The marriage boom: Spanish and Swedish women making sense of marriage during the marriage boom

Abstract

This article analyzes the marriage boom that took place during the middle decades of the twentieth century. The increase in nuptiality is analyzed in Spain and Sweden from a qualitative perspective, and the authors describe how cultural, social, economic and institutional transformations were understood by women who were in their reproductive period during the marriage boom. In-depth interviews were conducted in both places with 51 women born between 1919 and 1951. The authors argue that it is important that the ways in which the factors previously identified as decisive of the marriage boom are studied for their motivating power, and the way they were or were not made important in people's understandings of their marital practices. The results show that despite the differences between the national contexts of Spain and Sweden, three interrelated themes recurred when the interviewed women framed their marital choices: (1) the normalization of marriage as a life event; (2) religion; (3) and education and work life. The results also suggest that the women highlighted norm systems within which their choices and decisions were made, rather than describing individual choices and decisions as stemming from individual preferences and wishes.

Keywords::

• marriage boom
• social constraints
• religion
• education
• working life
• Spain
• Sweden

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the women who generously shared their memories and reflections with us. We also wish to thank Esther Abad Baptista and Angelika Sjöstedt Landén, who helped us to carry out the interviews.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. The need to acknowledge women's role as decision-makers has been emphasized by MacKinnon (1995). The decision to interview only women is partly based on Emeka's (2006) research, who, referring to Bumpass (1973), suggests that fertility decisions are primarily taken by women (see also Janssens, 2007). However, the role of men and masculinity remains an important area of research (Janssens, 2007), and men's family-size desires have been noted to have equal effects on birth rates (Thomson, McDonald, & Bumpass, 1990).

^2. The introduction of the Contraceptive Act has been interpreted as a case in point that birth control was, in fact, beginning to be widely discussed as early as 1910 (Lennerhed, 1994, pp. 29–38).

^3. Research has pointed to a substantial reduction of what has been called ‘the female educational penalty on fertility’ during the Swedish baby boom (Sandström, 2014, p. 137).

^4. In 1939, dismissing women due to pregnancy, childbirth or marriage was prohibited in Sweden.

Additional information

Funding

For María Sánchez-Domínguez, this research was made possible by a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Ageing and Living Conditions program at the Centre for Population Studies, Umeå University, Sweden, and by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain [CS02011-24625]. For Anna Sofia Lundgren, this research was funded by the Ageing and Living Conditions program at the Centre for Population Studies, Umeå University, Sweden.