In the period 1909—1927, new laws concerning divorce and marriage were enacted by the Scandinavian countries. Both at the time and more recently, these laws were considered as ‘‘liberal’’ as they promoted greater freedom to divorce based on individuality and gender equality. In this article, the authors first analyze the changes in these Family laws in the early twentieth century. Then, the authors study the effect of these laws on divorce and marriage patterns. As these laws did not modify the trend in divorce rates, the authors ask why this was the case. The authors’ conclusions are that the laws were more concerned with preserving the sanctity of marriage and maintaining social order than with promoting individual freedom and gender equality.
The five Nordic countries all adopted New Family Laws in the space of two decades: Norway in 1909, 1918, 1927; Sweden in 1915, 1920; Denmark 1922, 1925; Iceland 1921, 1923; and Finland 1929. Nevertheless, this article will exclusively focus on the Scandinavian countries that are Norway, Denmark, and Sweden.
2.
See, for example, Kari Melby, et al., eds., Inte ett ord om kärlek. Äktenskap och politik i Norden ca 1850-1930 (Lund, 2006); David Bradley, Family Law and Political Culture: Scandinavian Laws in Comparative Perspective (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1996).
3.
Kari Melby, and Bente Rosenbeck, ‘‘Reproduksjon som fortolkningsramme for de nordiske velferdsstater: Foucault møter Giddens,’’ Tidskrift for kjønnsforskning 1-2 (2009), 28-46; Folke Schmidt, ‘‘The ‘Leniency’ of the Scandinavian Divorce Laws,’’ Scandinavian Studies in Law (1963), 109-21; Folke Schmidt, ‘‘The Prospective Law of Marriage,’’ Scandinavian Studies in Law (1971), 193-218; Kirsti Niskanen, ‘‘Marriage and Gendered Property Rights in Early Twentieth-Century Rural Sweden,’’ in The Nordic Model of Marriage and the Welfare State, edited by Kari Melby, Anu Pylkkanen, Bente Rosenbeck, and Christina Carlsson Wetterberg (Copenhagen: The Nordic Council of Ministers, Nord 2000, 27), 69-87.
4.
Carol Lee Bacchi, Women, Policy and Politics. The Construction of Policy Problems ( London: Sage, 2006).
5.
Hanne Marie Johansen, ‘‘Marriage Trouble, Separation and Divorce in Early Modern Norway,’’ in The Marital Economy in Scandinavia and Britain, edited by Maria Ågren and Amy Louise Erickson (London: Ashgate, 2005), 175.
6.
The historian Malin Lennartsson has analyzed the church interpretation and practice in a particular part of Sweden during the seventeenth century. She found that the church allowed divorces for reasons other than adultery and voluntary abandonment. Grounds for divorce included, for example, violence in marriage (Malin Lennartsson, I säng och säte: relationer mellan kvinnor och män i 1600-talets Småland (Lund: Lund University Press, 1999).
7.
Christer Lundh , Swedish Marriages: Customs, Legislation and Demography in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Lund papers in economic history n88, 2003), 12.
8.
The main idea was that because of the common origin of the Scandinavian legal institutions and of the essential unity in legal concepts prevailing in Scandinavia, this legislative reform should proceed by joint efforts.
9.
Jan Hellner , ‘‘Unification of law in Scandinavia,’’The American Journal of Comparative Law1-2 (1968), 90.
10.
In the first years delegates worked intensively: the second meeting was in Trondheim in 1911 (from the 1st July to the 29th). Then they gathered three times in 1912 (the first meeting took place in March in Copenhagen, the second meeting in June and July in Christiania (Oslo), the third in September/October in Stockholm). Bugge, ‘‘Den Skandinaviske Faelleslovgivning,’’ Tidskrift for Retsvidenskab 80 (1914), 124-5.
11.
Utkast til Lov om Egteskaps Indgaaelse og Opløsning. Avgit av de norske Delegerte ved det skandinaviske Familieretsarbeide; Lagberedningens förslag till revision av giftermålsbalken och vissa delar av ärvdabalken, I, Förslag till lag om äktenskaps ingående och upplösning m. M. St. Holm 1913 (Stockholm 1913); Udkast til Lov om Ægteskabs Indgaaelse og Opløsning med tilhørende Bemærkninger. Udarb. Af den ved kgl. Res. Af 25 Juli 1910 og 19 Juni 1912 nedsatte Kommission. Kj.havn 1913 (Copenhagen 1913).
12.
