Natural Fertility in Pre-Industrial Germany

Abstract

Analysis of reconstituted family histories of couples married before 1850 based on 10 village genealogies suggested that family limitation was largely absent in pre-industrial German village populations. Marital fertility schedules of this pre-industrial period conformed to the age pattern of natural fertility. Women bore their last child at relatively high ages and apparently were not influenced by previous experience with infant and child mortality. These findings seem to hold over a substantial period and across villages in very different areas of Germany. A positive association between age at marriage and marital fertility at a given age was evident, but in most cases all or a substantial proportion of this relationship could be attributed to several plausible mechanisms other than deliberate attempts to limit family size. The age at last birth appeared to be unrelated to age at marriage. Assertions that birth control was widely practiced in the pre-industrial period were questioned. If any birth control was practiced within marriage in pre-industrial German villages, it was apparently not parity-dependent and differed fundamentally from the form of control involved in the modern fertility transition. Modern, parity-dependent family limitation apparently represented innovative behavior. Interpretations of the fertility transition as an adjustment process based on long-standing behavioral mechanisms were questioned.