Marriage and the Family

What really went on in the 18th century

Extended and Nuclear Families (lets get the boring stuff out of the way)

• In African and Asian families when you got married you moved into one of the parents house

• This was a rarity in western Europe • Most people did not marry young • The average age to get married was 27 or older• One could not marry until they could support

themselves economically

Work away from home ( we’re almost there…)

• People worked with their families until they could support themselves elsewhere

• Boys were often apprenticed to a trade ( sorry, no joke for this one)

• Girls left home at an early age, and often became servants (See picture)

• Girls often were pray to seducers and sexual attack, rape is bad Mmmkay

Premarital Sex• Less than 1% of babies born were

born out of wedlock • The community took control over

sexual encounters, for example, unwed mothers were shunned from community

• The community would parade and gang up on the person that had an unplanned child

• They would sit them up on a donkey facing backwards, and make them hold up the donkey’s tail You mean we can

have sex before marriage?

Contraceptives• There were not many

illegitimate children due to the effects of contraceptives

• Some forms of contraceptives included;

• Coitus Interruptus, the pull out method

• The SHEATH, which was a leather condom

It doesn’t always work, but condoms just don’t feel natural

Illegitimacy and New patterns of marriage

• Vocab: Illegitimacy Explosion, illegitimate children rose from 2% from 1750, to about 25% in 1850, which means that they got lazy with their contraceptives

• Fewer men married the women that they were impregnating

• Men tricked women into having sex by saying that they would marry them

• This continued until the 19th century I don’t usually have

sex, but when I do I do it unplanned.

Fun Facts • Using Coitus Interruptus

correctly will lead to pregnancy in only four out of one-hundred women.

• Using it incorrectly will lead to twenty-eight pregnancies out of one-hundred.

• Still Used by many today because of effectiveness.

So who wants to

get married?(We Promise!)