Abstract
This paper uses the links between children born between 1800 and 1919 and their parents in 12 rural Aragonese villages to analyze the role of fathers in the survival, health, and lifespan of children. The researchers compared the effect of being fatherless (or being motherless) to having both parents alive. The results show that being fatherless increased the probability of death during childhood. Moreover, fatherlessness reduced the average age of death as an adult, a child’s average height, the probability that a child is literate, the child’s socioeconomic status, and the individual’s age at marriage.
Keywords
“De tal palo, tal astilla” is a well-known Spanish saying concerning the resemblance of children to their parents, both physically and behaviorally. This resemblance is a consequence of both genetics and the time that parents invest in their children’s upbringing. It is widely believed that mothers are essential for the survival and health of their children. 1 However, researchers have tended to discuss the role of fathers. 2 When children survive to adulthood, parents play a fundamental sociological role in shaping the living conditions that their children experience as adults. 3 The loss of a parent can affect the age at which a child will die. In their study on the survival of African Americans, Preston et al. found that having both parents alive during a person’s childhood favors a lifespan over eighty-five years. 4 Thus, there are familial and genetic factors that affect an individual’s age at death. On the one hand, parents transmit genetic benefits (or liabilities) linked to longevity to their children. Older individuals tend to have longer-lived parents and ancestors. 5 On the other hand, the resources and care provided to children during their first years of life affect their health in adult life; childhood nutrition, housing, and risk of childhood illness all materially affect people later in life. 6 Furthermore, the death of a parent at a crucial time in a child’s life may have potentially lasting health effects on that child. The economic, social, and epidemiological context also affects an individual’s health and lifespan. 7 In addition to living conditions, the attitude of orphaned children and their behavior in relation to health tend to differ from those of children with living parents. Some studies have indicated a connection between the death of one’s parents and life expectancy. 8 On average, young people who have experienced the death of a parent expect to live shorter lives than their peers; they have poorer health habits and are more likely to smoke. 9 These unhealthy habits can shorten their lives. The presence of stepparents may mitigate the psychological and sociological consequences of the death of a parent. 10 Individuals who lose a parent during childhood also tend to have greater health problems, including excessive alcohol consumption. 11
This article aims to improve the understanding of how the death of a father during childhood affects that child’s living conditions, the course of their lives, and their age at death. More specifically, the researchers investigate the effects of being fatherless in the very long term. Therefore, this article contributes to the debate over how a child’s living conditions and socioeconomic situation in childhood and adolescence affect his or her survival, longevity, behavior, and quality of life. 12 The findings of this study will increase the body of knowledge regarding the factors (including genetic, environmental, and socioeconomic issues) that influence the health of the elderly. In this study, we consider the term “orphans” (i.e., being in the state of orphanhood) as including all children who were without one of their parents. This study analyses boys and girls separately and differentiates between children who are fatherless, motherless, or whose parents are both alive on their fifteenth birthday (the age at which the majority of individuals in the study had entered in the labor market). This analysis used a sample of individuals who lived in 12 Spanish villages and who were born between 1800 and 1919. Many of their descendants born in the decades following 1919 are still alive, so the results of this study instead provide insights regarding the quality of life and survival of these elderly people. The initial hypothesis is that the death of a parent in a child’s first months of life affects that child’s health and behavior during adulthood and age at death. According to the hypothesis, the older a child is at the time of his or her parent’s death, the less pronounced these effects are.
