Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-k7rjm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-05T06:54:48.798Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sociohistorical and Demographic Perspectives on U.S. Remarriage in1910

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Cheryl Elman  and
Andrew S. London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Many scholars have noted the theoretical importance of remarriage intwentieth-century American life (Burch 1995; Cherlin 1998; Furstenberg 1980;Glick 1980; Thornton 1977; Uhlenberg and Chew 1986), yet few historical studieshave examined remarriage in the United States empirically. This gap in theliterature is noteworthy for two reasons. First, the turn of the twentiethcentury seems to have marked a crossover in the remarriage transition of theUnited States, reflecting changes in the pool of persons eligible to remarry.This transition was characterized by decreases in remarriage resulting fromdeclines inmortality and probability of widow(er)hood, followed by increases inremarriage resulting from higher divorce rates. The crossover in the transitionwas likely to have occurred when the pool of eligibles was at or near its nadir.Second, there is ongoing debate about the implications of remarriage forfamilies and individuals (Booth and Dunn 1994), and about the impacts ofremarriage on family functions (Cherlin 1978; Cherlin and Furstenberg 1994). Inthe light of these considerations, we believe it is important to examineremarriage and its consequences in the United States at the turn of the centuryso that we may better understand the ways that remarriage influences family lifeand shapes the life course of persons within families (see London and Elman2001).

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , Fall 2001 , pp. 407 - 447
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2001 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

August, Andrew (1994) “How separate a sphere? Poor women and paid work in late-Victorian London.” Journal of Family History 19: 285–309.Google Scholar
Banner, Lois W. (1971) “On writing women’s history.” In Rabb, T. K. and Rotberg, R. I. (eds.) The Family in History. New York: Harper Torchbooks: 159–70.Google Scholar
Becker, Gary S. (1974) “A theory of marriage:Part 2.” Journal of Political Economy 82: 511–26.Google Scholar
Bideau, Alain (1980) “A demographic and social analysis of widowhood and remarriage: The example of the Castellany of Thoissey-en Dombes, 1670-1840.” Journal of Family History 5: 28–43.Google Scholar
Blau, Peter, and Duncan, Otis Dudley (1967) The American Occupational Structure. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Booth, Alan, and Dunn, Judy, eds. (1994) Stepfamilies? Who Benefits? Who Does Not? New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Burch, Thomas K. (1995) “Theories of Household Formation: Progress and Challenges,” in Imhoff, EvertVan, Kuijsten, Anton, Hooimeijer, Pieter, and Wissen, Leo van (eds.) Household Demography and Household Modeling. New York: Plenum Press.Google Scholar
Burch, Thomas K. (1990) “Remarriage of older Canadians: Description and interpretation.” Research on Aging 12: 546–59.Google Scholar
Cherlin, Andrew J. (1978) “Remarriage as an incomplete institution.” American Journal of Sociology 84: 634–50.Google Scholar
Cherlin, Andrew J. (1998) Public and Private Families. 2d edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Coombs, Jan (1993) “Frontier patterns of marriage, family, and ethnicity: Central Wisconsin in the 1880s.” Journal of Family History 18: 265–82.Google Scholar
Degler, Carl (1980) At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Demos, John (1970) A little commonwealth:Family Life in Plymouth Colony. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dupâquier, J., Hélin, E., Laslett, P., Livi-Bacci, M.,and Sogner, S. (1981) Marriage and Remarriage in Populations of the Past. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Elman, Cheryl (1998) “Household structure and economic change at the turn of the twentieth century.” Journal of Family History, 23: 417–40.Google Scholar
Elman, Cheryl, and Uhlenberg, Peter (1995) “Early-twentieth-century coresidence: Elderly U.S. women and their children.” Population Studies 49: 501–17.Google Scholar
Furstenberg, Frank F. (1980) “Reflections on remarriage: Introduction to Journal of Family Issues special issue on remarriage.” Journal of Family Issues 1: 443–53.Google Scholar
