The stem family and industrialization in Catalonia (1900–1936)

Abstract

The stem family was the predominant family in Catalonia in all social groups. Proto-industrialization took place in a context in which this type of family prevailed. In many areas, the man worked in the fields and women and other family members were engaged in manual spinning. In other cases, they were weavers who also farmed. With the advent of factories, there was a transfer of this well-trained labour supply to the factories. The stem family (consisting of at least two generations, unmarried children, and numerous women) allowed the circulation of domestic work between women within the same family and the consolidation of an abundant labour supply and cheap labour that allowed for the feminization of the textile industry with successive technological changes. Female labour trajectories, therefore, were not affected by marriage or motherhood, because the family had enough older women to deal with the domestic work of young mothers. Hence, the family type, and not the family life cycle is the (independent) variable that best explains the female labour supply.

Keywords:

• Female labour-force participation
• female activity rates
• stem family
• industrialization
• Spanish history
• breadwinner model
• family economies

Notes

1. Theories and empirical research and debates on the male-breadwinner model (Horrell & Humphries, 1995; Scott & Tilly, 1975) have been recently renewed on alternative sources and methods (Garret, 2007; Humphries & Sarasúa, 2012; Mckay, 2007; Saito, 2007; Shaw-Taylor, 2007; Van Nederveen Meerkerk & Schmidt, 2012). In Spain see Gálvez (2000); Muñoz Abeledo (2012), Pérez-Fuentes (2013); Borderías (2012, 2013).

2. The problem of under-registration of female activity is common to National Censuses of Populations in other countries (Higgs, 1987; Horrell & Humphries, 1995; Humphries & Sarasúa, 2012; Nyberg, 1994).

3. In some Catalonian areas of urban industrialization, such as Sabadell (Camps Cura, 1995), Vilassar (Llonch, 1993), Esparraguera (Nicolau, 1983), older women workers already retired from the same company, or neighbours, played an important role in the care of the children of young mothers. Even without co-residence in the same household, it was frequent for generations of the same family or collateral relatives to be neighbours, which also favoured this exchange of services (Borderías, 1993). In England in areas with a predominance of nuclear families, the important role played by older workers to sustain the work of younger mothers with children has also been noted (Anderson, 2007, p. 203; Hewitt, 1958, pp. 128–132). In other countries, the dedication of teenage daughters to the care of younger siblings has been pointed out (Duprée, 2007, pp. 138–163 ; Mason, Vinovskis, & Hareven, 1978, p. 202). In Catalonia, nurseries created by companies came late and were an exception. Municipal nurseries were not developed until well into the twentieth century.

4. On the role of the family as an agent for social change, see Medick: ‘If one considers the producing family of the rural-industrial lower classes from this point of view, it appears as the essential agent in the growth of emergent capitalism. The family functioned objectively as an internal engine of growth in the process of proto-industrial expansion precisely because subjectively it remained tied to the norms and rules of behaviour of the traditional familial subsistence economy’ (Medick, 1976, pp. 296–297).

5. For Mosk, the characteristics of the agrarian and proto-industrial production systems are the most relevant, although not the only, factor behind the stem family type: ‘In my opinion, the demand for labour is one of the most important determinants of household structure in Japan because it has strongly affected fertility and hence the natural rate of increase (thereby indirectly shaping household structure) in addition to directly shaping household composition through the outflow of family members to external locales where there are employment opportunities’ (Mosk, 1995, p. 108).

6. The Labour Census covers the workers who were employed by others, but not those who are self-employed or the casual work that existed in a town. The Enumerators’ Books usually cover 100% of male activity and very little female activity, except that which implies residency (such as that of a maid or servant). The correction allows, above all, for the rate of female activity to be improved in places where the work is wage-based, as occurred in the textile industry. The results of the correction of the Enumerators’ Books of inhabitants based on the data of the Labour Censuses were published in Borderías (2012, 2013). We use the corrected database that emerged from that exercise. This correction has not been performed on the Enumerators’ Books of 1936 produced by the Catalonian Government, which are of excellent quality and cover wage-work in a highly detailed manner.

7. Information about female occupation in the Enumerators’ Books has been partially corrected through nominal cross-reference with information contained in the Labour Censuses which list only women working in manufacturing.

8. In the twentieth century many of the traditional family norms were in the process of being dissolved (such as for example that of the sole heir being the first male son) but it was habitual practice that one of the sons (it did not have to be the first-born) took charge of the house with the obligation of caring for his parents.

9. We use the methodology developed by Laslett (Laslett, 1972, 1983; Laslett & Wall, 1972). When the percentages of nuclear families stand below 70%, and the extended and the complex families stand at around 30%, even though the majority of the households consist of a nuclear family, the logic of the life cycle is the stem logic. Families are nuclear because they cannot be stem families demographically. In the family cycle there are certain times when the family has a nuclear structure (when the grandparents have died and the new heir remains with small children), but is waiting to be converted into a stem family. The data for Catalonia in these Enumerators’ Books coincide with the data that we have for the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries (Ferrer Alòs, 2008) and with those for other zones with similar family systems.

10. This ratio indicates which gender is predominant in the population. The total number of men is calculated over the total number of women and it gives a rate over 100 (when there are more men) or it gives a rate under 100 (when there are more women).

11. We have used the method of L. Henry (Henry, 1983) to calculate permanent celibacy (people still single at the age of 50 years) and the marriage ages given in the Enumerators’ Books. Celibacy rates are given as per-1000.

12. It would be necessary further to analyse wages and attempt to understand whether factory work was a result of poverty or a strategy for accumulating resources and better attaining goods and services. Investigations into the relationship between wages and female labour in different countries have shown that the relationship is far from linear. In different European textile areas, characterized by high female labour demand, high rates of female labour-force participation coexisted with high male wages (Borderías, 2004; Horrell & Humphries, 1995; Van den Eeckhout, 1993 and Van den Eeckhout and Schmidt, 2012). It is also necessary to take into account cultural factors, as shown by some studies on the homes of craft workers in which low income among heads of families coincided with low rates of labour-force participation among their wives (Horrell and Humphries, 1995; Van den Eeckhout, 1993).