The influence of popular beliefs about childbirth on fertility patterns in mid-twentieth-century Netherlands
Titelübersetzung:Der Volksglauben über Geburten als Einflussfaktor auf Fruchtbarkeitsmuster in den Niederlanden Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts
Autor/in:
Bras, Hilde
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 39 (2014) 1, S 76-103
Inhalt: "Ever since the Princeton European Fertility Project on the decline of fertility, the question of how (changes in) cultural beliefs have influenced the historical fertility transition has been in the forefront of historical demographic research. Previous research has however mostly assessed the influence of religious denomination and has not examined the impact of wider beliefs or 'cultural life scripts'. On the basis of a folklore questionnaire, this article examines the occurrence, content, and geographical patterning of popular beliefs about childbearing in relation to fertility patterns in 1.022 rural Dutch communities during the nineteen forties. Beliefs in isolation and churching of women existed in almost half of all communities, particularly among Catholic populations, while fear of enchantment of infants was still alive in about a fifth of all municipalities. To be sure, such popular beliefs were rapidly vanishing and remnants were still found in isolated and strongly religious areas. A multivariate analysis shows that in communities where beliefs in churching and witchcraft still existed, birth rates were significantly higher. The study shows the salience of including popular beliefs in studies of fertility behavior and fertility decline. Moreover, it extends the concept of cultural life scripts beyond that of age norms to include prescriptions on social contexts, conducts, and practices surrounding important life passages." (author's abstract)
Schlagwörter:20. Jahrhundert; Netherlands; Geburtenrückgang; fertility; Katholik; birth; reproductive behavior; determinants; kulturelle Faktoren; declining birth rate; faith; Fruchtbarkeit; Glaube; cultural factors; Roman Catholic; generatives Verhalten; Ritual; Aberglaube; ritual; woman; Geburt; superstition; Religion; religion; gender-specific factors; Determinanten; twentieth century; Niederlande; cultural life script; popular beliefs
SSOAR Kategorie:Religionssoziologie, Sozialgeschichte, historische Sozialforschung, Bevölkerung
Sportlife: medals, media and life courses of female Dutch Olympic champions, 1928-1940
Titelübersetzung:Ein Leben für den Sport: Medaillen, Medien und Lebensverläufe niederländischer Olympiasiegerinnern, 1928-1940
Autor/in:
Derks, Marjet
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 39 (2014) 1, S 144-162
Inhalt: "Starting from the assumption that cultural historical analyses can help our understanding of changes in life cycles and life courses, this article explores the way in which a specific socio-cultural phenomenon, sport, changed and defined the life courses of women in pre-war Netherlands. While similar questions are often being researched from a psychological or sociological and hence short-term perspective, here a long term and biographical analysis is being applied. Focusing on a group of medal winning participants in the Olympic Games, the leading question is whether their physical talent allowed these women to pursue a different life course. A second question is how their international careers matched with dominant cultural life scripts, which stated that young women should prepare to become wives, mothers and homemakers. It can be concluded that the presented biographies reveal an ambiguous reality. On the one hand, sporting successes opened up several possibilities for the women concerned, who became public figures and their country's first national female sport heroes. Thus, they embodied the beginning of a new cultural feminine ideal that opened up existing scripts. Their personal life course underwent profound changes as well, albeit of a confusing nature. All coming from lower class families, they saw their social careers set off because of their swimming, but also getting disrupted because of it. Sport-related disagreeing life scripts were tensional rather than advantageous. At least in hindsight, the women blamed their sporting career for the strenuous course their lives took." (author's abstract)
Schlagwörter:Netherlands; Olympische Spiele; cultural factors; sports; life career; Berichterstattung; image of women; Sport; Medien; Olympic Games; kulturelle Faktoren; Frauenbild; Karriere; woman; Lebenslauf; career; reporting; media; Niederlande; cultural life scripts, inter-war era, sporting careers, female sport heroes, biographical method
