Mormon Demographic History II: The Family Life Cycle and Natural Fertility

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Abstract
The family life-cycle of a group of .apprx. 17,000 women born between 1800 and 1869 were examined. These women were selected from a larger file based upon a set of genealogical records maintained by the LDS [church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Mormon] Church. The selection was based partly upon the interest in extending back in time Glick''s analysis of the family life-cycle of American women. To maintain rough comparability with Glick''s work, women were selected who had married only once. The constraint that the husbands also had been married only once was included in order to eliminate any confounding influences associated with polygyny. Not only the timing, but the number of children ever born will strongly influence the structure of the life-cycle. The relation between fertility and stages of the life-cycle is more dramatically indicated in the analysis of a natural-fertility population. Analyzing a series of indices, demonstrated that the population is a natural-fertility population. These data are not representative of the general family life-cycle of the American family in the 19th century. They refer to the life-cycle of a unique religious and frontier population.

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