“There is Only One Mother”: The Importance of Mother in Rural Spain, 1750–1959

Abstract

Several studies have shown the importance of the mother in the survival and wellbeing of her children. However, none of them have analyzed the rural areas of the Iberian Peninsula. In this article we use the life courses of more than 10 thousand children born between 1750 and 1959 to understand the effects of being motherless on the survival, educative outputs, and wellbeing. To achieve this, we use descriptive statistics as well as Cox and OLS regression models. Our results confirm that the mother is one of the most important relative for the survival and wellbeing of her young children.