SSOAR Kategorie:Freizeitforschung, Freizeitsoziologie, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Sozialgeschichte, historische Sozialforschung
"At age 27, she gets furious": scripts on marriage and life course variation in The Netherlands, 1850-1970
Titelübersetzung:"Mit 27 Jahren wird sie unruhig": Skripte über Ehe und Lebenslauf-Variation in den Niederlanden, 1850-1970
Autor/in:
Kok, Jan
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 39 (2014) 1, S 113-132
Inhalt: "Marrying too old, too young, or not at all could elicit scorn from all sides: family, friends and neighbours. The same could occur when a partner was much younger or older. During modernization new societal norms on marriage are supposed to have emerged and to have become more pervasive, as individual access to and timing of marriage became less dependent on family fortunes and family strategies. In this article, life courses of more than 15.000 Dutch individuals are studied in order to answer the question: was their timing of marriage and choice of partner related to (changing) life scripts - and what social or cultural groups were the carriers of these scripts - or still predominantly determined by family dynamics?" (author's abstract)
Schlagwörter:20. Jahrhundert; Netherlands; 19. Jahrhundert; soziale Norm; Ehe; cultural factors; marriage; wedding; Heirat; kulturelle Faktoren; socioeconomic factors; social norm; sozioökonomische Faktoren; woman; Partnerwahl; choice of partner; gender-specific factors; age; twentieth century; Lebensalter; nineteenth century; Niederlande; celibacy; late marriage; early marriage; age homogamy; life scripts
SSOAR Kategorie:Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Familiensoziologie, Sexualsoziologie, Sozialgeschichte, historische Sozialforschung
Life scripts and life realities: women in nineteenth-century Nijmegen
Titelübersetzung:Lebensskript und Lebenswirklichkeit: Frauen im Nimwegen des 19. Jahrhunderts
Autor/in:
Engelen, Theo
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 39 (2014) 1, S 104-112
Inhalt: "On average, more than one fifth of the 19th century Nijmegen brides were pregnant at the date of marriage. In a society where extramarital sexuality was explicitly forbidden, and where the success of marriage restriction depended on following that rule, this finding is remarkable. Obviously, the cultural life script that allowed sexuality only within marriage was not a script all inhabitants lived up to. A remarkable secondary finding is that the protestant population had a much higher proportion of bridal pregnancies than the Roman Catholic population, although both the Protestant and the Roman Catholic clergy strongly opposed sexual activities, unless within marriage. Therefore, when bridal pregnancy among Protestant couples was twice as high as among Catholics, this points either at a stricter control by the Catholic clergy, or at more deviance among Protestant youngsters. In any case, when studying cultural life scripts on sexuality, it is always important to note that it can be countered by human agency." (author's abstract)
Schlagwörter:Netherlands; 19. Jahrhundert; Protestant; Ehe; cultural factors; marriage; Roman Catholic; Katholik; Schwangerschaft; kulturelle Faktoren; sexuality; pregnancy; Protestant; Sexualität; woman; Lebensbedingungen; living conditions; nineteenth century; Niederlande; cultural life script; bridal pregnancy; extramarital sexuality
SSOAR Kategorie:Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Sozialgeschichte, historische Sozialforschung, Bevölkerung
Clustering and dispersal of siblings in the North-Holland countryside, 1850-1940
Titelübersetzung:Räumliche Nähe und Distanz von Geschwistern im ländlichen Nord-Holland, 1850-1940
Autor/in:
Kok, Jan; Bras, Hilde
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 33 (2008) 3, S 278-300
Inhalt: 'Why are some families scattered over a larger area than others? In this article we use a dataset with the complete life courses of all children from 210 families, originating from the same village in the commercialized North-Western part of The Netherlands. We experiment with multinomial logistic regression on sibling sets to discover the factors behind geographical sibling dispersal. The most important factors turn out to be the survival of the parents, the civil status of the siblings, and the size and gender composition of the sibling set.' (author's abstract)|
Class, work and religion in the female life course: the case of a Dutch textile town: Enschede, 1880-1940