This article considers a fairly lengthy of period of time, as it focuses on individuals born between 1800 and 1919 and who died between 1800 and 2019 in a rural agricultural context. The majority of individuals in the study area were engaged in agricultural work, mainly cereal and wine production, throughout the entire period. In this context, census or parish records associate men with agricultural production, while women are indicated as having engaged in domestic work and to not have worked outside the home. 13 However, the reality was different, with women being a fundamental workforce for agricultural tasks. Despite this involvement in the workforce, especially in the case of female day laborers, women had fewer job opportunities than male day laborers. 14 Women were hired during the periods of high agrarian workload; in many cases, they did not exhibit the same job stability as did men. The situation of children and young men was also worse than that of adult men. 15 Their wages were lower, even for similar tasks, and they had fewer job opportunities. The situation was even worse for younger children, since, in periods of need, they were required to work in the fields, which promoted absenteeism from school, even though the wages paid were very low. This negative picture was exacerbated by the agricultural crisis that began in the 1880s and continued during the following decades. The labor market in rural areas became even tighter for women and young people than in the previous decades. A significant portion of young people were forced to migrate to the cities in search of job opportunities. In Aragon (the region where the study area is located), the agrarian crisis had a notorious impact, especially in the Ebro Valley. In our study area until 1891 (or even until the end of the century) the impact was pronounced but more moderate than in other close areas due to the increase in the demand for wine caused by the phylloxera crisis in France and the access of day laborers to the ownership of plots of land following the decisions of some of the former lords (and owners of large plots) to sell these lands to the locals. 16 Throughout the article, we analyze the effect of the agricultural crisis on mortality and the well-being of individuals.
This study is innovative in several ways. First, it analyzes the long-term effects of losing a parent in the context of rural Spain and differentiates these effects based on the gender of parents and children. There are hardly any publications on the importance of fathers with regard to demographic outcomes for the Iberian Peninsula. This article, which pays special attention to the role of parents in the rural agrarian environment—which differs in certain ways from the urban environment—thus seeks to partially fill this gap. Second, this study examines the effects of orphanhood at different ages, taking into consideration the differentiated effects that the death of a parent can have on a child depending on when that parent died. The good quality of the longitudinal data available in the long term allows us to explore the effects of losing parents at different stages of life at a level of detail that is beyond the normal scope of this type of demographic analysis. Finally, these results are not only historically informative but also apply to older generations, as the results highlight the significance of childhood events to their current living conditions. Therefore, this analysis fills existing gaps in the literature and, by investigating generations born in the first decades of the twentieth century, it also illustrates how losing a parent affects the health and living conditions of individuals born during this period.
Area and Data
The data in this study come from 12 rural Aragonese villages in northeast Spain: Alfamén, Botorrita, Cosuenda, Jaulín, Longares, Mezalocha, Mozota, Muel, Torrecilla de Valmadrid, Tosos, Valmadrid, and Villanueva de Huerva (see Figure 1). This area includes a combination of plains and foothills near the Huerva River. Historically, the economic activities in this region were characterized by the production of cereal, wine, and sheep. Over the years, the total population in this region grew from approximately 7,425 inhabitants in 1800, to 7,702 in 1860 and to 9,655 in 1920. Pre-1950 data regarding births, marriages, and deaths of individuals and their parents were gathered from parish registers. Data on deaths that occurred between 1950 and 2019 were gathered from public sources linked to cemeteries and information provided by the families of the deceased. The data were collected from the Alfamén and Middle Huerva Database (AMHDB) and developed according to the family reconstitution method. 17 This approach offers high-quality demographic insights into a rural context and includes all individuals who were either born in or migrated to the study area. The sample size of this study was 25,520 individuals whose dates of birth and death, as well as those of their parents, are known. The researchers selected the most conservative criterion, considering only individuals for whom the date of death was known. This criterion allowed the researchers to accurately calculate the ages at which these individuals became orphans and their eventual ages at death. Of the total sample, the researchers had the data of 9,775 individual adults (aged twenty-one years and older).
Study area location. Source: Own rendering.
Anthropometric evidence also indicates that standards of living in this area were low. The average male height was around 160 cm in the mid-nineteenth century, well below both that of their European counterparts and their compatriots in other regions of Spain. 18 The database included the height data for 1,176 twenty-one-year-old men (who had been conscripted). This source includes data beginning in 1856 (for individuals born in 1835 or later).
