The Timing of Marriage in the Transition to Adulthood: Continuity and Change, 1860-1975

All societies are age graded to a degree and must, therefore, make some provision for marking and sanctioning the orderly passage from one stage of life to the next. The patterning of social transitions provides an unusually good site from which to observe regularities of a social system over time. Clearly, the ways in which such transitions are accomplished are not fixed features of any given society but are subject to renegotiation as social and economic conditions change. In turn, the alteration of social schedules may itself be a source of change, bringing about shifts in other social institutions. Such alterations, though sometimes subtle, are a prime subject for inquiry. Remarkably little attention in the literature on family history has been given to the subject of transitions. Most family scholars, attempting to depict change over time, have fixed their interest on shifts in household size, composition, and headship (Hareven 1976). In this excessive preoccupation with the organization of the household, more dynamic processes have been slighted; it is almost as though it were necessary to make the family stand still in order to appreciate that it has changed. Both on an aggregate and an individual level, it is easy to treat events