Titelübersetzung:Soziale Klasse, Arbeit und Religion im weiblichen Lebenslauf: der Fall einer niederländischen Textilarbeiterstadt: Enschede, 1880-1940
Autor/in:
Janssens, Angelique
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 23 (1998) 1/2, S 254-274
Inhalt: Zwischen Frauenerwerbsarbeit und Geburtenrate wird ein enger Zusammenhang angenommen. Dieser wird bei Frauen in den Niederlanden für den Zeitraum 1880 - 1940 untersucht. Am Beispiel der mittelgroßen Textilindustrie-Stadt Enschede mit einem überaus hohen Geburtenanstieg zwischen 1899 und 1930 wird gefragt, inwieweit Erfahrungen mit dem Arbeitsmarkt die Eheentscheidung bzw. Ehechancen junger Frauen beeinflussen. Dabei werden bei den Frauen die Beschäftigungsgruppen 'Lehrerin/Kleinhandel', 'Nähen/Hausangestellte', 'Weben' und 'beschäftigungslos' unterschieden. Es zeigt sich, daß das Eheschließungsverhalten und die Familiengröße nicht wesentlich von sozioökonomischen Faktoren wie dem beruflichen Status des Ehemannes abhingen. Zumindest im frühen 20. Jahrhundert wurde in Enschede die Triade 'Frau, Arbeit und Familie' durch die Triade 'Frau, Familie, Religion' ersetzt. Damit verlief in diesem Zeitraum die Teilung der Gesellschaft nicht horizontal nach sozioökonomischen Gruppen, sondern vertikal nach religiösen und kulturellen Zuordnungen. Der ziemlich späte Wandel demographischer Verhaltensweisen in den Niederlanden geht einher mit geringer Frauenerwerbstätigkeit bis in die 60er Jahre. (prf)
Inhalt: 'In recent years it has become an accepted wisdom to assume a close correlation between the productive and reproductive activities of women. This paper therefore examines the extent to which the labour force participation of women in the Netherlands and patterns of demographic behaviour of women are interrelated in the period between 1880 and 1940. The Netherlands hold a special position in that respect since it combines a rather late demographic transition with low levels of female labour force participation that continue well into the 1960s. This paper presents some preliminary results concerning the industrial textile town of Enschede. In the middle of the Dutch fertility decline socio-economic influences did not appear to have been much impact on either marriage or fertility behaviour. Rather, the evidence suggests that the famous triangle of 'women, work and family', at least for early twentieth-century Enschede, should be replaced by the triangle 'women, family and religion'.' (author's abstract)
Domestic service, migration and the social status of women at marriage: the case of a Dutch Sea Province, Zeeland 1820-1935
Titelübersetzung:Hauswirtschaftsdienst, Wanderungsbewegung und sozialer Status von Frauen bei der Eheschließung
Autor/in:
Bras, Hilde
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 23 (1998) 3, S 3-19
Inhalt: Die Autorin untersucht, inwieweit Mädchen vom Lande, die als Dienstmädchen in die Stadt abwanderten, mit ihrer Eheschließung einen höheren sozialen Status erreichen konnten. Sie stützt sich auf Daten aus den Jahren 1820 bis 1935, die in der niederländischen Provinz Zeeland ermittelt wurden und vergleicht diese mit entsprechenden Daten der Stadt Middelburg für denselben Zeitraum. Die Auswertung belegt, dass der Dienstmädchenberuf nicht zu Ehen mit Männern höherer sozialer Stellung führte als nach dem gegebenen Sozialstatus des Mädchens zu erwarten war. Hingegen bieten sich anderen in der Stadt lebenden Frauen größere Chancen auf eine Ehe mit höherem Sozialstatus. Die Untersuchung widerlegt damit die Auffassung anderer Wissenschaftler, wonach die Hausangestelltentätigkeit in der Stadt für Mädchen vom Lande als 'Brückenschlag' zu einem höheren Sozialstatus anzusehen sei. (prh)
Inhalt: 'Some scholars have seen female domestic service as a 'bridging occupation', facilitating the migration of women from the countryside to the cities and enabling them to make advantageous marriages and become upwardly socially mobile. However, previous research has yielded contradictory results with regard to the marriages of female servants. On the basis of 1800 marriage records, in this article it has been estimated how social background, occupation and migration determined the status at marriage of women in the province of Zeeland the Netherlands, in the period 1820-1935. When holding everything equal, just exercising the occupation of domestic service didn't result in marriages with men of higher social positions as could be expected given the status of the job. However, living in a city by the time of one's marriage, did indeed offer women greater chances on a high status marriage.' (author's abstract)