The researchers examined the effect of being fatherless, motherless, or having both parents alive on different health, behavioral, or longevity variables at different ages. Orphans who lost both their father and mother are excluded from the results due to the small size of the sample (there are very few cases in the database). Historically, the presence of widows was more common than widowers given the higher mortality of men from occupational diseases and accidents and other violent deaths. 19 Furthermore, in rural areas with inefficient medical services, such as in the study area, young women have typically had high maternal mortality rates. 20 Thus, the number of widows and widowers tended to balance out in early adulthood. The greater presence of widows compared with widowers may produce some biases in the comparative analysis. However, it does not seem that these numbers are decisive for understanding the differences between losing a father and a mother given that the different family roles of the parents could have had a greater effect on how their death affected the well-being of their children.
Only 23.9 percent of the widows in the study area remarried, and, when they did, in most cases, they remained in a period of mourning for longer than a year until they remarried (in most cases, several years). In addition, in this area, wills traditionally allowed the spouse to enjoy the assets of the deceased spouse in usufruct as long as he or she did not remarry. 21 Therefore, individuals had an incentive not to remarry. Therefore, we decided to consider as fatherless all children who lost their biological fathers, regardless of whether their mothers remarried. The comparisons were made using descriptive statistics according to two characteristics: the child’s gender and the survival status of his or her parents. The results, when combined with the existing literature on the topic of parental loss, provide new data of great interest.
Differences in Infant and Child Mortality and the Outcomes of Biological Well-being during Infancy
Studies on abandoned children (i.e., those who are both motherless and fatherless) have revealed that they have very high mortality rates, which are aggravated by their social situation. 22 The lack of a parent also entails consequences for children. In their study of Spanish parents, Reher and González-Quiñones found that mothers were fundamental to the survival of their children in their first months of life until the 1950s–1960s. 23 Similarly, Anderson, Hogberg, and Åkerman detail how the death of a mother during a child’s first year of life carries the greatest risks for a newborn. 24 Many other studies globally have found a positive relationship between the presence of the father and the survival and well-being of his children; however, in other regions, this relationship did not exist, or, in some cases, the presence of the father had exceptionally negative effects on the child. 25 Table 1 displays the probabilities of the death of children under the age of nine from the sample based on their parents’ survival status. The results reveal that the presence of parents had a positive effect on the survival of their children. In cases in which the father had died during the first two years of life of his child, the probability of the child’s death increased by between 25 and 61 per cent (for individuals born between 1800 and 1919). The data indicate that mothers were more important than fathers to their children’s survival. Being motherless increased the probability of a child’s death between 45 and 123 per cent between 1800 and 1919. Table 1 confirms that the effect of losing a mother is clearly greater than that of losing a father. Thus, during the infancy, the presence of a mother is more important than that of the father with regard to the survival of children. In almost all case studies, the survival of fathers had a positive effect on the survival status of their children, but less than the effect of mothers.
Probabilities of Death [q(x)] during Early Life by Father’s Survival Status, 1800–1919.
Source: AMHDB.
Note: Date of birth defines periods, while “n” refers to the number of births for women of each category.
Table 1 reveals the effect of the agricultural crisis that occurred from the 1880s onward. Despite the improvements in average living standards evident in the increase in height and the beginning of the demographic transition, childhood mortality increased in the period 1880–1919 in practically all age groups of children under ten years old. This increase in mortality was more moderate in the case of fatherless and motherless children, but a slight increase was observed as well. The continuing decline in mortality that began in the study area in the 1860s was affected by the agrarian crisis. 26
Table 2 includes an analysis of men’s height when conscripted; the individuals are organized by parents’ survival status (in cases in which the mother, father, or both parents were alive or dead) and their age at death of a parent. Despite the small sample available, the researchers estimated that twenty-one-year-old boys who lost their mothers during the first two years of their lives were, on average, 2.3 mm shorter than children whose parents were both alive. Children who lost a father during the first two years of their lives were 1 mm shorter on average. When one compares the same data in relation to losing a parent during the first seven years of a child’s life, children who were motherless were an average of 2.2 mm shorter, while fatherless children were, on average, 0.6 mm shorter. Similar outcomes are evident for children who lost a parent between birth and fifteen years of age. In other words, the results reveal that, within the studied sample, parents were crucial to the biological well-being of their children during infancy (assuming that height at the age of conscription is indicative of biological well-being). Similarly, regarding the probability of a child’s death, the sample data indicate that mothers were more important than fathers to the biological well-being of their children. This finding is probably a consequence of the fundamental role that mothers in the sample played in caring for their children (especially when they were ill), including cooking for the family and controlling the food that their children consumed. In Spain, fathers were traditionally less involved in the daily care of their children. We should not forget that height is especially conditioned by quality of life in childhood, with adolescence having a lesser effect. 27 Heights were possibly capturing primarily the consequences of living standards during childhood, when mothers were more important. If, according to our hypothesis, fathers had a greater effect from adolescence onward, height might not be such a good indicator of the loss of the father.
