The Swedish Lutheran state Church, known for its strong and efficient control of its parish members, is an illuminating example. Swedish priests lobbied politically for more than a century to obtain a Church monopoly on weddings, which they achieved only in.36 However, the clerics had won a Pyrrhic victory by not accepting that young couples could become parents without being blessed by the Church and that no law could change that biological fact. The longterm effect of the new formalistic policy was an increase in the extra-marital birth rate. Statistics indicated that the number of illegitimate children rose by several per cent after the s. The public as well as policy-makers targeted the “sinful” mother as well as her bastard child. The pressure put on the unmarried mothers became so terrible that many of them preferred to kill their new-born babies to avoid being charged with illicit sexuality. Infanticide rose to new records and by the mid-eighteenth century almost every third criminal executed was an unmarried mother who had committed infanticide. The harsh penal practice illustrates the social attitudes that mercilessly stigmatised unmarried mothers and illegitimate children as inferior persons. Though penal practice was reformed shortly afterwards and other means introduced such as giving birth anonymously, popular attitudes remained almost unchanged. The Swedish experience was not an exception but more likely conformed to the rule in the counties of Europe and North America, Catholic as well as Protestant.37 Very little justifies moving the star on our WVS map from its medieval position. Still, by the mid-eighteenth century, family law 132 35 R. Lettmann, Die Diskussion über die klandestinen Ehen und die Einführung einer zur Gültigkeit verpflichtenden Eheschliessungsform auf dem Konzil von Trient. (Münster 1967: Aschendorff.) - H. Dieterich, Das protestantische Eherecht in Deutschland bis zur Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts. (München 1970: Claudius.) 36 Inger ( 1997), 140-145. 37 E. Anners, Humanitet och rationalism: Studier i upplysningstidens strafflagsreformer, särskilt med hänsyn till Gustav III:s reformlagstiftning. (Stockholm 1965: Nordiska bokhandeln.)
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