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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
Extract
The sociologist's apparent bias against historical data is founded in the main on the restricted definition of a “fact” which he has come to accept during the past generation. Having found by tedious and pedestrian work that many popular impressions about social relations in our own time are incorrect, he has become sceptical of the possibility of ascertaining the facts about historical populations whose members can no longer be interviewed or observed. But I sense among my fellow sociologists a diminishing parochialism and for this reason I welcome Lawrence Stone's work on marriage patterns among the English nobility in the 16th and 17th centuries. I should like to weigh his conclusions by reference both to general social science principles and to cross-cultural data.
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- Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1961
References
1 For examples close to the present subject matter, it is not popularly known that the divorce rate is higher in the lower social strata, that child marriages and multigeneration households were not common in China, that widows did remarry in both China and Japan, that polygyny is not usual in polygynous societies, that the average age at marriage in Western countries has been dropping for half a century. I discuss several of these matters in my forthcoming book, World Changes in Family Patterns. For some relevant data see Goode, William J., After Divorce (Giencoe, III., 1956), chs. 4 and 5Google Scholar; Hsu, Francis E. K., “The Myth of Chinese Family Size”, American Journal of Sociology (05 1943), pp. 555–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lee, Rose Hum, “Research on the Chinese Family”, American Journal of Sociology, 54 (05 1939), pp. 497–504CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Van der Valk, H., Conservatism in Modern Chinese Family Law (Leiden, 1956)Google Scholar; Taeuber, Irene B., The Population of Japan (Princeton, 1958), ch. 11Google Scholar; and Dorjahn, Vernon, “The Factor of Polygamy in African Demography”, in Bascom, wm. R. and Herskovits, Melville J., Continuity and Change in African Culture (Chicago, 1959Google Scholar).
2 Of course there are differences in the degree to which youngsters are “used”, in different classes and societies.
3 For an analysis of this matter from another perspective, see my “The Theoretical Importance of Love”, American Sociological Review, 24 (02 1959), pp. 38–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Barber, Elinor, The Bourgeoisie of 18th century France (Princeton, 1955CrossRefGoogle Scholar), notes the “going prices” for obtaining a groom of noble birth. All such prices however assume a circle of eligibles.
5 See Dube, S. C., Indian Village (Ithaca, 1955), p. 132Google Scholar; and Mohindar Singh, , The Depressed Classes (Bombay, 1947), p. 158Google Scholar.
6 Scott Matsumoto, Yoshiharu, Contemporary Japan (═ Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, 50, Part 1, 1960Google Scholar), ch. 4, tries to marshal data to show the strength of traditional family patterns in Japan, but the changes are evident, even in his presentation.
7 Marsh, Robert summarizes these data excellently in his forthcoming Mandarin and Executive (Glencoe, III.Google Scholar).
8 I refer here to Tokugawa Japan, and to the nobility. In rural areas there was village endogamy, so that farmer youngsters at least knew one another before marriage. There is a considerable Japanese literature on rural patterns, but I have found no complete description of them in European languages.