Reproductive Behaviour:
Reproductive Behaviour Live births largely confined to marriage
Bastardy as a historical variable
Marriage as a historical and social variable
Reproduction within marriage varied
Evidence
Approaches to the biological maximum: 24-30 month birth intervals
Changes in reproduction rates
Explanation: Family limitation?
coitus interruptus / reservatus ? or abortion/infanticide?
Slide3:
Reproduction within marriage: Age specific marital fertility rates
= births / 1000 woman years in each age cohort Is this evidence of family limitation (birth control)?
Affective Relations in the Nuclear Family Group:
Affective Relations in the Nuclear Family Group Stone’s “Open lineage family” as the norm?
Nuclear households but primary loyalties to kin
Interpersonal relations differed little from those with neighbours, kin, or lord
Criticism: a negative stereotype to contrast modernity?
Change or variation?
Early modern ‘restricted patriarchal nuclear family’
State & sectarian loyalties reinforced patriarchal authority & repression
Highly controversial: A figment of moralists’ imagination?
‘Closed domesticated nuclear family’
Individualism as a socio-cultural value: emotion, privacy, sexuality
Confined to certain elites (courtly?, Florentine?, Restoration England?) Or all just fashion among literary commentators?
Child-Rearing in the Context of Family Structure:
Child-Rearing in the Context of Family Structure Concepts of childhood from literary & normative texts
Children ‘deficient’ adults.
Hereditary and gender characteristics basic.
Parental love inevitable
Behavioural practice from other kinds of sources
‘Infancy’
Birth –age 2: at great risk & how people coped
less than ‘adult human’
Childhood, ages 2-7, survivors entered parental sphere
Affection, care/nurturing
Pueritia, 7/8-12/14
Proto-adults preparing for adult world: gendered
In a household
Rites of passage
Confirmation/first communion
Age of majority = able to enter adult life