Glick, Paul C. (1980) “Remarriage: Some recent changes and trends.” Journal of Family Issues 1: 455–78.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia (1981) “Family strategies and the family economy in the late nineteenth century: The role of secondary workers,” in Hershberg, T. (ed.) Philadelphia: Work, Space,Family, and Group Experience in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press: 2–310.Google Scholar
Gratton, Brian (1986) Urban Elders. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Griffith, J. D. (1980) “Economy, family, and remarriage: Theory of remarriage and application to preindustrial England.” Journal of Family Issues 1: 479–96.Google Scholar
Grigg, S. (1977) “Toward a theory of remarriage: A case study of Newburyport at the beginning of the nineteenth century.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 8: 183–220.Google Scholar
Guest, Avery, Landale, Nancy, and McCann, James (1989) “Intergenerational occupational mobility in the late-nineteenth-century United States.” Social Forces 68: 351–78.Google Scholar
Guttman, Herbert G. (1976) The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Haber, Carole, and Gratton, Brian (1993) Old Age and the Search for Security. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Hareven, Tamara (1982) Family Time and Industrial Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hareven, Tamara, and Uhlenberg, Peter (1995) “Transition to widowhood and family support systems in the twentieth century, Northeast U.S.,” in Kertzer, David I. and Laslett, Peter (eds.) Aging in the Past: Demography, Society, and Old Age.Berkeley: University of California Press: 273–99.Google Scholar
Kertzer, David (1991) “Household history and sociological theory.” Annual Review of Sociology 17: 155–79.Google Scholar
Kertzer, David, and Karweit, Nancy (1995) “The impact of widowhood in nineteenth-century Italy,” in Kertzer, David I. and Laslett, Peter (eds.) Aging in the Past: Demography, Society, and Old Age. Berkeley: University of California Press: 229–48Google Scholar
King, Miriam, and Ruggles, Steven (1990) “American immigration, fertility, and race suicide at the turn of the century.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 20: 347–69.Google Scholar
Kleinberg, S. J. (1989) The Shadow of the Mills. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Knodel, John, and Lynch, Katherine A. (1985) “The decline of remarriage: Evidence from German village populations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” Journal of Family History 10: 34–59.Google Scholar
Kobrin, Frances (1976) “The primary individual and the family: Changes in living arrangements in the United States since 1940.” Journal of Marriage and the Family, May: 233–39.Google Scholar
Koo, Helen P., and Suchindran, C. M. (1980) “ Effects of children on women's remarriage prospects.” Journal of Family Issues 1: 497–515.Google Scholar
Kramarow, Ellen A. (1995a) “A note on remarriage reporting in the 1910 U.S. Census.” Journal of Family History 20: 347–64.Google Scholar
Kramarow, Ellen A. (1995b). “Living alone among the elderly in the United States: Historical perspectives on household change.” Demography 32: 335–52.Google Scholar
Landale, Nancy, and Tolnay, Stewart E. (1991) “Group differences in economic opportunity and the timing of marriage.” American Sociological Review 56: 33–45.Google Scholar
Laslett, Peter (1971) The World We Have Lost. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.Google Scholar
London, Andrew S., and Elman, Cheryl (2001). “The influence of remarriage on the racial difference in mother-only families in 1910.” Demography 38: 283–97.Google Scholar
Manfra, Jo Ann, and Dykstra, Robert (1985) “Serial marriage and the origins of the black stepfamily: The Rowantry evidence.” Journal of American History 72: 18–44.Google Scholar
McDaniel, Antonio (1994) “Historical racial differences in living arrangements of children.” Journal of Family History 19: 57–77.Google Scholar
Miller, Andrew T., Morgan, S. P., and McDaniel, Antonio (1994) “Under the same roof: Family and household structure,” in Watkins, S. C. (ed.) After Ellis Island: Newcomers and Natives in the 1910 Census. New York: Russell Sage Foundation: 125–73.Google Scholar
Modell, John (1978) “Patterns of consumption, acculturation, and family income strategy in late-nineteenth-century America,” in Hareven, T. and Vinovskis, M. (eds.) Family and Population in Nineteenth-Century America. Princeton:Princeton University Press: 206–44.Google Scholar
Moen, Phyllis, and Wethington, Elaine (1992) “The concept of family adaptive strategies.” Annual Review of Sociology 18: 233–51.Google Scholar
Morgan, S. Philip, McDaniel, Antonio, Miller, Andrew, and Preston, Samuel H. (1993) “Racial differences in household and family structure at the turn of the century.” American Journal of Sociology 98: 798–828.Google Scholar
