Genealogy Chat

I have a couple married in 1879. I have them on the 1881, 1891 and 1901 census with apparently no children. Not likely to be any after 1901 as wife was 49 by then and she died in 1913

I should think so Carol. I have a couple though earlier than your never any children from early 1800's till they died in the 1880's except for a nephew who lived with them in 51and then as they got old they with him. I suppose they couldn't have children unless they had them and they died between census, but i haven't come across any. Germaine x

Thank you for that Germaine Of course, there was no IVF then and if they were unable to have children they would have just gone without.

Tha's it Carol I think that is why they must have taken on their nephew. Strange thing was they were the aunt and uncle of my G G Grandmother and on her marriage it states her uncle as her father!! I know he wasn''t just think that he must have been there as she was growing up. So she looked on him as a father. Wish she had stayed with him as a child would have made things a lot easier. Germaine x

Germaine Maybe the uncle gave her away and she regarded him as her dad? Carol Generally speaking, in my and my husband's trees, people had children every 18months or so (in Wales it was every year, in England about every 2 years) until the wife dropped dead or reached her 40s. But I do have some couples who didn't have children. Since in the late 1800s contraception was considered sinful and there weren't many reliable methods or access to information about them, I assume any childless couple were unable to have children. This could be a problem with the woman conceiving, or carrying a child to term - stillbirths and miscarriages weren't recorded - or the man might be sterile or have a low sperm count. nell

I've just been researching a family of 8 siblings born in the 1840-50's. Five of them married.....one son and four daughters. The son and his wife had seven children, but the daughters only managed one child between the lot of them. I thought this pretty unusual.............I wonder why? Merry

Yes, quite likely I would think. My grandmother's sister married but remained childless. I guess that if a couple did not produce children they could not get the help from the medical profession that people can get now. If it didn't happen it just didn't happen.

I have a few couples that never had children of their own - but most seem to take on a niece or nephew for a while. Sue - also from Glorious Somerset! lol

Infertility is not something that only affects modern-day society, there have always been people unable to have children. Up until 1948 all medical treatment had to be paid for, so even had such a thing as infertility treatment been available, and of course it was not, it would only have been for the very wealthy., most people found it hard enough to find the money to see a doctor if they were really ill.. With most people having fairly large families, a childless couple would often take in the child of a relative, which eased the burden on that family. Jennifer

Hi Merry Perhaps the daughters were Rhesus negative with Rhesus positive husbands! First child is fine, but trigger antibodies in mother's blood which kill subsequent children. Lots of other possibilities of course. Just a thought. Carol, I have several instances of childless marriages, and many, many cases where one child from a sibling with lots of them is handed over to the childless couple and brought up by them. Gave the child a chance of a better life I suppose. Still not unheard of today, except nowadays sisters sometimes deliberately have a child to give away to a childless sister, rather than having the child anyway. Tina

I have two or three couples with no children. (when the wife is young enough to have them, of course) I have one unfortunate family who had 7 children who all died before the age of 8 or 9. (different times, can't put it down to an epidemic) Makes me wonder if they had some genetic disease. This is before census, and I found them trawling parish records. The burials were all neatly crossreferenced back to the baptisms, so I know its the same family. I also have one family with only one child - born the year after the marriage (1835), when mum was in her twenties. I think Dad was an only child too. I always thought it odd I've never found any traces of other children. I'd completely forgotten about the Rh Pos - Rh Neg thing! Its a very good explanation, thanks!

I have one family which really throws me - in 1841 they have been married 7 years and have a baby. Then there is another 7 years before another child. I kept looking for deaths and wondering if the children were theres. But then today you meet couple who have been married 20 years and suddenly have a child, so I suppose we have all become a bit blaise about our ancestors being able to churn them out every year. And yes, I had another couple who were childless after 5 years and have a nephew and niece living with them. In the next census they have just one child of their own (apparently). I guess we will never know if they went to a local workhouse and took on a foundling or something.

I think that it was probably as common then as it is now, but just another one of those Victorian taboo subjects. I have read that it was always assumed that it was the wife's fault, never of course the man's. I'm sure that it must have been as heartbreaking then as it is now, a wife's place was in the home and being childless must have felt like a failure. It must have been soul destroying for them to see their siblings producing children every other year. Thank goodness for modern medical advances.

Yes, I have a few of examples where this has happened in my tree. Couples right through all the censuses without children, even a case where a childless couple put down on later census 'son' but earlier ones said 'nephew'. I doubt that childless couples would have had available medical help and the occupation of the husband could have contributed to this e.g. those working in chemical factories etc. (especially if he worked there from a young age) which could have resulted in a lowered sperm count. There could be a thousand medical reasons or maybe they just didn´t fancy each other!

Just read that bit about Rhesus Neg. wife & Pos. husband. Can´t resist adding that my husband & I have the above blood combination and we had 6 children all born without needing to change the blood. We were fortunate of course and yes that is an interesting suggestion.

My great-aunt married at about 37 years of age and produced just one child, after about 2 years. She was from an educated family and was a teacher herself before her marriage in 1920. In later years, she told my mother that she truely had no idea about sex or where babies emerged from until after her marriage. Mum quizzed her about not knowing this, as to have lasted until near-middle age without ANY idea seemed pretty bizarre, esp as my great-aunt kept animals.....dogs, cats and horses......you would think it would be difficult to avoid the subject completely! Auntie said ''I soon put a stop to ''all that'' once I had my son''. I wonder how many other couples were in this situation? Merry

Rh Pos/Rh Neg again - not sure when they discovered this was the reason for a lot of deaths & miscarriages, but certainly in the 1970's you could be immunised after the first baby to prevent the reaction occuring with subsequent pregnancies.

Today at least people who are childless have sometimes 'chosen' to be so - my sister and her husband were such a couple - his job took them all over the world to 'under developed' countries so they felt it would be wrong to have kids. So people without children now arent necessarily looked upon as unfortunate unless they have told people they are desperately trying for a family. But back then, I cant imagine how miserable the wife would have been seeing her neighbours and relatives churning out kids every year. I guess some men even left their wives because they didnt produce any. It must really have been so awful for those women.

I also have a childless couple in my tree. They stuck out from all the rest of that branch because the husband came from a line of VERY productive people - around 15 kids or more each. so to follow him through the censuses and see that although he married twice, they never had children of his own was quite sad. It was obvious they wanted children because they 'adopted' two of his wife's nieces...started off calling them nieces and later on he was calling them 'daughters', although they kept their original birth surnames throughout. As others have said already, infertility isn't a modern-day problem and I suppose we'll all find a case like this sooner or later on our tree. Sad, though, when you do.

i read recently that 1 in 5 girls born now is expected not to have children. I am not sure the situation was much different then. Infertility could be caused by many things, a botched abortion, a side effect of venereal disease, mumps (men) etc.