Influence of parental death on child mortality and the phenomenon of the stepfamily in western Bohemia in 1708–1834

ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to examine, to what extent the chance of survival of children under 5 years of age was influenced by a biological parent’s death in the region of western Bohemia. Young children’s mortality is considered in relation to family structure, since persons raising the child in its early childhood significantly influenced the quality of child care. Given the gender-specific division of labour in pre-modern families we focus chiefly on the possible different effects of a mother’s death or a father’s death. In addition, we try to establish whether the negative impact of a biological parent’s death could be compensated by the entrance of a stepparent. For the purposes of this analysis we used the Cox proportional hazards mixed-effect model. Our research has shown that although maternal death had more serious consequences compared to paternal death, especially if it occurred in the child’s first year of life, even paternal death increased child mortality since the need to assume the paternal role prevented the surviving mother from taking optimum care of her children. The entrance of a stepparent in general increased children’s chance of survival although in the case of stepmothers the positive effect was limited and could mainly be observed among children over 3. In contrast, our research has shown that there was no major difference in survival chances resulting from the presence of a biological father vs. a stepfather, an interesting result demonstrating that in the functioning of the pre-modern family biological ties were of only relative importance.