Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T09:40:17.740Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - The cultural context of fertility transition in immigrant Mennonites

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2010

John Landers
Affiliation:
University College London
Vernon Reynolds
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Get access

Summary

Introduction

In the 1870s, Mennonites from the village of Alexanderwohl in the Ukraine Molotschna Colony immigrated to the United States and settled in choice farming areas around Goessel and Meridian, Kansas, and Henderson, Nebraska (McQuillan, 1978; Crawford & Rogers, 1982; Stevenson et al., 1989; see Figure 5.1). They arrived with large families to a country already in the midst of fertility decline (Vinovskis, 1981), and within one generation they also were reducing family size (Stevenson et al., 1989). The recency of this fertility transition provides an opportunity to assess the relative importance of education, occupational opportunities outside the home, and the labour value of children in stimulating the reproductive decline for the Kansas and Nebraska Mennonites. This analysis is based on Caldwell's (1982) wealth flows model as modified by Handwerker (1986a, b, c).

Foreign colonists who had settled in Russia since 1763 were exempt from military and civil service ‘in perpetuity’ (Rempel, 1974). However, reforms in the 1860s resulted in the cancellation of this exemption and institution of compulsory military service. The most politically conservative portion of the Mennonite population (eventually one-third) began to emigrate to the United States and Canada in the 1870s. Many selected choice farmland in Kansas and Nebraska with the aid of railroad agents, and by the 1880s Mennonites were some of the most successful farmers, experiencing relatively few foreclosures during the severe droughts of the 1890s (McQuillan, 1978).

The Mennonite group which immigrated was also the most religiously conservative of the Molotschna Colony (Rempel, 1974).

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×