Morrison, Donna R., and Ritualo, Amy (2000) “Routes to children’s economic recovery after divorce: Are cohabitation and remarriage equivalent?” American Sociological Review 65: 560–80.Google Scholar
Pagnini, Deanna, and Morgan, S. Philip (1990) “Intermarriage and social distance among U.S. immigrants at the turn of the century.” American Journal of Sociology 96: 405–32.Google Scholar
Pagnini, Deanna, and Morgan, S. Philip (1996) “Oral history on racial differences in marriage and childbearing.” American Journal of Sociology 101: 1694–1718.Google Scholar
Pelling, Margaret (1991) “Old age,poverty, and disability in early modern Norwich: Work, remarriage, and other expedients,” in Smith, M. P. and Smith, R. M. (eds.) Life, Death,and the Elderly. London: Routledge: 74–101.Google Scholar
Preston, Samuel H., and McDonald, John (1979) “The incidence of divorce within cohorts of American marriages contracted since the Civil War.” Demography 16: 1–25.Google Scholar
Preston, Samuel H., Lim, S., and Morgan, Philip P. (1992). “African American marriage in 1910: Beneath the surface of census data.” Demography 29: 1–15.Google Scholar
Riley, Glenda (1991) Divorce: An American Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rotella, Elyce, and Alter, George (1993) “Working-class debt in the late-nineteenth-century United States.” Journal of Family History 18: 111–34.Google Scholar
Ruggles, Steven (1987) Prolonged Connections. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Ruggles, Steven, and Sobek, Matthew (1997) Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 2.0 .Minneapolis: Historical Census Projects, University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Sassler, Sharon (1993) “Factors affecting coresidence with parents in 1910.” Paper presented at the 1993 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.Google Scholar
Schlissel, Lillian (1992) Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey. New York: Schocken Books.Google Scholar
Smith, Daniel S. (1995) “The demography of widowhood in preindustrial New Hampshire,” in Kertzer, David I. and Laslett, Peter (eds.) Aging in the Past: Demography, Society, and Old Age. Berkeley: University of California Press: 249–72.Google Scholar
Stack, Carol B. (1974) All Our Kin. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Thornton, Arland (1977) “Decomposing the re-marriage process.” Population Studies 31: 383–92.Google Scholar
Tolnay, Stewart (1997) “The Great Migration and changes to the northern black family, 1940-1990.” Social Forces 75: 1213–37.Google Scholar
Uhlenberg, Peter, and Chew, Kenneth S. Y. (1986) “ The changing place of remarriage in the life course.” Current Perspectives in Aging andthe Life Cycle 2 : 23–52Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1910) Instructions to Enumerators, Thirteenth Census of the United States. Washington,DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
van Poppel, Frans (1995) “Widows, widowers, and remarriage in the nineteenth-century Netherlands.” Population Studies 49: 421–41.Google Scholar
Wall, Richard (1995a) “Historical development of the household in Europe,” in Imhoff, Evert van, Kuijsten, Anton, Hooimeijer, Pieter, and Wissen, Leo van (eds.) Household Demography and Household Modeling. New York: Plenum Press: 19–52.Google Scholar
Wall, Richard (1995b) “Elderly persons and members of their households in England and Wales from preindustrial times to the present,” in Kertzer, David I. and Laslett, Peter (eds.) Aging in the Past: Demography Society, and Old Age. Berkeley: University of California Press: 81–106.Google Scholar
Watkins, Susan C. (1994) “Background:About the 1910 Census,” in Watkins, Susan C. (ed.) After Ellis Island: Newcomers and Natives in the 1910 Census. New York: Russell Sage Foundation: 11–34.Google Scholar
White, Lynn (1994) “Coresidence and leaving home: Young adults and their parents.” Annual Review of Sociology 20: 81–102.Google Scholar
White, Michael, Dymowski, Robert, and Wang, Shilian (1994) “Ethnic neighborhoods and ethnic myths: An examination of residential segregation in 1910,” in Watkins, Susan C. (ed.) After Ellis Island: Newcomers and Natives in the 1910 Census.New York: Russell Sage Foundation: 175–208.Google Scholar
Wright, S. J. (1991) “The elderly and the bereaved in eighteenth-century Ludlow,” in Margaret Pelling and Smith, R. M. (eds.) Life, Death, and the Elderly. London: Routledge: 102–33.Google Scholar
Wyatt-Brown, Bertram (1982) Southern Honor:Ethics and Behavior in the Old South. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar