ABSTRACT
Peter Laslett’s courtship intensity model seems to hold more promise for explaining illegitimate births in Essex County. Though the model is not a perfect fit, key aspects of it can be replicated. Laslett looked at fluctuations in the illegitimacy rate over time and concluded that when the marriage rate went up, the illegitimacy rate increased correspondingly. Also, the age at first marriage decreased. In Massachusetts, where 94 percent of women and 98 percent of men married, as opposed to a 73 percent marriage rate in early modern England, courtship intensity was at a constant peak.3 It must have seemed as if every young person was engaged in courtship and, once married, procreation.4 There would be an inevitable spillover of illegitimate births. Laslett, however, correlated illegitimacy with the fact that younger, poorer women entered the marriage market in prosperous times, engaged in sexual intercourse after contract, conceived, and then the marriage market failed for some reason, not necessarily economic. Laslett also emphasized the importance of locality persistence (cultural factors, including courtship expectations, which, in Essex County, included premarital chastity) to explain illegitimacy rates. The part of the courtship intensity model that posits a positive correlation between marriage rates and illegitimacy rates can be used to explain the existence of illegitimacy in Massachusetts, while locality persistence can be applied to explain why the rates remained so low.
