High maternal mortality meant that having more than about 7 children per woman was rare. Total fertility rate was about 4.5 to 7 in the pre modern era. Population growth was low due to infant and early childhood mortality though.
If you start having children at age 12, you can have a child every year and reach 7 children by age 20. Without contraceptives, people weren’t having such large multi-year gaps between children like we do now.
Based on my own genealogical research, the trend I typically saw was 6-8 kids, between 18 and early 30s, about 20% of which died. Plus consider that some of those will be sons, and some daughters never become mothers, 25 is pretty spot on for the average age for a mother-to-mother generational gap.
First births yes, but what about average age? Our ancestors may have been second born, third born, eighth born etc
High maternal mortality meant that having more than about 7 children per woman was rare. Total fertility rate was about 4.5 to 7 in the pre modern era. Population growth was low due to infant and early childhood mortality though.
If you start having children at age 12, you can have a child every year and reach 7 children by age 20. Without contraceptives, people weren’t having such large multi-year gaps between children like we do now.
Based on my own genealogical research, the trend I typically saw was 6-8 kids, between 18 and early 30s, about 20% of which died. Plus consider that some of those will be sons, and some daughters never become mothers, 25 is pretty spot on for the average age for a mother-to-mother generational gap.