Average Height at Conscription by Parents’ Survival Status, Men Born between 1835 and 1919.
Source: AMHDB.
Note: “Both parents alive” = parents are alive on the child’s fifteenth birthday.
However, these results differ from those obtained (during a similar period) for the urban Spanish town of Aranjuez, where persons who had lost a father were shorter than those who had lost a mother, and persons whose parents were both alive were the tallest. 28 The death of a father seems to have an influence from earlier ages in the case of Aranjuez. The socio-economic conditions and the distribution of inequality in the urban environment of Aranjuez may have differed from those of the rural environment analyzed. In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Spain, fathers were the main income earners, and perhaps the effects of a father’s death were felt earlier or more intensely in Aranjuez than in the rural study area. This difference could be a result of the characteristics of traditional Spanish rural areas compared with more urban environments. Or the mortality patterns may have differed. In the next section, the authors analyze how the loss of fathers affected their offspring’s life spans and the course of their adult lives. The section also provides a better understanding of the differences between Aranjuez and Middle Huerva area.
Differences in Adult Mortality and the Importance of Fathers to Their Offspring’s Life Span
Thus far, this paper has verified the importance of parents to the survival of their children and has highlighted the greater importance of mothers to children’s outcomes in variables related with the infancy of her children. In this section, the researchers analyzed the long-term effects of orphanhood in the sample population by examining outcomes for children over twenty-one years of age. Table 3 indicates that the age at death of those individuals who had lost a parent during their childhood or adolescence was, on average, two years younger than individuals whose parents were both alive. These differences occurred with children born in both the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century. The data reveal that a mother’s death had greater effects on children when it occurred during the first two years of the child’s life, especially among girls. However, these effects diminished after that time. For boys, the sample data indicate that when a mother’s death occurred when a boy was at least two years of age, the effects on the child’s lifespan were almost imperceptible. In the researchers’ analysis of the sample, this is the first variable in which the death of a father had more important consequences (for a child’s life span) than the death of a mother. The sample data reveal that fatherlessness reduced a child’s life span by up to 2.9 years for males and 4.2 years for females. Losing the father had important effects on individuals across all age groups (although these effects were less visible for children who lost their father in the first two years of their life, perhaps due to the smaller sample size). Mothers seem to have been more important in outcomes related to childhood (especially early childhood) while fathers seem to have been more important in outcomes related to adolescence and adulthood.
Average Age at Death of Men and Women (Over 21) According to Parent’s Survival Status, Age at Death of the Parent, and Paternal Occupation, 1800–1919.
Source: AMHDB.
Note: The information on paternal occupation has been extracted from the population and electoral censuses carried out between 1857 and 1920. The sample includes 56 percent of the individuals analyzed (of these, 24.1 percent were day-laborers and 24.2 percent were farmers). The cousins’ column refers to the average age at death of cousins of the same gender on the same side of the family.
