Analysis of the fertility histories of women born between 1850 and 1900, as given in the Utah Population Database (UPDB), reveals the effect of the number, as well as the sex composition, of previous children on birth-stopping and birth-spacing decisions. Specifically, agricultural and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) households—two sub-populations that might have placed different values on male and female children for economic, social, and/or cultural reasons—showed a distinct preference for male children, as expressed by birth stopping after the birth of a male child and shorter birth intervals in higher-parity births when most previous children were female. Remarkably, women in both the early "natural fertility" and the later contraceptive eras used spacing behavior to achieve a desired sex mix. Although the LDS population had relatively high fertility rates, it had the same preferences for male children as the non-LDS population did. Farmers, who presumably had a need for family labor, were more interested in the quantity than in the sex mix of their children.

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Nineteenth Century. During the last part of the nineteenth century, Finnmark province and the Northern part of 3The prevailing discourse in family history since the early 1970s has downplayed earlier assumptions that industrialization and urbanization diminished intergenerational coresidence, and that support for elderly people diminished with the modernization of society.According to this interpretation, the dominant form of household structure in Western Europe and the United States in preindustrial times was nuclear, and industrialization did not affect the nature of domestic life. Elderly parents supposedly resided in independent households as long as their health permitted, and resided with their adult children only after they became too frail to maintain their own household (Laslett & Wall 1972, Laslett 1977, Hareven 1982, Kertzer & Laslett 1995, Alter, Cliggett, & Urbiel 1996, Timothy Guinnane 1996.Adopting the same methodology that Laslett and his collaborators introduced in the early 1970s, Norwegian scholars have confirmed the dominance of nuclear households in preindustrial times. These scholars have charted "who lived with whom" using the Hammel and Laslett categorization scheme, and have made little attempt to address "who moved in with whom." Moreover, Norwegian parish-level studies suggest that the allodium law encouraged a stem-family system, which was especially prevalent in farm communities. In addition to stating that the oldest son would inherit the farm (primogeniture), allodium law described a set of rights that the older generation had upon retirement and the transfer of the farm. After moving out from the main building into a separate kårhus, the older generation could claim a part of the farm's livelihood to secure their old age. Thus, among family historians, the allodium law and the retirement contract accompanying it have been seen as strong evidence for a consistent and culturally homogeneous family system across preindustrial Norway