Diane Sainsbury , ‘‘Gender and the Making of Welfare States: Norway and Sweden,’’ Social Politics1 (2001), 125.
13.
Law of the 11 June 1920 promulgating the new Marriage Code (Lag 11 juni 1920 om införande av nya giftermålsbalken).
14.
Lov 31 mai 1918 nr. 2 om indgaaelse og opløsning av egteskap (ekteskapsloven).
15.
Lov om Ægteskabs Indgaaelse og Opløsning af 30. Juni 1922: Act on incapacity and guardianship (lov om unyndighet og værgemål af 30. Juni 1922 n 277). The main feature of this Act was to recognize joint parental authority and to lay down the principle that the two parents had equal duties and rights in matters affecting their children.
16.
Lov om Ægteskabets Retsvirkninger af 18. Marts 1925 (n°120.).
17.
Lov 20 mai 1927 nr. 1 om ektefellers formuesforhold (ektefelleloven).
18.
Alice Kessler Harris describes the conception ‘‘gendered imaginations’’ as ‘‘gendered habits of mind [ . . .] framed discussions of what was possible and shaped the boundaries of the politically plausible,’’ in Pursuit of Equity. Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th Century America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 5.
19.
Inger Margrete Perdersen noticed that still at the end of the 1960’s in Denmark ‘‘most social insurance systems (for example, unemployment and sickness insurance) classify married women as ‘‘nonsupporters.’’ As a result, they get lower benefits then married men,’’ Inger Margrete Pedersen, ‘‘Status of Women in Private Law,’’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 375 (1968), 49. Through the system of joint taxation in the Scandinavian countries, the husband was given the position as the economic head of family. This in turn denied married women their right to pay taxes, see for example, Anna-Birte Ravn, ‘‘Gender, Taxation, and Welfare State in Denmark 1903-1963,’’ in The Nordic Model of Marriage and the Welfare State, edited by Kari Melby, Anu Pylkkanen, Bente Rosenbeck, and Christina Carlsson Wetterberg (Copenhagen: The Nordic Council of Ministers, Nord 2000, 27), 113-27.
20.
It was usually the husband who travelled to the nearest foreign city, while the wife stayed at home and sued him on the grounds that he maliciously and willfully deserted her (see Folke Schmidt, ‘‘The ‘Leniency’ of the Scandinavian Divorce Laws,’’ 111).
21.
‘‘Förslag till lag om äktenskapets ingående och upplösning 1913,’’ Kommittébetänkande 1915 [‘‘Bill on the Entrance into and Dissolution of Marriage,’’ Swedish committee report 1915], 389. The committee also referred to German practice and their usage of the family desertion motive as a way for agreeing spouses to obtain a divorce.
22.
‘‘Förslag till lag om äktenskapets ingående och upplösning 1913,’’ Kommittébetänkande 1915 [‘‘Bill on the Entrance into and Dissolution of Marriage,’’ Swedish committee report 1915]: 390-91. Folke Schmidt asserted that the Norwegian committee was more ‘‘sparing’’ with ideological statements in this case. He suggests that this can be explained by the fact that they did not have the mandate to suggest innovations in this matter as they had to limit their scope to the Act on Access to Dissolution of Marriage 1909. (Folke Schmidt, ‘‘The prospective law of marriage,’’ 199).
23.
Folke Schmidt , ‘‘The prospective law of marriage,’’198.
24.
‘‘Förslag till lag om äktenskapets ingående och upplösning 1913,’’ Kommittébetänkande 1915 [‘‘Bill on the Entrance into and Dissolution of Marriage,’’ Swedish committee report 1915], 394.
25.
The punishment for a couple that refused to reunite was decided by the local church. It could be in economic terms through a penalty paid, but it could also be physically disciplinary (kyrkotukt) or made in terms of social shame with exclusion from the church and other social institutions (skamstraff).
26.
A spouse who pleaded guilty for having abandoned the family lost all right to property. Wife’s and children’s right to alimony after divorce was by law only possible during the time of separation (in Sweden one year).
27.
Malin Lennartsson, I säng och säte: relationer mellan kvinnor och män i 1600-talets Småland.
28.
‘‘Förslag till lag om äktenskapets ingående och upplösning 1913’’ Kommittébetänkande 1915 [‘‘Bill on the Entrance into and Dissolution of Marriage,’’ Swedish Committee Report 1915], 385.
29.
Folke Schmidt, ‘‘The Prospective Law of Marriage,’’201.