In general, the loss of the father affected the life span of boys more acutely than girls, contrary to the finding regarding the consequences of losing a mother on a daughter. The sample data suggest a strong link between parents and children of the same gender. Some scholars have noted that fathers spend more time and become more involved with their sons. 29 Furthermore, fathers differentiate more between their children than mothers. Fathers tend to display a clear preference for boys and encourage their sons to achieve lofty goals in life. 30 These father–son and mother–daughter connections have been observed in other demographic and cultural processes in Spain, such as the transmission of religious values from parents to children. 31
Table 3 demonstrates that socioeconomic status did not significantly affect the outcomes of the children in the sample. As the sample includes small Spanish rural populations, more than 80 percent of these individuals were day laborers (landless or semi-landless) or farmers (landowners). In both socioeconomic groups, fatherless children were most affected by the loss. The results of this research do not support the conclusion that there were important differences between the socioeconomic groups. Location did not seem to be an important factor, either. When comparing the results according to the individual’s localities, the results are the same regardless of that individual’s place of origin and the characteristics of that place (i.e., whether the area is mountainous or flat, whether there is easy access to a river, and the population size). In the long term, we cannot observe the effects of having been born during the agrarian crisis of 1880s since the improvements in the standards of living and the lengthening of life spans prevent us from exploring the effects in greater depth.
The size of families with only one parent was mostly different from families with both parents, but only since the first parent died (birth intervals until the parent death were similar in fatherless-, motherless-, and both-parents-alive families). In other words, due to the death of a parent, the parents could not produce more children, and the number of family members thus remained the same. The average family size of families in which both parents were alive at age 45 was approximately four children. In families in which a parent had died, the size of the family was approximately 2.5 live children (although this varied greatly). Families with fewer children may have had fewer issues with food scarcity, which could have been an advantage. However, the death of a parent seems to have been more important than family size regarding food availability. Finally, the genetic explanation does not seem to explain fully the results presented in Table 3. When analyzing the average age of death of paternal cousins (in the case of fatherless children) and maternal cousins (in the case of motherless children) of the same sex whose parents were both alive, the researchers found no significant differences between them and the whole sample population. The paternal cousins of fatherless girls under seven years old died at an average age of 62.2 years, which is comparable to the average age of death of the entire analyzed population (63.0 years) and motherless individuals (62.8 years). In the case of paternal cousins of fatherless boys, the average age of death was 65.4 years, compared with motherless individuals (61.8 years) and the entire analyzed population (62.0 years). These results seem to contradict the supposition that the average age at death of fatherless and motherless individuals from the sample is driven by genetic factors. The results indicate that the lower average age of death could instead be the consequence of unrelated life developments following the loss of a parent.
The results in Table 3 are consistent with the differences in height found in the case of Aranjuez. In Aranjuez, the loss of a father had more of an effect on height at twenty-one years old than the loss of a mother, possibly due to the deprivation of parental income in the family budget. In contrast, as we mentioned previously, in our area of study it is the children who lost their mother who were most affected by their height at twenty-one years old, with a greater incidence of this effect when losing the mother at a very young age. However, we cannot forget the fundamental role of mothers in caring and cooking for children. Possibly, in the rural environment, they had greater access to basic foodstuffs grown locally. Even if there were deprivations due to the lack of income of the father, these deprivations could have been less than those in the cities given the direct access to food and the possibility of being able to carry out basic agricultural tasks (she or her children) in exchange for vegetables or fruit. The consequences of losing a father during childhood appear to have been proportionally more severe in the urban case than in our rural area. In any case, further research with new and additional data based on the Iberian rural environment is needed to draw more accurate conclusions.
According to the results, being fatherless is linked to a shorter life span among adult individuals of both sexes. Figure 2 confirms this point. The figure displays the percentage of individuals alive at different ages, beginning at twenty-one years old, depending on their parents’ survival status when they were two years old. The results for both men and women are clear: while motherless individuals presented similar mortality patterns to individuals whose parents were both alive, fatherless individuals experienced higher mortality after reaching approximately forty years of age. Therefore, from twenty-one years old, fatherless children had higher mortality rates than other individuals. The results seem to confirm that there are temporal differences in when the effects of the death of a mother and a father had a greater impact on the physical well-being and mortality of their children. These results seem to confirm that the effects of losing a mother are greatest in the infancy, whereas losing a father had serious consequences in adulthood.
Percentage of surviving male and female offspring born between 1800-1919 beginning at twenty-one years old (the number of children alive at twenty-one years = 100 percent). Source: AMHDB.
