Between Sex and Power: Family in the World,1900-2000
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Between Sex and Power The institution of the family changed hugely during the course of the twentieth century. In this major new work Göran Therborn provides a global history and sociology of the family as an institution, and of politics within the family, focusing on three dimensions of family relations: on the rights and powers of fathers and husbands; on marriage, cohabitation and extra-marital sexuality; and on fertility and birth control. Therborn’s empirical analysis uses a multi- disciplinary approach to show how the major family systems of the world have been formed and developed. His truly global scope covers the family in: • Europe and the New World • West Asia and North Africa • South and East Asia • Sub-Saharan Africa • Creole America and Southeast Asia. Therborn concludes by assessing what changes the family might see during the next century. This book will be essential reading for anybody with an interest in either the sociology or the history of the family. Göran Therborn is Director of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences and University Professor of Sociology at Uppsala University. International Library of Sociology Founded by Karl Mannheim Editor: John Urry Lancaster University Between Sex and Power Family in the world, 1900–2000 Göran Therborn First published 2004 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 2004 Göran Therborn All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Therborn, Göran, 1941– Between sex and power: family in the world, 1900–2000 / Göran Therborn. p. cm. – (International library of sociology) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Family–History–20th century. 2. Family– Cross-cultural studies. 3. Patriarchy–History–20th century. 4. Marriage–History–20th century. 5. Sex–Social aspects. 6. Fertility, Human–Social aspects. I. Title. II. Series. HQ518.T47 2004 306.85´09´04–de22 2003017723 ISBN 0-203-64329-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-67007-8 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–30077–0 (hbk) ISBN 0–415–30078–9 (pbk) Contents List of illustrations ix Preface xi Introduction: sex, power and families of the world 1 PART I Patriarchy: its exits and closures 13 1 Modernities and family systems: patriarchy around 1900 17 Collisions and continuities in Europe 20 At the frontier: gender governance of European settlement 29 The duality of Creole society: colonial and Indo- and Afro-American families after the upheavals 34 Colonial thrusts 37 Imperial threats 56 The world of patriarchy around 1900 70 2 A long night’s journey into dawn 73 Prologue: when the earth moved: three moments of change 73 Act 1: reform, revolution or neither 79 Act 2: the constitutional moment 92 Act 3: ‘1968’ and feminist globalization 99 3 The patriarchal burden of the twenty-first century 107 South Asian marriage arrangements 108 Backlash in West Asia and North Africa 112 African traditions and their ruination 116 East Asian changes and recidivism 119 vi Contents Southeast Asian hesitations 123 Euro-American post-patriarchy: inequality 126 Patriarchy into the twenty-first century 129 PART II Marriage and mutations of the socio-sexual order 131 Meanings of marriage 131 4 Sex and marriage in 1900 137 Fin-de-siècle scenes 137 The rule of universal marriage 139 The peculiarities of Western (European) marriage 144 The Creole Americas and their non-marriage 156 The global significance of marriage in 1900 160 5 Marital trends of the twentieth century 162 The rise of the Western honeymoon 162 Asian ageing 172 African specificity through colonialism and national crises 177 The world of marriage in 2000 181 The great disruption – and the smaller ones 187 6 The return of cohabitation and the sexual revolution 192 Boundaries blurred: marriage and non-marriage 192 The sexual revolution 207 From outlaw to married citizen: a note on rights to homosexuality 223 PART III Couples, babies and states 227 7 Fertility decline and political natalism 229 The world’s demographic transition, 1750–2050 229 Family systems and their fertility 239 Damming a tide: governmental birth promotion 251 8 The politics and sociology of birth control 260 Family systems and the second wave of fertility control 260 Assessing the waves: Europe and the Third World 265 The political demography of family planning 271 Moving against oneself? 