both workers and lower officials. However, income from adolescents did not seem to have mitigated cash-flow problems as older children increased household borrowing too. Lending declined after the start of WWI. This means that the source underestimates annual lending during peacetime conditions. However, the demand for loans remained largely constant, forcing workers in need to seek out other sources of credit. Still, households’ social networks played an important part in an incessant struggle to make ends meet.","PeriodicalId":46118,"journal":{"name":"History of the Family","volume":"27 1","pages":"268 - 292"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46759191","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 : 2022-03-30DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2022.2056227
Evdoxios Doxiadis
ABSTRACT This article explores marriage payments in late Ottoman Greece through the early years of the independent Greek state and, in particular, the idea of virginity and its value in both men and women. The main focus of the article is the payment known as egenliki, paid by the bride who is entering a second marriage to a groom who has not been previously married. Engenliki is examined in conjunction with the rarer payment of a groom to his bride for her virginity. Through the examination of over 900 surviving dowry contracts from Athens and following the historical trajectory of such payments from the Roman Law to Ottoman Greece, this article argues that such rare payments were symbolic in nature meant to redress what was perceived as an inequality in marriage and possibly to forestall societal disapproval of marriages where only one of the members had been previously married.
{"title":"A question of equity? The ‘value’ of male and female virginity in late 18th and early 19th century Athens","authors":"Evdoxios Doxiadis","doi":"10.1080/1081602X.2022.2056227","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2022.2056227","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores marriage payments in late Ottoman Greece through the early years of the independent Greek state and, in particular, the idea of virginity and its value in both men and women. The main focus of the article is the payment known as egenliki, paid by the bride who is entering a second marriage to a groom who has not been previously married. Engenliki is examined in conjunction with the rarer payment of a groom to his bride for her virginity. Through the examination of over 900 surviving dowry contracts from Athens and following the historical trajectory of such payments from the Roman Law to Ottoman Greece, this article argues that such rare payments were symbolic in nature meant to redress what was perceived as an inequality in marriage and possibly to forestall societal disapproval of marriages where only one of the members had been previously married.","PeriodicalId":46118,"journal":{"name":"History of the Family","volume":"28 1","pages":"1 - 16"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43268178","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 : 2022-03-29DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2022.2055610
Ludwig Pelzl, J. Zuijderduijn
ABSTRACT In pre-industrial Europe, many thousands of ‘middle-class’ individuals retired by purchasing a corrody: a contract allowing them life-long food and lodging, usually by spending their remaining years in a hospital. Given that people usually struggle to prepare for the later stages of life, this article asks whether corrodies were priced in line with the market. We study institutions that specialized in commercial retirement in two distinct areas: the Dutch Republic, where middle-class living standards were high in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and Bavaria, where purchasing power was lower. In the Bavarian city of Regensburg, the local hospital sold subsidized corrodies, probably to accommodate social middling groups with limited scope for saving but with a strong desire to continue to set themselves apart during old age from groups with a lower social status. In Leiden, in the Dutch Republic, it was more expensive to maintain that distinction because even lower social groups had the opportunity to save. As a result, here corrody prices were higher and more in line with the market price.
{"title":"Saving the best for last? Old age retirement among the Urban middle classes in Leiden and Regensburg (c. 1650- c. 1800)","authors":"Ludwig Pelzl, J. Zuijderduijn","doi":"10.1080/1081602X.2022.2055610","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2022.2055610","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In pre-industrial Europe, many thousands of ‘middle-class’ individuals retired by purchasing a corrody: a contract allowing them life-long food and lodging, usually by spending their remaining years in a hospital. Given that people usually struggle to prepare for the later stages of life, this article asks whether corrodies were priced in line with the market. We study institutions that specialized in commercial retirement in two distinct areas: the Dutch Republic, where middle-class living standards were high in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and Bavaria, where purchasing power was lower. In the Bavarian city of Regensburg, the local hospital sold subsidized corrodies, probably to accommodate social middling groups with limited scope for saving but with a strong desire to continue to set themselves apart during old age from groups with a lower social status. In Leiden, in the Dutch Republic, it was more expensive to maintain that distinction because even lower social groups had the opportunity to save. As a result, here corrody prices were higher and more in line with the market price.","PeriodicalId":46118,"journal":{"name":"History of the Family","volume":"27 1","pages":"326 - 349"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47624962","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 : 2022-03-24DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2022.2041065
Haiying Hou
ABSTRACT The birth control movement in Japan first arose in the early 1920s. The Japanese government disapproved of birth control because it was enthusiastic about population growth to strengthen national power. Simultaneously, the movement was accompanied by a clash of ideologies among its supporters and critics in society. Existing research is especially interested in state policies and management, as well as the viewpoints and activities of birth control activists. This paper delves into a less-discussed topic: the perspectives of birth control opponents, focusing on Yoshioka Yayoi (1871–1959), a gynaecologist, educator, and women’s rights activist. It argues that during the early twentieth century, state policies did not always play a decisive role in shaping people’s anti-birth control attitudes. Yoshioka’s opposing views in interwar Japan incorporated her concerns for women’s morals and health, which were heavily influenced by social values and contraceptive technology at the time. As World War II began, her anti-birth control views had a strong political implication – promoting childbirth as a war effort. Despite Yoshioka’s alignment with the state, the distinctions that existed between her views and national ideologies should not be overlooked. Yoshioka’s ideas are conservative and show limitations. However, through her case, this article hopes to offer insight into the different meanings of birth control for people living in the early twentieth century, not only in Japan but also in a global context. Many people were reluctant to embrace this new family planning method due to moral reasons and uncertainty. Keeping birth control out of people’s daily lives, especially for conservatives like Yoshioka, was an optimal way to benefit individuals.
{"title":"A Re-examination of Birth Control in the First Half of Twentieth Century Japan: Yoshioka Yayoi’s Anti-birth Control Position","authors":"Haiying Hou","doi":"10.1080/1081602X.2022.2041065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2022.2041065","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The birth control movement in Japan first arose in the early 1920s. The Japanese government disapproved of birth control because it was enthusiastic about population growth to strengthen national power. Simultaneously, the movement was accompanied by a clash of ideologies among its supporters and critics in society. Existing research is especially interested in state policies and management, as well as the viewpoints and activities of birth control activists. This paper delves into a less-discussed topic: the perspectives of birth control opponents, focusing on Yoshioka Yayoi (1871–1959), a gynaecologist, educator, and women’s rights activist. It argues that during the early twentieth century, state policies did not always play a decisive role in shaping people’s anti-birth control attitudes. Yoshioka’s opposing views in interwar Japan incorporated her concerns for women’s morals and health, which were heavily influenced by social values and contraceptive technology at the time. As World War II began, her anti-birth control views had a strong political implication – promoting childbirth as a war effort. Despite Yoshioka’s alignment with the state, the distinctions that existed between her views and national ideologies should not be overlooked. Yoshioka’s ideas are conservative and show limitations. However, through her case, this article hopes to offer insight into the different meanings of birth control for people living in the early twentieth century, not only in Japan but also in a global context. Many people were reluctant to embrace this new family planning method due to moral reasons and uncertainty. Keeping birth control out of people’s daily lives, especially for conservatives like Yoshioka, was an optimal way to benefit individuals.","PeriodicalId":46118,"journal":{"name":"History of the Family","volume":"27 1","pages":"391 - 409"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45777722","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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