In Table 4, we can observe the differences in causes of death for a sample of adult individuals of both sexes (who died between 1875 and 1950) who were fatherless (and became fatherless before their second birthday) or had both parents alive. However, the results should be treated with caution. The authors found two categories of death in which fatherless individuals stand out: infectious diseases and diseases of the respiratory system. It is plausible that these results are the consequence of poor biological well-being or younger entry into the labor market. These individuals could also have had worse states of health, which would have compounded the consequences of these diseases.
Percentage of Adult Individual (Over Twenty-one Years Old) by Cause of Death, According to Gender and Orphanhood, Individuals Born between 1880 and 1919.
Source: AMHDB.
Note: Causes of death have been classified according to the following criteria of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems-10 (ICD-10) by the World Health Organization. The table includes the most common categories.
Differences in Wages, Age of Employment, and Output during Adulthood
As the historical data in the sample indicate, losing a father had serious consequences for his children’s average age of death. On average, fatherless men died between one and two years younger, and fatherless women died between three and four years younger. One explanation for this finding may stem from the economic consequences of losing the main income earner. In their study on the height of British children during industrialization, Horrell, Humphries, and Voth suggest that nutritional and health situations were worse in homes in which there were no fathers. 32 Normally, families without fathers were more likely to be in low-income socioeconomic cohorts. 33 Many women worked outside the home (especially if they did not have another breadwinner in their homes), but there was salary discriminatory against women. Therefore, income in homes with single mothers tended to be lower because the household had only one small salary. Additionally, if the mother was alive but away from home at work, the children might have received less care than those whose mother remained in the home. This unfavorable economic situation normally forced fatherless children to join the workforce at a younger age, where they worked longer hours and in worse conditions. 34
In nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spain, wages were particularly low. In most cases, the father’s salary was insufficient to support his family. 35 Female wages were much worse. Table 5 compares male salaries with female salaries in different places and periods near the study area during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for unskilled and unqualified workers. In all cases male salaries were 1.5–2.5 times female salaries. The greatest differences were found in places closest to the study area. The salaries of low-skilled male individuals could not support an average family in Spain. The female salary resulted in even more unfavorable conditions. Women were also hampered in the labor marked due to the more seasonal and less stable nature of their work. Overall, women’s contributions to the family budget were predictably much lower than men. It is possible that in rural Spain, as in England, there were incentives for fatherless children to enter the labor market younger, despite worse conditions, to increase family income. This incentive was particularly true for boys, who were more valued than girls in the labor market. As in England, entry into the labor market in poor conditions at such young ages could have affected the long-term health of these children and their age of death.
Brief Description of Some Studies of the Male–Female Wage Differences in Close Spanish Areas. 36
Source: AMHDB.
Note: The selection was done based on the field of occupations and the distance to the study area. Lana Berasain personally provided us with the data. * Lana Berasaín calculated the percentage for the complete period; ** only available for the day-laborer families; *** based on the budget of the working class of Barcelona, 1914.
Unfortunately, we do not have sample data on the children’s ages upon their entry into the labor market. However, we can use some variables (i.e., literacy, occupation, and age at first marriage) to estimate this information. The most interesting variable for this purpose is the literacy rate. School attendance was compulsory for both boys and girls, and municipalities had to bear the costs of schooling the poorest children, at least in theory. On a day-to-day basis, many children skipped class to work, helping their parents with agricultural tasks or working for others at low-paid jobs. Therefore, low literacy rates among fatherless and motherless individuals might indicate that these children routinely skipped class to perform other tasks, possibly to earn money. As Table 6 reveals, the fatherless and motherless children in the sample had lower literacy rates. The data indicate the largest differences are between boys with both parents and fatherless boys, with a gap in literacy rates greater than 10 per cent across all the studied periods. Among motherless children, these differences are less pronounced, ranging from 3–5 per cent. The data also reveal differences for female children, but these differences are quite small. Boys likely had greater incentives to enter the labor market than girls given that they received higher wages and were more valued by employers. Fatherless families had the lowest total family incomes. Therefore, children in these families had incentives to skip school to work at poor-paying jobs. Furthermore, it is uncertain whether the low literacy rates were due exclusively to children entering the labor market and not to other disincentives to pursuing their educations.
