The Social and Economic Structure of Contemporary Europe609During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
economic restraints created a trend toward marriage at
a later age. Couples did not marry without a steady job
or a plot of land; many waited until they had accumu-
lated savings or property. By the start of the twentieth
century, the average age at which British men married
had passed twenty-six years. For Irish men, the age was
past thirty. Women in both societies married at a
slightly younger age. The trend toward later marriage
continued into the twentieth century, and on the eve of
World War I British men were typically marrying at
twenty-seven or twenty-eight. In the postwar years,
however, that trend began to change, and age at
marriage began to fall. By the 1960s British men were
marrying a full three years younger, at twenty-four or
twenty-five; British women at twenty-two or twenty-
three. In western Europe only 2 or 3 percent or mar-
riages involved teenaged women. In Belarus, however,
26 percent of all marriages involved teenaged girls and
3 percent involved girls fifteen or younger. Poland re-
ported 22 percent and Bulgaria 38 percent of all mar-
riages involved teenaged girls.
If the trend toward younger ages at marriage in
western Europe, and very young marriages in the east,
had appeared in an earlier century, it would have had a
significant impact on European population because the
number of childbearing years within marriage would
have increased. At the start of the twentieth century,
the average woman had fourteen to fifteen childbearing
years within marriage. By the 1980s, however, that
number had fallen below five years, despite younger
marriages. Much of the explanation for this phenome-
non has come from the restriction of childbearing years
through the use of artificial birth control. Another part
of the explanation is that the earlier marriages in the
twentieth century were not necessarily longer mar-
riages because divorce often truncated marriages during
the childbearing years.
In 1900 divorce remained illegal in some countries
(such as Italy and Spain), difficult to obtain in some
(such as Britain), and only recently adopted in others
(such as France). As twentieth-century society accepted
divorce, it witnessed both the spreading legalization of
divorce and the exponential growth of the rate at
which marriages were dissolved (see table 30.10). Even
the most devoutly Catholic states of Europe accepted
divorce by the end of the century. Public support in a
referendum of 1970 led to the legalization of divorce in
Italy, although the law there remains cautious and re-
quires a three-year separation before a divorce is
granted. The Spanish republic introduced divorce in
1932, but it remained legal in Spain only until Franco
revoked it in 1938. Divorce was not reinstituted there
until 1981, but Spain then adopted a liberal divorce
law. The last Western nation to prohibit divorce was
Ireland, where the constitution expressly banned it; a
referendum in 1995—the closest vote in Ireland’s his-
tory—amended the constitution to permit divorce. In
other countries, the divorce rate grew rapidly. By 1990,
30 percent of marriages ended in divorce in France and
Germany, and more than 40 percent were dissolved in
Britain, Denmark, Russia, and Sweden. The trend was
vivid in post–World War II Britain: In 1950, there were
11.5 marriages and 0.4 divorces per one thousand pop-
ulation, a marriage to divorce ratio of 29-to-1; that ratio
steadily fell to 9-to-1 in 1960 and to less than 3-to-1 in- Approximately one-fourth of British divorces
ended marriages before they had lasted five years, and
the majority of divorces ended marriages shorter than
ten years. Divorce thus significantly reduced childbear-
ing to less than fifteen years within marriage.
Childbirth, Birth Control, and Abortion
Despite the pattern of earlier marriages, the birthrate
also fell sharply during the twentieth century (see table
30.11). The German birth rate of 28.2 births per thou-
sand population in 1910 dropped to 11.4 per thousandNumber of Number of Divorces as a
divorces divorces percentage of
Country in 1910 in 1990 marriages (1990)
Britain 701 165,700 41
France 15,125 106,096 31
Germany 13,008 128,729 30
Italy 0 30,778 8
Russia n.a. n.a. 42
Sweden n.a. n.a. 44
Source: Priscilla Robertson, An Experience of Women,(Philadelphia, Pa.:
Temple University Press, 1982), p. 250; Roderick Phillips, Untying the
Knot: A Short History of Divorce(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991), pp. 185–86; The Economist,December 25, 1993; Martha Cronin
and Julia Nasser, “Number of Marriages and Divorces in E.C. Countries,”
Europe(June 1992), p. 4; Information Please Almanac, Atlas, and Year-
book 1994(Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), p. 839.
n.a. Not availableTABLE 30.10Divorce in Europe, 1910–90