Family Control, Bridal Pregnancy, and Illegitimacy: An Event History Analysis in Leuven, Belgium, 1846-1856

Extramarital pregnancy and illegitimate childbearing have been interpreted by historians as well as sociologists basically in terms of deviant behavior and lack of social control (Tranter 1985; Blaikie 1995). While society has looked at procreation outside marriage as a moral lapse, social science has regarded it in terms of deviancy, as “something which interrupted the proper functioning of social processes, and revealed a failure of social control, the control of individual behavior by family and kin, by political and educational authority” (Laslett 1980a: 1–2). Within this framework, interpretations of the “illegitimacy explosion” of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries have almost invariably referred to weakening social control as a result of industrialization, urbanization, and migration. In the 1970s, the debate on the rise of illegitimacy was centered on Edward Shorter’s contention that women’s emancipation produced rising extramarital sexual activity. This article does not reopen that dispute (see Shorter 1971, 1975: 255–68; Tilly et al. 1976; Lee 1977; Fairchilds 1978; Alter 1988). Rather, it starts from the common ground underlying the different interpretations, which associates adolescent extramarital pregnancy with social isolation. Scholars have argued that migration and new living and working conditions often led to separation from the family and local community. This change would have resulted in the collapse of traditional social control, making premarital intercourse more likely.

However, scholars have not been able to demonstrate this association empirically because relevant indicators for living conditions were lacking in their sources. Belgian population registers combine accurate household and vital registration data on a nominal level. Using this source, the analysis here focuses on adolescent women from the town of Leuven in the middle of the nineteenth century, when illegitimacy reached it maximum levels (about 25% of all births were illegitimate). It examines whether extramarital pregnancy was associated with isolation from family and the native community. The findings suggest that it was not. Extramarital pregnancy should be interpreted as an integral part of popular culture and courtship practices, structured by a gendered double standard, rather than in terms of deviant behavior.

Social Control and Extramarital Pregnancy

Whatever their origin, beliefs about the proper age to get married are clearly part of regional cultures (Watkins 1986). In the eighteenth century, the Flemish Catholic clergy, for example, advocated marriage delay until both partners reached “moral maturity,” that is, until they were capable of making a well-considered decision (Storme 1992). Van Poppel 1992 (29–116) describes similar beliefs and norms for nineteenth-century Netherlands. There, as in many European regions, the nineteenth-century elite was alarmed when it thought more and more industrial or proto-industrial workers married at earlier ages. This trend was denounced, often in explicitly Malthusian terms, as lack of prudence on the part of the proletariat. Bourgeois writers advised the lower classes to be more provident and not to marry in a hurry.

The principle of legitimacy entailed “that no child should be brought into this world without a man—and one man at that—assuming the role of sociological father” (Malinowski cited in Laslett 1980a: 5). Bourgeois rules of respectability required that Europeans “procreate only with partners to whom they are wedded at the time of the procreative act” (ibid.: 6). In some areas, especially in Central Europe and Scandinavia, sexual intercourse between engaged people was an expected and legitimated part of courtship in order to “test” a woman’s fecundity. Still, the principle of legitimacy held in these areas as well, because marriage was supposed to follow in the case of pregnancy. Moreover, popular definitions of marriage and, hence, bastardy did not always conform to church or state definitions (Caspard 1974; Shorter 1975: 98–108, 121–48; Mitterauer and Sieder 1982: 121–26; Mitterauer 1983: 55–67; Alter 1988: 113–14).

Like the norms regarding the timing of marriage, the principle of...