Percentage of Literate Individuals by Sex and Parent’s Survival Status, Individuals Born between 1840 and 1919.
Note: “Both parents alive” = both parents are alive on the child’s fifteenth birthday.
Source: AMHDB.
The absence of fathers in nineteenth- and twentieth-century English families normally forced children to start working at younger ages, for longer hours, and in poorer conditions than those with fathers. 37 The sample data on literacy makes it clear that families in rural Spain had a similar experience. Table 7 displays the results of the authors’ analysis of several factors, including the fields that men worked in during adulthood (twenty-one years of age or older), grouped into three categories: day laborers (40 per cent of the total sample), farmer-landowners (55 per cent), and artisans and upper-class jobs (5 per cent). The results clearly display that fatherless offspring are overrepresented in the day-laborer field, with more than 49 per cent of the men in the sample in this group, which was the poorest employment category. In contrast, individuals with living fathers comprised a greater proportion of the farmer category, with nearly 10 per cent more than fatherless individuals. However, when the differences in socioeconomic status of fathers were analyzed, the authors did not find large differences between the fathers of fatherless families and the rest of the fathers. In other words, it is possible that landowning families had to sell some of their property. Therefore, the results suggest that fatherless children were of lower socioeconomic status than the rest of the children, and they also seem to confirm that fatherless children had unfavorable employment situations.
Distribution of Occupation Categories (Percentage) by Father’s Survival Status, Men Born between 1800 and 1919.
Source: AMHDB.
Unfortunately, for the rural environment analyzed, information on employment rates by age was unavailable. However, we can approach their labor role through the 1860 census, even considering the priority of the profession of the head of the household and the scarcity of information on female labor (unless they were heads of households or held public positions such as teachers). In the 1860 census, 53.2 percent of the sons of widows between ten and twenty years of age (with the widows being the heads of households) included information on their occupation. Meanwhile, individuals of the same age from nuclear families included their occupation in less than 20 percent of cases. Employment rates were presumably under-estimated in both groups. The greater presence of widows’ sons could be a consequence of the greater importance of their wages in maintaining the family home. Another sign of the need of widows’ sons to enter the labor market to support their families is that, in several cases in the 1860 census, the older brother entered the labor market while the younger brothers (even older than ten ) continue to appear as “students.”
The average age of individuals’ first marriages can be useful as additional proof that fatherless and motherless children joined the workforce at a younger age. Several studies have found that orphans, on average, married at younger ages than individuals whose parents were both alive. 38 Table 8 confirms that both fatherless and motherless men and women from the sample married younger (this was particularly true for fatherless offspring). This result could be due to two factors, one economic and the other social. First, economic situations were generally worse in families that had suffered the death of a parent. This situation meant that children joined the workforce earlier, which may have helped them overcome the economic barriers of access to marriage. 39 Second, these children may have had more incentives to marry and start new families so that they would not be left alone should their living parent die. In general, the data reveal a gap in the average ages at first marriage between fatherless individuals and individuals whose parents were both alive. The results, according to the economic rationale, serve as indirect proof that fatherless children joined the workforce at a younger age. However, more data and additional sources are needed to confirm this hypothesis.
Average Age at First Marriage by Parents’ Survival Status, Individuals Born between 1855 and 1919.
Source: AMHDB.
Note: “Both parents alive” = parents are alive at the child’s fifteenth birth.
Discussion
Our study indicates that losing a parent had important consequences on the lives of children in the short, medium, and long term. The results of this study, as well as the literature cited above, suggest that losing a mother has particularly strong effects at young ages. Mothers were especially important in the survival of their children and their biological well-being. Losing a father, however, had more mitigating effects at younger ages, and even, in some regions of the world, no effect at all. In contrast, the loss of a father had important long-term effects, especially in terms of reducing the average life span of children. In the long term, the effects of being motherless were more limited. Therefore, losing a mother or a father had different consequences on the children, and these consequences are especially visible at different periods of the lifecycle.
