Life and Death of Singles in Dutch Cities, 1850-1940

Abstract

Our study entails a quantitative analysis of the life courses of permanent celibates in Dutch cities. We make use of a large database with randomly selected life courses (Historical Sample of the Netherlands), which covers the entire country in the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. The database allows us to look at the family backgrounds, households, and mortality of urban singles. Singles were characterized by a prolonged stay in the parental house, which was related to the survival of both parents. Becoming single was more likely in Roman Catholic and elite families. In cities, skewed marriage markets contributed to women remaining unmarried. However, the well-known concentration of lifelong spinsters in cities was mainly caused by the clustering of social groups in which female celibacy was more common than in others, as well as by sex-specific migration to cities. Although they lived with their parents well past adolescence, in later life, urban celibate men and women did not depend on family. Women lived in a same-sex household more often than men. In old age, most celibates lived by themselves, but their "solitude" did not necessarily imply they were doing worse than others; at least, it was not reflected in higher mortality rates.

Why did they not get married? Biological, economic and family determinants of celibacy in rural Spain (1785–2010)

“…Regarding the presence of family members at home, for single men who were born during the pre-transition period (1785-1899) it was important to assess the potential for remaining celibate, because the longevity of the mother and the longevity of the father favoured bachelorhood. Similar results have been found for the Netherlands during the nineteenth century (Kok and Mandemakers, 2016).…”

“…Therefore, the presence of a caring mother or father would have actually lessened the chance of marriage. These results arose from the situation in The Netherlands, where both parents could have influenced long-term celibacy (Kok and Mandemakers, 2016). Another highly significant variable in all models is the number of celibate brothers.…”

“…Our interest is in knowing the marital status of natives at the age of 45, so that those who died before reaching that age are excluded from the sample. In order to know the effect of parental longevity on single people, given the relevant role played in the Netherlands (Kok and Mandemakers, 2016), if we simply do not know the exact age of death, then we accept the age recorded by the parish priest as an approximation. In order to complete the remaining variables on the family context (numbers of unmarried siblings, numbers of deceased siblings, parity, etc.)…”

“…However, in our study area only two families with four or more children who had reached the age of 45 failed to see any of their children marry. Second, the existence of an unattached brother could have guaranteed a long-term companion in the home, and especially so with the existence of an unmarried sister (Kok and Mandemakers, 2016). At the same time, adult single siblings could have represented an insurance against subsistence crises due to economic reasons during low-income periods.…”

Consumption of Chinese goods in southwestern Europe: a multi-relational database and the vicarious consumption theory as alternative model to the industrious revolution (eighteenth century)

“…The same is true for the extensive range of databases that look at wide clusters of the population to study the life course of Dutch city families, such as those by Kok (2007) Kok and Mandemakers (2016), the "Soundtoll" database to register the toll and custom system in the Baltic market, and Van Dyke's (2016) datasets to study the Dutch and British commerce in Guangzhou and Macao during the eighteenth century. Following a similar line of research, Silvia Marzagalli designed the "Novigocorpus" database, which registers data on the itineraries of merchant ships from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries (Dedieu et al 2011, 241-262).…”