Exit, voice, and loyalty: Parent–child relations in the proto-industrial household economy (Zürich, 17th–18th centuries)

Abstract

This article formulates a simple model of parent–child interest conflicts. Based on a simple model of a household economy with a production or wage income function, a labor maintenance cost function, and an externally given wage rate, it discusses potential conflicts over the appropriation of the product of family members' labor in terms of the trilogy of exit, voice, and loyalty. The model is then explored by using household lists that provide detailed information on the economic activity of individuals. Many young proto-industrial workers used the threat of exiting their parents' household to keep much of their earnings through the Rast custom (boarding allowance). The threat of leaving operated well among the middle and lower classes of proto-industrial society, but it is unclear whether it also worked for the daughters of farmers who apparently left home much earlier than their brothers. The discourse of contemporaries about the Rast custom are considered and interpreted as a counterstrategy against the exit threat in which the elders fostered a sense of loyalty among the young.

Keywords:

• Trilogy of exit, voice, and loyalty
• Rast custom
• Proto-industrial society

Notes

1 The following conclusions derive from a rather lengthy analysis containing some 30 tables (Pfister, 1992b, pp. 316–364), a summary of which will be presented in this article rather than isolated evidence.

2 All two-way effects and the single possible three-way interaction effect for a three-dimensional contingency table were tested. Each line provides for a statistical test of the association between the variables denoted by their initials in the first column. Both the tests for the marginal (simple, uncontrolled) association as well as for the partial association (controlled by the other two-way relationships in the table) are presented. For an explanation of the method, see Brown (1976).

3 This ranking is derived from an impressionist ranking of the five parishes with respect to the labor intensity of agriculture and of the structure of the proto-industrial sector (predominance of weaving versus spinning) as well as the level of proto-industrial wages at the moment when a listing was established; cf. Pfister (1992b, p. 387 et passim).

4 This can be concluded from analyses of the labor division between spouses and the evolution of work roles over the early stages of the life cycle; cf. Pfister (1992b, pp. 328–330).

5 Wages of a maidservant was usually half those of a male farmhand in 18th-century Zürich; cf. StAZ AAb 1.9, B IX 46–48; Wyss (1796, pp. 111–113).

6 Nevertheless, Pfister (1989, p. 103) has shown that the group of married people aged 20–29 was particularly high in Oetwil. Because the group of unmarried adult offspring living in parental households was above average among the lower classes (cf. Table 2c), the age at marriage among farmers must have been low by comparison.

7 Households deeply involved in textile production frequently recorded more young couples at the beginning of the family cycle as well as households headed by widows. Both types of households generally displayed household sizes smaller than the average population.