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The average size of families depends primarily on birth control, abortion, the
ability to afford children, the age at marriage and the proportion of those who
never marry. Birth control did not start to have any impact until the latter
part of the nineteenth century. Abortion was not legalised in Britain until
1967.
Married women had an average of five to six children in the period 1600-1799. In
the 1850s nearly two thirds of married women ended up having five or more
children, whereas today nearly two thirds of those who married some twenty years
before have only one or two children.
Illegitimate births in the seventeenth century ranged from 2-2.5% of all births
and increased to about 3.4% in the eighteenth century. There were wide regional
variations. The dramatic increase in the latter part of the twentieth century
may be a temporary phenomena, or more probably a changed concept of the role of
the marriage ceremony as a prerequisite to having children.
The average age at first marriage was about 28 for men and 26 for women in the
seventeenth century. The average age at first marriage declined to about 23
years for women by about 1851 and has remained at about that level since.
The proportion of those who never married is significantly higher in the
seventeenth century (20-23% of women and a higher percentage for men; the
difference presumably caused by the remarriage of widowers).