SC - OT: Anthropology-OOP

[Tara Sersen]

>BTW, has anyone read _A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on
Her Diary,
>1785-1812_ by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich? It appears to refute some of our cherished
myths
>about the Early days of the US-- such as severe punishments for premarital
sex, and
>extremely high incidence of postnatal mortality in women.

I'm going to take a look for that book!  In college, we did a demographic survey
of graveyards in the DE-PA-MD area.  We went to some of the oldest graveyards
in that area, each took a few rows so we covered the entire graveyard, and wrote
down the birth and death dates and genders on each stone.  Then we analyzed
the data.  What we found is that, since the early 1700's, there was never the
stereotyped mortality of women (or men for that matter) in their 20's-40's.
 There was a high infant mortality rate, which skews simple statistics that
therefore state "average mortality is 40 yo" or something like that.  But, actually,
if you managed to live past the age of 5 you were likely to live into your 60s
or 70s.  There were even a reasonable percentage of people living into their
80s and 90s.  There was an interesting spike in male mortality in the age range
of 17-24 yo periodically... war.  And, of course, a high mortality rate that
was age independant in about 1917-1918.  If you excluded those two anomolies,
you found approximately the same bell curve for men and women independent of
the century.  The "peak" of that curve was a bit earlier in life early on, but
not drastically.

Our conclusion was that there was no evidence of any unusually high percentage
of women dieing in their childbearing years.

Magdalena vander Brugghe