Family Relationships

Relationships, with family and romantic partners, both good and bad were interlaced throughout these one hundred autobiographies. This is understandable, not only because these sorts of relationships are central to the human condition but the life stories considered here all began at the start of a century that brought with it a variety of changes to established patterns of family demographics and structures in England. The twentieth century bore witness to a significant decline in the number of children women had between the ages of twenty and forty-nine, with the average number of children per natal family dropping from about six in 1870 to around four in 1900, dropping again to just over two by the 1940s. By the early 1900s, male and female views on the economic and social advantages of limiting their family size aligned, which meant couples began to adopt, often rudimentary, contraceptive methods.