Changes in choice of spouse as an indicator of a society in a state of transition: Woerden, 1830-1930

Der Prozeß der Modernisierung hat auch in sozialer Hinsicht eine offene Gesellschaft geschaffen. Ein Indikator dafür ist das Maß an äußerer Übereinstimmung zwischen Ehepartnern. Die These, daß die Modernisierung der Gesellschaft auch eine freiere und weniger pragmatische Partnerwahl begünstigt, wird überprüft. Auf der Quellengrundlage der eingetragenen Ehen, die in der niederländischen Stadt Woerden von 1830 - 1930 geschlossen wurden, werden der Wandel in der sozialen, altersmäßigen und religiösen Übereinstimmung bei der Partnerwahl untersucht. Dabei werden sechs soziale Klassen zwischen 'Ungelernte Arbeiter' und 'Oberklasse' sowie die Religionen römisch-katholisch, calvinistisch und lutheranisch unterschieden. Die sozialen, religiösen und Altersfaktoren werden in einem Beziehungszusammenhang betrachtet. Es zeigt sich, daß die Alters- und soziale Klassenübereinstimmung abnehmen, während die religiöse Übereinstimmung zunimmt. (prf)'The 19th and 20th centuries have been an era characterised by social modernisation spurred on primarily by economic developments. The process of modernisation also had an impact on interpersonal relationships and resulted in a more open society. The degree of homogamy between husbands and wives is an important indicator for societal openness, the theory being that the changes which occurred during this period enabled people to be freer and less pragmatic when choosing a spouse. This paper examines this thesis by studying changes in social class, age- and religious homogamy based on marriage data for the town of Woerden during the period 1830-1930. In contrast to other studies which examined the degree of homogamy of each of these variables in isolation, our aim was to reveal the interrelationship between the factors which influenced a person's choice of spouse, using log-linear analyses. The results show that a unidimensional model positing a trend towards increasing openness can be misleading. A decline in social class homogamy and an increase in age homogamy - indicators which would suggest that people had more freedom when it came to choosing a spouse - were found to go hand in hand with an increase in religious homogamy - indicative of a society in the ever-tightening grip of religion.' (author's abstract

Environmental Influences on Young Adult Male Height. A Comparison of Town and Countryside in the Netherlands, 1815-1900

The first phase of industrialization has often been associated with decreasing standards of living for workers, and early industrial towns and cities gained bad reputations. One of the best indicators for living conditions in early life is young adult height, and the literature has often pointed at urban-rural differences in heights to illustrate the initial decrease of living standards due to urbanization and industrialization. But how was urban residence connected to height? Causal mechanisms can include disease environment related to crowdedness, food availability or the nature of urban versus rural work. But perhaps urban-rural differences can simply be attributed to compositional effects, e.g. in cities relatively more poor, illiterate or incomplete families were to be found. Another question is whether urban-rural differences are limited to large cities compared to the rest, or whether we also find differences between towns and villages. In this brief, exploratory paper, we combine two detailed local datasets to provide answers to these questions. We contrast an early industrializing town, with a typical proletarian sub-culture of tile bakers and a significant middle class (Woerden in the province of South-Holland) to an agrarian community (the village of Akersloot and surrounding area in the province of North-Holland). Our dataset allows us to disentangle effects of the family composition, the family’s socio-economic status, food prices, and the environment on bodily growth of 1,738 young men. Our results suggest that the specific conditions of urban workers were more important for the physical development of their children than the urban or rural setting itself