{"id":1495,"date":"2015-03-08T21:21:49","date_gmt":"2015-03-09T03:21:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=1495"},"modified":"2015-03-09T10:05:41","modified_gmt":"2015-03-09T16:05:41","slug":"were-children-in-the-past-really-a-profit-center-for-their-parents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/03\/were-children-in-the-past-really-a-profit-center-for-their-parents.html","title":{"rendered":"Were children in the past really a profit center for their parents?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

You\u2019ve read this before, right?<\/p>\n

For much of human history, children were economically valuable to their parents. \u00a0Either as farm labor or, later as factory workers, they provided valuable extra labor at little cost. \u00a0Only in the early decades of the nineteenth century, with child labor laws and the shift to a predominently urban population, were children more burden than benefit, and, in the last couple decades, a significant burden indeed, as parents are expected to put substantial time and money into ensuring their children are as successful in life as possible. \u00a0Given this turn-around, it\u2019s no wonder that fertility rates have plummeted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

OK, I\u2019ve block-quoted this but it\u2019s not anything that I can reference from anywhere in particular; it\u2019s more a composite of things I\u2019ve read in multiple places. \u00a0And I think it\u2019s wrong, or, rather, true of only a limited number of times and places.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that in America, at the time of the Western Expansion, one could tend to believe that one\u2019s surplus children, those not in line to inherit the family farm, could simply move further West. \u00a0But for most families, outside of this unusual time, getting one\u2019s children settled was a significant concern. \u00a0Sometimes the inheritance custom was that the land was divided up among all the children, in which case each successive generation had fewer acres to farm; in other cases, only the oldest inherited, and then the parent tried to apprentice the child, or find a good marriage match. \u00a0Depending on the time and place, there may have also been dowry to contend with, or the expense of the requirement that the parents host a wedding feast (no, I\u2019m not thinking about modern American traditions so much as places like India, where families can go into debt to meet this obligation).<\/p>\n

I suppose at the time of the Industrial Revolution,\u00a0\u00a0things were somewhat different. \u00a0You expected your kids to fend for themselves in the wider world after getting a start in factory life as a child \u2014 not much different than places like India where child labor continues, even though illegally. \u00a0But were the pennies these children would bring in, starting at age 6 or so, really a part of the calculus for family size? \u00a0I\u2019m skeptical. \u00a0There were, after all, enough children abandoned or left to beg (think Jacob Riis and How the Other Half Lives<\/em>) that seems unlikely that the wages they earned really improved the financial lot for the family. \u00a0Heck, for that matter, even in the mythical American family farm, prosperity was largely determined based on the number of acres and the overall growing conditions (e.g., rainfall, soil quality, etc.), not the number of children available to help with plowing or harvest.<\/p>\n

Could it be true that, even if couples didn\u2019t have large families in the past because of the children\u2019s economic contribution to the family, that the children served as a \u201cretirement plan\u201d \u2013 and the more, the better?<\/p>\n

Maybe.<\/p>\n

In some times and places, especially in Asia, there very much was, and is, an expectation that one\u2019s children would care for you, though I don\u2019t know that it necessarily was the case that the more children, the better.\u00a0 According to Shutting Out the Sun<\/a>, in Japan, it\u2019s the oldest son who has this obligation, which means that these oldest-sons are now having a difficult time finding wives.<\/p>\n

I recall that, in medieval England, being childless wasn\u2019t an impediment as long as you weren\u2019t landless; when you were ready to retire, you could invite someone who was landless to move in \u2013 you\u2019d live in the hayloft \u2013 with specific agreements that he (and his future family) would be required to provide for your needs.<\/p>\n

And among factory workers, say, in the U.S., those immigrant families where we idealize the multigenerational household, with grandma and grandpa being cared for and dispensing wisdom?\u00a0 According to a lengthy section in Unretirement<\/a>, this was all hit-or-miss.\u00a0 This was the ideal solution, but often you\u2019d be a burden to your equally-poor adult children, or you\u2019d end up in the poorhouse.\u00a0 It seems like quite a bit of advance planning to intentionally pop out a few more kids, just to improve the likelihood that one of them would be able to care for you in your old age.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s my point with this? \u00a0Mainly that (I believe) we\u2019re barking up the wrong tree if this is the answer we offer for changing fertility patterns. \u00a0Prior to reliable means of controlling fertility, and, among Christians, the abandonment of religious restrictions (not just limited to Catholics, until the 20th century), people had children because nature took it\u2019s course, though, at the same time, the mega-sized families weren\u2019t the norm even then (perhaps in a later post I\u2019ll look this up) due to high infant mortality and the natural spacing of breastfeeding; it also wouldn\u2019t surprise me if the lower nutrition levels, and greater degree of food insecurity, impacted fertility as well.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You\u2019ve read this before, right? For much of human history, children were economically valuable to their parents. \u00a0Either as farm labor or, later as factory workers, they provided valuable extra labor at little cost. \u00a0Only in the early decades of the nineteenth century, with child labor laws and the shift to a predominently urban population, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWere children in the past really a profit center for their parents?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"You've read this before, right? 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