Families and Growing Cities : Structures and Strategies in Family Formation, Sweden 1840—1940

This book originates from a research program on the urban family in Sweden 1840-1940. It examines the family at the centre of life during Sweden’s transition to a modern industrialized and urbanized country. The proportion of singles and married people as well as ages at marriage are analysed against the background of economic development, social structure, the housing situation and “male breadwinner-ideology”. Generational relations and the different family and household forms in urban areas are discussed. By using the potential of the Demographic Data Base, Umeå University in combination with population registers from the 20th century, eight marriage cohorts from the 1840’s to the 1930’s are created for two middle-sized Swedish cities, Linköping and Sundsvall. The authors explore in detail the new fertility regimes that emerged rather rapidly in urban Sweden during the first decades of the last century. The concept “family strategies” is used to understand the behaviour of individuals and families within all social classes during the fertility transition. Smaller families were achieved through increased use of spacing and stopping and mainly by pre-industrial forms of fertility control. However, the authors also stress the importance of bourgeois debaters and early feminists as well as left wing women’s associations for bringing down the birth rate. Finally, the book raises central issues concerning the economic, social and psychological forces that shaped the modern family and the interrelationship between history, demography and other related sciences.digitalisering@um