Age at marriage and family size

Social causation and social selection hypotheses

Bibliographic Data

ID24077253
AuthorsJoan Busfield (0000-0002-9377-1909, University of Essex, corresponding author)
Year1972
Volume4
Issue1
Pages117-134
Publication date1972-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Biosocial Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9320 • E-ISSN: 1469-7599
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0021932000008385
PMID5060695
OpenAlexW1987957549
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited13

The familiar and well-established negative association between a woman's age at marriage and family size has received somewhat less attention in recent years. No doubt this is because, with the reduction in fertility of the past century, the observed differentials appear less striking and seem less significant. Age at marriage is a less obvious determinant of family size than in the past. Glass & Grebenik (1954), commenting on the data produced by the 1946 Family Census, emphasized the decreasing importance of the association both absolutely and relatively. Contrasting the completed fertility of the 1900–09 and the 1925 marriage cohorts in Great Britain (Table 1), they argued that, though for all, married women the relative influence of age at marriage was unchanged, the figures for fertile marriages only (those where the wife had at least one child) appeared to indicate ‘that age at marriage and fertility were not quite so tightly linked for the more recent group’. And they added ‘this is the kind of development which would be expected with the increasing spread of family planning’.

Age at first marriage · Causation · Census · Developed country · Family planning · Fertility · Historical demography · Political science · Population · Research methodology · Sociology · Wife · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences · Demography · Family Dynamics and Relationships · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Law · Psychology