Widowhood options and strategies in preindustrial northern Europe: Socioeconomic differences in household position of the widowed in 18th and 19th century Finland

• Published in: The history of the family 2002, Vol.7 (1), p.79-99
• Main Author: Moring, Beatrice
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Eighteenth Century; Employment - economics; Employment - history; Employment - legislation & jurisprudence; Employment - psychology; Europe; Family Characteristics - ethnology; Family Relations - ethnology; Family Relations - legislation & jurisprudence; Family studies; Finland; Finland - ethnology; History; History of medicine; History, 18th Century; History, 19th Century; Households; Inheritance and Succession; Intergenerational Relations; Intergenerational Relations - ethnology; Nineteenth Century; Pre-industrial society; Public Assistance - economics; Public Assistance - history; Public Assistance - legislation & jurisprudence; Residence; Rural Women; Social Conditions - economics; Social Conditions - history; Social Conditions - legislation & jurisprudence; Social structure; Sociodemographic Factors; Socioeconomic Factors; Socioeconomic status; Widowhood; Widowhood - economics; Widowhood - ethnology; Widowhood - history; Widowhood - legislation & jurisprudence; Widowhood - psychology; Widows; Women's Health - ethnology; Women's Health - history; Women's Rights - economics; Women's Rights - education; Women's Rights - history; Women's Rights - legislation & jurisprudence
• ISSN: 1081-602X; 1873-5398
• DOI: 10.1016/S1081-602X(01)00097-5

This article reassesses the variety of demographic, social, and economic forces that shaped the residence patterns of widowed and intergenerational relationships in northern Europe in the past. Factors considered include occupational status (landholders and landless), retirement contracts, system of poor relief, age at widowhood, and number of children surviving from previous marriages. Detailed findings are presented for two communities in southwestern Finland. Women in rural western Finland should not be viewed as helpless or dependent. Legally they might never have been the equals of men, but if their lives were affected by a number of restrictions so were those of men. Cooperation with kin and the creation of strategies for maintaining the family land were not unique to southwestern Finland. The stem family indeed had the capacity to act as an institution providing for the maintenance of the old and the young whenever it was supported by stable property. The possibility that this property might pass from the family to nonrelatives provided the motive for detailed retirement contracts. Such contracts did not signal intergenerational tension with the parental generation trying to protect its interests in the face of pressure from the children, as Gaunt [The property and kin relationships of retired farmers in northern and central Europe. In R. Wall (Ed.), Family forms in historic Europe (pp. 249–279). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] has suggested. With the proletarianization of society in the 19th century, the proportion of poor widows increased. These paupers circulated among farms being taken care of for a specific time at each place. However, even in the late 19th century, landless widows usually did not reside alone.