Prolific immigrants and dwindling natives?: fertility patterns in western Massachusetts, 1850 and 1880
Wilcox, J.; Golden, H.H.
Journal of Family History 7(3): 265-288
1982
ISSN/ISBN: 0363-1990 PMID: 11611074 DOI: 10.1177/036319908200700303Document Number: 243616
This comparative demographic study used household-level manuscriptcensus data to explore ethnic, occupational, and rural-urban differences in fertility. The study region comprised two western Massachusetts counties which experienced industrialization, urbanization, and immigration throughout the nineteenth century. We collected one-in-ten samples of households from the federalmanuscript censuses of fifteen communities. We sampled the same communitiesin 1850 and 1880, and coded detailed characteristics of over 2,400 households. Inaddition to counting the number of preteenage children in each household, weused information on the ages of women and children to estimate the length of thechildbearing span. In so doing, we could refine the child-woman ratio by standardizing it according to the number of years a currently married woman hadbeen at risk of bearing a child-since age 25 or since the birth of her first child. We then employed age standardization and multiple classification analysis in anattempt to rule out competing explanations of native-immigrant differences. A djustments for age at maternity and wives' age distribution rendered the Irishmost prolific, but the French Canadians and 1850 natives were not far behind. Evidently, Irish and French-Canadian women had longer childbearing spans than native women in both census years, and slightly earlier maternity. The statisticaladjustments failed to explain the low fertility of the 1880 natives, suggesting thatthey were more effective than other groups in limiting marital fertility. While fertility levels of immigrants and 1850 natives were quite similar to those of theircontemporaries in England and America, the 1880 natives were clearly atypical. By 1880, native fertility probably had dwindled to a level other American groupswould not reach until after World War I. The changing occupational structurehelped to magnify native-immigrant differences. Families with semiskilled andunskilled heads tended to be larger than those headed by farmers, skilled craftsmen, and white-collar workers. The low and declining fertility of the middle-class natives was especially noteworthy.