284 Summing up: the routes to fertility decline – convergent or divergent? 289 Contents vii Conclusions: the century gone, the century coming 295 The global dynamics of family institutional change 295 Times coming 306 Appendix: a note on primary sources 316 Notes 318 Bibliography 323 Index 365 viii Contents Chapter Title ix Illustrations Figure 7.1 A framework for understanding fertility control 243 Tables 3.1 Types of sexual unions in Nigeria, 1998 117 3.2 Who decides a wife’s visit to relatives, 2000? 118 3.3 Women’s average income relative to men’s in post-patriarchal societies, 2000 128 4.1 Eastern and Western European marriage systems c. 1900 145 4.2 Female age at first marriage and percentage of women never married in North America, Oceania and Britain around 1900 147 4.3 The percentage of children born out of wedlock among live births in Europe, and in ex-British settlements, 1896–1900 149 5.1 Peaks of Western European female celibacy 162 5.2 Years of peak numbers marrying in Western Europe since 1815 164 5.3 Percentage married among American women aged 20–24, 1900–2000 166 5.4 East–West European marriages in 1985 168 5.5 Sexual unions in Mexico in 1930 and 1970 169 5.6 Sexual unions in Jamaica, 1975–76 171 5.7 Extra-marital births in Uruguay, 1900–2000 172 5.8 Married girls in Iran aged 15–19, 1976–96 176 5.9 African polygyny around 2000 178 5.10 The household structure of the black population of South Africa, 1996 179 5.11 Children aged 10–14 in African households with both parents, and with no parent present, 1995–2000 180 5.12 The urban population of sub-Saharan Africa, 1900–2000 181 5.13 Western European women never married by the age of 45–49, c. 1900 and 2000 182 5.14 Female mean age at first marriage in Europe in 2000, east and west of the Trieste–St Petersburg line 183 5.15 Marriage propensities in Africa and Asia, 1990–2000 184 x Illustrations 5.16 Marital status of women aged 35–39 in Creole America and some other countries for comparison 186 5.17 Children living with both parents until the age of 16: Swedish birth cohorts, 1900–83 187 5.18 Crude divorce rates around the world, 1950–99 190 5.19 Total divorce rates in Europe, 1995–2000 191 6.1 Trajectories of extra-marital births in Europe, North America and Oceania, 1960–2000 199 6.2 Mother’s partnership situation at first birth in Europe and the Western New World in the 1990s 201 6.3 Family status of women in the EU, 1996 203 6.4 Forms of sexual union in Brazil, 1960–2000 204 6.5 Cohabitation in Hispanic America, c. 1980 and 2000 205 6.6 Periods of female pre-marital sex: Europe, the USA and New Zealand in the mid-1990s 209 6.7 Teenage African women in the 1990s and their sexual experience 213 6.8 Current African sexual orders 214 6.9 Girls married by age 18 and 20 and female median age at marriage in South Asia and in some other countries of young marriage and strict sexual control 216 6.10 Teenage Latin American women in the 1990s and their sexual experience 219 7.1 Total and marital fertility rates in the Western European family system around 1900 230 7.2 Total and marital fertility rates outside the Western European family around 1900 and early twentieth century 231 7.3 The demographic shift: fertility decline in Third World countries, 1965–80 237 7.4 The timing of the two-to-three child norm worldwide 238 7.5 Fertility in Communist and in Capitalist Europe, 1951–85 258 8.1 Desired number of children in family regions of the world, mid- to late 1970s 264 8.2 Timing of extra-European post-World War II fertility decline by geocultural family system 266 8.3 Total fertility rates in the developed world, 1965–2000 285 8.4 Completed fertility in Europe by female birth cohorts 288 8.5 Expected number of children by young European and American women 289 8.6 Ethnic fertility in women in the USA, 1999 289 8.7 Fertility in major countries or regions of the world, 1896/1900–1995/2000 293 9.1 Regional population prospects of the world, 2000–50 309 Box 8.1 World routes of fertility decline 290–91 Preface When you read this, at least eight years will have passed since my friend and distinguished colleague Frank Castles, then at the Australian National University, asked me to write a book on the institution of the family in the world from 1901 to 2001.