Women's Work and European Fertility Patterns

Abstract

During the nineteenth century most commentators on the "condition of the working classes" attributed large families and frequent illegitimacy among the poor to social, economic or moral pathology.For Engels overpopulated working class families were the offspring of industrial capitalism.For Malthus, they were evidence of imprudence, of an inability to make rational calculations.For both, as for many government investigators and social reformers, high rates of fertility among married and single workers were both indicators and causes of misery and deprivation.Since the nineteenth century, of course, there have been many debates about the effects of industrialization on the standard of living of workers and on their demographic behavior.There have been some studies of family size among occupational groups and there have been attempts to describe and explain changes in working class fertility patterns.Most of these studies lack the explicit moralizing of the 19th century commentators, although some implicitly retain those biases.Few, however, maintain that large families and numerous bastards were positive developments.I