Fertility, Marriage, and Culture: Demographic Processes Among Norwegian Immigrants to the Rural Middle West

Abstract

The image of the “backward” immigrant has enjoyed a prominent place in American history, in large part because of the perceived “non-American” fertility behavior of many immigrant groups. The European perspective on these migrants, however, has been to see them as innovators, breaking free from the demographic constraints of the Old World. Drawing upon a large sample of reconstituted Norwegian immigrant families, this article examines the rising and then declining fertility of this group over the second half of the nineteenth century. It concludes that their fertility experience was influenced both by cultural tenacity and economic opportunity.