Daily Life in the Old Regime343cantly older ages than those common in the twentieth
century.
A study of seventeenth-century marriages in south-
ern England has found that the average age of men at a
first marriage was nearly twenty-seven; their brides av-
eraged 23.6 years of age. Research on England in the
eighteenth century shows that the age at marriage rose
further. In rural Europe, men married at twenty-seven to
twenty-eight years, women at twenty-five to twenty-
six. Many variations were hidden within such averages.
The most notable is the unique situation of firstborn
sons. They would inherit the property, which would
make marriage economically feasible and earlier mar-
riage to perpetuate the family line desirable.
Most people had to postpone marriage until they
could afford it. This typically meant waiting until they
could acquire the property or position that would sup-
port a family. Younger sons often could not marry be-
fore age thirty. The average age at first marriage of all
males among the nobility of Milan was 33.4 years in
the period 1700–49; their wives averaged 21.2 years.
Daughters might not marry until they had accumulated
a dowry—land or money for the well-to-do, household
goods in the lower classes—which would favor the
economic circumstances of a family. Given the con-
straints of a limited life expectancy and a meager in-
come, many people experienced marriage for only a
few years, and others never married. A study of mar-
riage patterns in eighteenth-century England suggests
that 25 percent of the younger sons in well-to-do fami-
lies never married. Another historian has estimated that
fully 10 percent of the population of Europe was com-
prised of unmarried adult women. For the middle class
of Geneva in 1700, 26 percent of the women who died
at over age fifty had never married; the study of the
Milanese nobility found that 35 percent of the women
never married.
The pattern of selecting a mate changed somewhat
during the eighteenth century. Earlier habits in which
parents arranged marriages for children (especially if
property was involved) were changing, and a prospec-
tive couple frequently claimed the right to veto their
parents’ arrangement. Although propertied families of-
ten insisted upon arranged marriages (see document
18.2), it became more common during the eighteenth
century for men and women to select their own part-
ners, contingent upon parental vetoes. Marriages based
upon the interests of the entire family line, and mar-
riages based upon an economic alliance, yielded with
increasing frequency to marriages based upon romantic
attachment. However, marriage contracts remained
common.
After a long scholarly debate, historians now agree
that Western civilization had no single pattern of fam-
ily structure, but a variety of arrangements. The most
common pattern was not a large family, across more
than two generations, living together; instead, the most
frequent arrangement was the nuclear family in which
parents and their children lived together (see illustra-
tion 18.5). Extended families, characterized by coresi-
dence with grandparents or other kin—known by
many names, such as the Ganze Hauzin German tradi-
tion or the zadruga in eastern Europe—were atypical. A
study of British families has found that 70 percent were
comprised of two generations, 24 percent were single-
generation families, and only 6 percent fit the extended
family pattern. Studies of southern and eastern Europe
have found more complex, extended families. In Russia,
60 percent of peasant families fit this multigenerational
pattern; in parts of Italy, 74 percent.
Family size also varied widely. Everywhere except
France (where smaller families first became the norm),
the average number of children born per family usually
ranged between five and seven. Yet such averages hide
many large families. For example, Brissot de Warville, a
leader of the French Revolution, was born to a family of
innkeepers who had seventeen children, seven of whom
survived infancy; Mayer and Gutele Rothschild, whose
sons created the House of Rothschild banks, had
twenty children, ten of whom survived. The founder of
Methodism, John Wesley, was the fifteenth of nineteen
children. Households might also contain other people,
such as servants, apprentices, and lodgers. Studies of
eighteenth-century families in different regions have
found a range between 13 percent and 50 percent of
them containing servants. A survey of London in the
1690s estimated that 20 percent of the population
lodged with nonrelatives.
One of the foremost characteristics of the early
modern family was patriarchal authority. This trait was
diminishing somewhat in western Europe in the eigh-
teenth century, but it remained strong. A father exer-
cised authority over the children; a husband exercised
authority over his wife. A woman vowed to obey her
husband in the wedding ceremony, following the Chris-
tian tradition based on the words of Saint Paul: “Wives,
submit yourself unto your own husbands, as unto the
Lord.” The idea of masculine authority in marriage was
deeply imbedded in popular culture. As a character in a
play by Henry Fielding says to his wife, “Your person is
mine. I bought it lawfully in church.” The civil law in
most countries enforced such patriarchy. In the greatest
summary of English law, Sir William Blackstone’s Com-
mentaries on the Law of England(1765–69), this was stated