Western European marriage pattern
To the west of the line, which extends approximately between Saint Petersburg, Russia, and Trieste, Italy, marriage rates and thus fertility were comparatively low, and a significant minority of women married late or remained single, and most families were nuclear; to the east of the line and in the Mediterranean and particular regions of northwestern Europe, early marriage and extended family homes were the norm, and high fertility was offset by high mortality.
[6][7][8] The shift toward this "Western European Marriage Pattern" does not have a clear beginning, but it certainly had become established by the end of the fifteenth century on most of the shores of the North Sea.
[9][10][11] During the Middle Ages and the modern times, all kinds of movements developed which gradually sought to diminish the influence of the Church in matrimonial matters.
The impetus was given in the Netherlands since the Middle Ages with urban ordinances threatening civil and criminal measures against those guilty of kidnapping, i.e. marriage without parental consent.
A major factor was that by marrying their daughter off young the parents had one mouth less to feed and the dowry was often lower for younger girls who had learned less skills and build up less savings.
A well known example from neighbouring Britain is the cautionary tale of the play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare of whom the young ages were considered scandalous at the time.
[28] There was nonetheless great variation within Britain alone; while Lowland Scotland saw patterns similar to England, with women married in the middle twenties after a period of domestic service, the high birth rate of Highland Scotland and the Hebrides imply a lower age of marriage for the bride, possibly similar to Gaelic Ireland,[29] where Brehon Law stated that women became legally marriageable at 15 years and men at 18 years.
However, similar marriage patterns, with a high degree of female agency (as measured by the so-called 'female-friendliness index') have been documented in Mongolia, Japan, and parts of Southeast Asia.
[39] The origins of the late marriage system are a matter of conjecture prior to the 15th century when the demographic evidence from family reconstitution studies makes the prevalence of the pattern clear; while evidence is scant, most English couples seemed to marry for the first time in their early twenties before the Black Death and afterward, when economic conditions were better, often married in their late teens.
Many historians have wondered whether this unique conjugal regime might explain, in part, why capitalism first took root in Northwestern Europe, contributing to the region's relatively low mortality rates, hastening the fragmentation of the peasantry and the precocious formation of a mobile class of landless wage-earners.
Julius Caesar, writing in the first century B.C, wrote that while the Germanic tribes to the north of the empire were communal with their land, living under the Sippe kinship system, the homesteads were largely separate from each other, unlike the closer proximity in Roman towns.
And Tacitus, writing a century and a half later, also observed these many private households among the Germanic tribes, although there was public ownership of pastures and controlled use of the forests.
[46] The rise of Christianity created more incentives to keep families nuclear; the Church instituted marriage laws and practices that undermined large kinship groups.
From as early as the fourth century, the Church discouraged any practice that enlarged the family, like adoption, polygamy, taking concubines, divorce, and remarriage.
[49] The rise of manorialism in the vacuum left after the Fall of Rome might also have weakened the ties of kinship at the same time that the Church had curtailed the power of clans; as early as the 800s in northern France, families that worked on manors were small, consisting of parents and children and occasionally a grandparent.
To curb secret marriages and remind young couples of parental power, the Medieval Church encouraged prolonged courtship, arrangements and monetary logistics, informing the community of the wedding, and finally the formal exchange of vows.
[59] The average age at first marriage had gradually risen again by late sixteenth century; the population had stabilized and availability of jobs and land had lessened.
Christian Europe banned polygamy and divorce, and attempted to prohibit any form of sexual relationship that was not marriage, such as concubine or premarital sex, termed fornication.
Most issues regarding marriage and many other aspects of family life came under the jurisdiction of church courts and were regulated by an increasingly elaborate legal system termed canon law.
[61] When a growing population of poverty caused by "over-hasting marriages and over-soon setting up of households by the youth".,[62] the decree of the Common Council of London in 1556 raised the age of consent to twenty-one.
[63] It allowed overseers to apprentice children of the parish poor from the age of ten to twenty-four, essentially delaying the prospects of marriage.
The common belief in Elizabethan England was that motherhood before 16 was dangerous; popular manuals of health, as well as observations of married life, led Elizabethans to believe that early marriage and its consummation permanently damaged a young woman's health, impaired a young man's physical and mental development, and produced sickly or stunted children.
[67] He refined the racist ideas of his mentor, Gunther Ipsen, as well others, who sought to link racial attributes like skin color and ethnicity to marriage patterns.
[68] His deeply flawed[69] analysis of Baltic nuptiality data left an impression on decision makers in the German military, convincing them of the latent racial inferiority and alienness of Slavic people.
