IntensIfIcatIon of famIly relatIons?

This study examines whether and why a process of intensification of family relations took place during the long nineteenth century by investigating Dutch marriage couples’ selection of witnesses. The results show that during the period 1830-1950, lateral kin (siblings, siblings-in-law and cousins) were increasingly selected as marriage witnesses, at the expense of professional witnesses and patronage relations. This ‘lateralization’ process accelerated after 1890, with the take-off of industrialization and urbanization in the Netherlands and continued at least until 1950. The intensification of kin ties was not only related to economic development and social class formation, it was part of a broader cultural process of familiarization, which started among the urban bourgeoisie in the western part of the Netherlands, but spread to other regions and social groups. The development of kinship in Europe between the Middle Ages and the present day has often been discussed in terms of a decline or contraction towards the modern nuclear family. Recent research shows, however, that kinship systems and the significance of specific kin relations have varied over time in highly non-linear ways. Historians have pointed to a number of distinct structural shifts in the configurations of kin across Europe.1 The nineteenth century would have witnessed such a transition. From the middle of the nineteenth century in many European societies, co-residence with family and kin increased, cousin marriages and sibling-set exchange marriages rose to a high point and funerals and weddings became increasingly ritualized family occasions.2 It has been argued that these phenomena testify 1. David Warren Sabean, Simon Teuscher, and Jon Mathieu (eds.), Kinship in Europe. Approaches to long-term development (1300-1900) (New York and Oxford 2007). 2. Steven Ruggles, Prolonged connections. The rise of the extended family in nineteenth-century England and America (Madison 1987); Jan Kok, ‘A life-course approach to co-residence in the Netherlands, 1850-1940’, Continuity and Change 25:2 (2010) 285-312. Leonore Davidoff, ‘Close marriage in the nineteenthand twentieth-century middle strata, in: F. Ebtehaj, tseg_2011-4_definitief.indd 102 5-12-2011 12:06:47 Intensification of family relations? » 103 to an intensification of family and kin relations.3 At least among the higher and middle classes, a new cultural ideal would have spread whereby people consciously attached more importance to family and kin and to the newly invented rituals and practices of family life. During one of the most dynamic periods of economic development, social class formation and demographic transition, it has been argued that Europe became a ‘kinship-hot’ society.4 The intensification of family and kin relations has been explained in several ways. It is understood as a result of the economic salience of kin ties because of changing capitalist productive relations and social class formation,5 the spread of familialism connected to an increasing emphasis on domesticity,6 and the rise of egalitarian peer relations, romantic love, and the inception of a youth phase.7 We do not know, however, whether the observed changes in familial sociability can indeed be related to such shifting preferences or whether they were the consequence of changing opportunities to associate with kin. And if changing preferences were at the root of this shift, what ideals were then actually changing, and why? Who were the ‘innovators’ of these new familial practices, and to what extent did an altered family ideal spread to other social groups, to urban as well as to rural areas? Most research on family relations during the long nineteenth century has been based on qualitative sources such as diaries, letters, and autobiographies.8 These studies, although insightful and inspiring, necessarily focus on the higher and middle classes for which such ego documents are most readily available. Moreover, explanations that account for shifts in familial sociability have traditionally been formulated for the Anglo-Saxon world, although B. Lindley and M. Richards (eds.), Kinships matters (Oxford and Portland 2006) 19-46; Hilde Bras, Frans van Poppel and Kees Mandemakers, ‘Relatives as spouses. Preferences and opportunities for kin marriage in a Western society’, American Journal of Human Biology 21 (2010) 793-804; Jon Mathieu, ‘Kin marriages: Trends and interpretations from the Swiss example’, in: Sabean et al., Kinship in Europe, 211-230. 3. John R. Gillis, A world of their own making. Myth, ritual, and the quest for family values (Cambridge, Massachusets 1996); Sabean et al., Kinship in Europe; Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family fortunes. Men and women of the English middle class 1780-1850 (New York 1986). 4. David Warren Sabean and Simon Teuscher, ‘Kinship in Europe. A new approach to long term development’, in: Sabean et al., Kinship in Europe, 3. 5. Sabean, Kinship in Neckarhausen, 1700-1870 (Cambridge 1998) 449-489; Sabean et al., Kinship in Europe. 6. Gillis, A world of their own making. 7. Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a history. How love conquered marriage (New York 2005); Bart Van de Putte, Partnerkeuze in de 19de eeuw. Klasse, romantiek, geografische afkomst en de vorming van sociale groepen op de huwelijksmarkt (Leuven 2005). 8. See for instance: Davidoff and Hall, Family fortunes. Leonore Davidoff, ‘Kinship as a categorical concept: A case study of nineteenth-century English siblings’, Journal of Social History 39:2 (2005) 411-428. But cf. Ruggles, Prolonged connections. tseg_2011-4_definitief.indd 103 5-12-2011 12:06:47