The effects of mothers were more visible in the outcomes linked to childhood, while the effects of fathers were more visible in adolescence and adulthood. There are various possible explanations for these results. On the one hand, mothers were the main providers of care during childhood and the ones who fed their children. Possibly the greatest effects of the loss of a mother in the short term are linked to this being the period when children need their care most to survive. In contrast, fathers were the main providers of income, since their salaries were double those of their wives. Thus, fathers may have had a role more closely linked to being providers of socioeconomic welfare compared with mothers. The sample data indicate that the death of a father affected his family’s economic situation, forcing his children to work at younger ages and to accept precarious jobs. It does not appear that the local environment, genetic background, or socioeconomic status explain the results completely. Some studies have offered explanations relating to the psychological development of these individuals, indicating that orphaned children have poorer health and habits than those with parents.
The data relating to literacy rates, socioeconomic status, and average ages at first marriage seem to confirm that in nineteenth- and twentieth-century rural Spain, fatherless children (especially boys) were forced to enter the labor market sooner, working in low-paid jobs with poor conditions. Our results confirm that fatherless children had lower literacy outputs, skipped classes to do some paid agricultural work, were more likely to be in a profession in the 1860 census, and married younger, perhaps because they earned the money needed to marry at a younger age. These children and young adults were in greater need and less protected than those with parents when entering the labor market, so, as in England, they may have had more difficult and less-well-paid jobs. 40 It is possible that this hard work affected the health of many fatherless children and caused them to die at an earlier average age than other individuals. Therefore, engaging in hard manual tasks from a young age could have affected health in the long term.
The difficulties inherent in the labor market for women and young people were aggravated by the agricultural crisis that began in the 1880s. Work opportunities were reduced and those most affected were women and young people. As a consequence of the crisis, mortality at very young ages (under ten) increased, both for children who had lost a parent and for society as a whole. The crisis also caused an expulsion effect from the rural environment, forcing a large portion of young people to migrate to the city. However, this effect was more moderate in the area of study than in other areas of the region due to the increase in demand for wine and small changes in land ownership during this period.
Conclusions
This research found that there was a positive relationship between the presence of parents and the survival of their children. Drawing on sample data from nineteenth- and twentieth-century rural Spain, the results confirm that mothers played a more significant role in the survival of their children in childhood and adolescence than fathers. This study corroborates the results of other research using data from different places and contexts around the world. Similarly, the authors’ research on height data confirms that the loss of one’s parents affected a child’s biological well-being during childhood and adolescence. Again, mothers played a more important role than fathers in their children’s biological well-being. However, these findings contrast with those obtained for the Spanish town of Aranjuez where fathers played a more important role. The contrast between the rural and urban environment could be the explanation for these contrary findings. In any case, further research including new areas and data is needed to analyze these differences.
During adulthood, the sample data suggest that losing a father had the most serious consequences on an individual’s life span, socioeconomic status, and age when they married. Thus, losing a parent had different consequences depending on whether it was the mother or the father. The loss of a mother had greater effects during the infancy, possibly because she was the main caregiver, in which capacity she fed the children, with the father taking a secondary role in these tasks. In contrast, the death of a father had greater consequences for mortality in the long term, possibly because most of the family income depended on him in the context of low living standards.
The death of a father had more serious consequences on the average age of death of his children. Children who lost their father before their fifteenth birthday died at a lower average age. Men died one to two years earlier, and women died three to four years earlier. The analysis confirms that while motherless individuals exhibited mortality patterns similar those whose parents were both alive, fatherless children had a higher mortality rate, beginning at forty years of age.
The results also indicate that it is important to be cognizant of orphanhood when examining the health of the elderly and to mitigate its negative effects. This research provides an opportunity to understand better the role that parents play in the quality of life of their children and the consequences that persist throughout their lives, even in old age. Being parentless at a young age has and will continue to condition people, and it is an important factor to consider when planning healthcare for the elderly.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The support for this study has been provided by Gobierno de Aragón (Grant ID: S55 20R) and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Grant ID: PGC2018-095529-B-I00).
