Were children in the past really a profit center for their parents?

Last updated on: March 9, 2015 at 10:05 am by Jane the Actuary

Were children in the past really a profit center for their parents? 2015-03-09T10:05:41-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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You’ve read this before, right?

For much of human history, children were economically valuable to their parents. Either as farm labor or, later as factory workers, they provided valuable extra labor at little cost. Only 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. Given this turn-around, it’s no wonder that fertility rates have plummeted.

OK, I’ve block-quoted this but it’s not anything that I can reference from anywhere in particular; it’s more a composite of things I’ve read in multiple places. And I think it’s wrong, or, rather, true of only a limited number of times and places.

It’s true that in America, at the time of the Western Expansion, one could tend to believe that one’s surplus children, those not in line to inherit the family farm, could simply move further West. But for most families, outside of this unusual time, getting one’s children settled was a significant concern. Sometimes 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. Depending 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’m not thinking about modern American traditions so much as places like India, where families can go into debt to meet this obligation).

I suppose at the time of the Industrial Revolution, things were somewhat different. You expected your kids to fend for themselves in the wider world after getting a start in factory life as a child — not much different than places like India where child labor continues, even though illegally. But were the pennies these children would bring in, starting at age 6 or so, really a part of the calculus for family size? I’m skeptical. There were, after all, enough children abandoned or left to beg (think Jacob Riis and How the Other Half Lives) that seems unlikely that the wages they earned really improved the financial lot for the family. Heck, 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.

Could it be true that, even if couples didn’t have large families in the past because of the children’s economic contribution to the family, that the children served as a “retirement plan” – and the more, the better?

Maybe.

In some times and places, especially in Asia, there very much was, and is, an expectation that one’s children would care for you, though I don’t know that it necessarily was the case that the more children, the better. According to Shutting Out the Sun, in Japan, it’s the oldest son who has this obligation, which means that these oldest-sons are now having a difficult time finding wives.

I recall that, in medieval England, being childless wasn’t an impediment as long as you weren’t landless; when you were ready to retire, you could invite someone who was landless to move in – you’d live in the hayloft – with specific agreements that he (and his future family) would be required to provide for your needs.

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? According to a lengthy section in Unretirement, this was all hit-or-miss. This was the ideal solution, but often you’d be a burden to your equally-poor adult children, or you’d end up in the poorhouse. 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.

What’s my point with this? Mainly that (I believe) we’re barking up the wrong tree if this is the answer we offer for changing fertility patterns. Prior 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’s course, though, at the same time, the mega-sized families weren’t the norm even then (perhaps in a later post I’ll look this up) due to high infant mortality and the natural spacing of breastfeeding; it also wouldn’t surprise me if the lower nutrition levels, and greater degree of food insecurity, impacted fertility as well.

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