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  • Small families?

    Hi,
    I am an only child and I've tried to remember our neighborhood all those years ago. I think that there was another 'only', and two couples without children, but the rest of the households had 2 or 3 or more childen
    Looking at my extended family who married in the 1920s to mid 1950s, I have quite a few with no offspring, and lots with only one. I know that there can be medical reasons; I have considered emigration, but I am now finding deaths for the older generation in the same area in which they were born. I'm going on name and age and ignoring all the Fred Smiths.
    My query is - was this an era when there were smaller families in general, or was it that my lot were a bit odd?

    Any ideas?

    As an afterthought, we Colonials may have had more sustenace than those in the UK, thereby breeding better.

    SS

  • #2
    Hi SS

    it may be purely down to the 'war years' where the men we off doing their duty and the women were left to work etc..

    I have found some 'other' information on 'birth control'

    the link is here
    Julie
    They're coming to take me away haha hee hee..........

    .......I find dead people

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    • #3
      WWI is notorious for leaving girls without their sweethearts, and never marrying because of it. in general though, they seem to have had less children during the 20th century.

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      • #4
        Wot Julie said & people may have put off having children (in as far as that was possible with birth control) because of the wars

        No, I reckon you Colonials probably give way to your baser instincts....we were probably all playing chess & discussing philosophy.

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        • #5
          And, of course, wot kylejustin said (nipped in while I was posting)

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          • #6
            Higher aspirations! People had probably always known you could do more for your two children than you could for your twelve children, but at last the general public had the means to control their fertility and saw the advantages of doing so.

            Both wars saw a baby boom when it was all over. This wasn't just a case of men celebrating their return home, lol, it was more the feeling that it was now safe to have children whereas during the war it wasn't.

            OC

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            • #7
              Thanks all,

              I could understand 1938 to 1948 being lean years, but before and after seemed odd to me.
              I'll just accept that they were a lazy lot!

              SS

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              • #8
                Oh, just reminded me of the Depression in the 1920s. Those who could, would probably have limited their families.

                OC

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                • #9
                  Thanks again - 2 crises here have kept me very busy.
                  (Nice to meet up with you again OCH - even if you once said that Crowan in Cornwall was a 'hamlet'. The cheek of it.)
                  We had a depression here too, the war took a disproportionate number of our population, but we seemed to have had more children then.
                  A relatively unknown fact is that our food rationing in NZ lasted longer than in the UK even though we were producing it, because we were exporting it. Not a gripe - just a comment. Peace to all.
                  SS

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                  • #10
                    I have noticed that around the turn of the century (19th into 20th) a number of my families had only one or two children and that continued through the 20th century. However, my Chaplins had only two in the 1760s and they both had only two also (in one case there was a long gap from marriage to first born, but only the two were named in the will, so no others survived, even if I cannot find them).

                    Then there is my great grandfather was born in 1860, one of three children born over 20 years, which seems very odd, unless his father was away a lot for work or did not get on very well with his wife (he was a builder, so may have had to travel for work perhaps).
                    Diane
                    Sydney Australia
                    Avatar: Reuben Edward Page and Lilly Mary Anne Dawson

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                    • #11
                      Fertility problems too, for some people. My own children are spaced four and nine years apart - and that was not by choice!

                      OC

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