Journal of Family History

The evidence about relationships in British stepfamilies between 1500 and 1800 deals mostly with relationships between adults, not between adults and young children. A dominant theme is the threat posed to inheritance by a parent's remarriage, which had three possibilities: that an heir would be disinherited in favour of the children of the new marriage, that a parent and stepparent would squander their wealth during the biological parent's lifetime, and that a stepparent might acquire a life interest in an estate after a spouse's death. It seems that these fears were in many cases groundless. The possibility that domestic harmony might result from a parent's remarriage was also often exaggerated, and the general picture is of stepfamily relationships that were mixed in quality.

The wicked stepmother is a figure of considerable importance in Roman literature. Juno and Phaedra provided mythological models, and rhetorical training helped to perpetuate the stereotype. There are superficial resemblances to the wicked stepmother of European folklore, but Roman literature concentrates on one particular form of “wickedness”: the stepmother who deprives her stepson of his paternal inheritance, either for her own benefit or her children's. Classical inheritance law and the structure of the Roman family gave scope for this, but imaginative writers made it an issue of much more importance than the legal texts indicate it ever had.

The essay uses evidence from a French pre-alpine community in 1613-1792 to test the formalized models of Malthus as presented by Wrigley and Schofield. It finds a demographic regime characterized by early marriage, low marital fertility and fecundity, and low infant mortality. Such a system does not fit neatly into any of the models presented by Wrigley and Schofield for the balance of population and resources. The essay concludes with the proposition that greater attention needs to be given to the role of seasonal and temporary labour migration after marriage as a means of regulating people and resources in a marginal environment.

U.S. Federal legislation related to family planning services for women has been an ongoing process for several decades. Over the years numerous researchers have written about and speculated on many different Congressional acts germane to family planning. Most of these studies, however, have limited their discussions to a specific piece of legislation, its implications, and/or social consequences. The purpose of this study is to present a comprehensive (but relatively brief) history of federal legislation related to family planning services for women of all ages. The list of bills and acts is long and dates back to 1935.

In the cohort of 4000 infants born in Montreal in 1859, the cultural context showed a powerful influence on infant mortality: more French Canadian infants died in their first year than Protestant or Irish Catholic. Socio-economic status shows no effect on infant mortality, although in each cultural community the wealthy had a higher birth rate than the poor. A higher birth rate to French Canadian mothers can be attributed entirely to the larger number of deaths followed by prompt “replacement.” Among mothers whose infants survived twelve months, all three communities show the same median birth intervals, indicative of a high fertility, apparently regulated by breastfeeding. The summer concentration of infant deaths nevertheless points to diarrheal diseases and differences of infant feeding.

This study approaches the history of household patterns in early modern Europe from the perspective of Wallersteinian world-system theory. It is shown that the European core during this time was characterized predominantly by simple nuclear households. By contrast, the European periphery and semiperiphery were far more likely to be characterized by complex households. We explain these relationships in terms of the mode of labor control predominating in each zone of the world-economy. Simple nuclear households become the norm where labor is being freed from traditional feudal bonds and where capitalist labor markets exist. Complex households are most likely to persist under traditional feudal relationships because they constitute adaptations to the labor needs that arise under such circumstances. Complex households are also common, although somewhat less so, where sharecropping is a predominant mode of labor control.