Family Formation and Age at Marriage in Saint-Hyacinthe
Quebec, 1854-1891
Authors
Peter Gossage
Abstract
This article attempts to understand linkages between structural economic change
and patterns of family formation in Quebec in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Its focus is on marriage age, a demographic variable which, as European studies have
shown, is sensitive to economic conditions and opportunities, and an important determinant
of family size and structure. Men and women who married for the first time in late
nineteenth-century Saint-Hyacinthe married two to three years younger than the provincial
average. This pattern echoes that of the early capitalist wage workers studied by the
proponents of the proto-industrial model in Europe.
