The Impact of Female Labour Conditions on Infant Mortality: A Case Study of the Parishes of Nedertornea and Jokkmokk, 1800-96

• Published in: Social History of Medicine
• Main Author: BRÄNDSTRÖM, ANDERS
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University Press 1988
• Subjects: Articles; Jokkmokk; Nedertorneå; Northern Sweden
• Online Access: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/1/3/329; https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/1.3.329

SUMMARY In much research into trends in infant mortality in nineteenth-century Europe explanations have recently tended to be focused on changes in infant feeding practices and alterations to the sexual division of labour. Rarely has this research been conducted at the level of individual families within specified communities. Infant mortality in Sweden fell steadily through the nineteenth century from 200 per 1, 000 live births in 1800 to 100 in 1900. This study focuses on two parishes in northern Sweden where infant mortality rates in 1800 were generally in excess of 200 and, in some areas, of 300 per 1, 000 live births. One parish Nedertorneå, inhabited in 1800 primarily by a population of sedentary farmers, whose wives did not breast-feed, experienced infant mortality rates that varied annually from 300 to 500. The other, Jokkmokk, contained a population of nomadic reindeer herders whose women after birth breast-fed their infants for long periods. Over the course of the nineteenth century a campaign by midwives to persuade mothers in Nedertorneå to breast-feed their children led to a dramatic increase in their infant's survival chances although the mothers may well have increased their participation in agricultural work. The mothers of Jokkmokk, while breast-feeding their offspring into their third and fourth year of life, experienced no appreciable fall in the mortality rates of their infants. These women also engaged in demanding and seasonally concentrated labour within the pastoral economy. This study concludes that single-factor explanations for infant mortality decline, especially in societies such as Sweden, where rates were regionally highly varied, have to come to terms with the fact that the explanatory factors never operated alone but functioned interactively with other influences that could register positive and negative effects upon infant mortality.