30.
‘‘Förslag till lag om äktenskapets ingående och upplösning 1913’’ Kommittébetänkande 1915 [‘‘Bill on the Entrance into and Dissolution of Marriage,’’ Swedish Committee Report 1915], 448. In Norway, the guilt issue was less explicit. Instead of categorically refusing alimony in the case of guilt as in Sweden, it was reversed, that is, the spouse could (in worse case) lose the right to alimony. See Kari Melby, et al., eds., Inte ett ord om kärlek. Äktenskap och politik i Norden ca 1850-1930, 107-8.
31.
Folke Schmidt, ‘‘The Prospective Law of Marriage,’’ 202. The Norwegian law relating to alimony was amended in 1937 and the rules of maintenance payment during separation and after the divorce were, as in the Danish case, harmonized.
32.
In Sweden, divorce frequencies can be calculated by duration of marriage and summed. In Denmark and Norway, we use the Swedish duration-specific frequencies as standards to estimate total rates.
33.
Age-specific first marriage frequencies (Ansley J. Coale, Donald McNeil, ‘‘The Distribution by Age of the Frequency of First Marriage in a Female Cohort,’’ Journal of the American Statistical Association 340 (1972)) can only be calculated on census years. They are interpolated between two censuses and adjusted each year for the total number of first marriages. They are calculated per year over the age range fifteen to fifty and then summed over the ages concerned. In this way, a kind of age-standardized marriage rate is obtained. This makes sense under certain conditions (Roland Pressat, L’analyse démographique: concepts, méthodes, résultats (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1969)). As this is a period (cross-sectional) measure, it can even reach values above 1, due to changes in the age at marriage. The calculation is sex-specific, although men and women are both involved in marriages. To avoid the duplication of curves, we have averaged the results obtained for men and women.
34.
Svenn Erik Mamelund‘‘Can the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918 Explain the Baby Boom of 1920 in Neutral Norway?’’Population2 ( 2004), 229-60.
35.
The seminal article is by John Hajnal, ‘‘The Marriage Boom,’’Population Index (April 1953), 80-101.
36.
Kirsti Niskanen , ‘‘Marriage and Gendered Property Rights in Early Twentieth Century Rural Sweden,’’69-71.
37.
Tone Sverdrup, Stiftelse av sameie i ekteskap og ugift samliv (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1997), 53-65. Tone Sverdrup is talking about the implications of the Norwegian and Danish way of solving this problem. She concludes that it supported a massive societal transfer of property from women to men.
38.
Hanne Marie Johansen, ‘‘Marriage Trouble, Separation and Divorce in Early Modern Norway,’’175-89.
39.
Inger Margrete Pedersen, ‘‘Status of Women in Private Law,’’49. See also Anna-Birte Ravn, ‘‘Gender, Taxation and Welfare State in Denmark 1903-63’’.
40.
Passed in 1903, the Tax laws defined explicitly the husband as the ‘‘head of the family’’. This situation remained unchanged until the 1970’s when the laws adopted a more gender-neutral term, for example, ‘‘main person’’ of the family. The system was reorganized in 1983, when joint taxation of spouses was abolished. Since then, the tax system has been based on individual taxation. Anna-Birte Ravn and Bente Rosenbeck show that the 1903 legislation had some negative consequences for the social citizenship of married women. In Norway, couples could already, in 1959, choose separate taxation, whereas in Sweden, the legislators introduced this system in 1970. See Anna-Birte Ravn, and Bente Rosenbeck, ‘‘Gender and Family policies in Denmark in the 20th Century,’’ (FREIA, paper 67, 2008).
41.
Anna-Birte Ravn , and Bente Rosenbeck, ‘‘Gender and Family policies in Denmark in the 20th Century,’’1.
42.
Nathalie Le Bouteillec, Famille, économie et développement de l’Etat providence en Norvège et en Suède aux XIXième et XXième siècles (Paris: Sciences PO (Thesis), 2000), Nathalie Le Bouteillec, ‘‘Législation du travail des femmes et politique de la maternité en Norvège et en Suède,’’ Histoire et société 15 (2005), 43-55; Diane Sainsbury, ‘‘Gender and the Making of Welfare States: Norway and Sweden,’’ Social Politics 1 (2001), 113-43. Maternity benefits entitlements for Norwegian working mothers were introduced as early as 1909 (Sweden in 1931) and for mothers at home in 1915 (Sweden in 1937).
43.
Diane Sainsbury, ‘‘Gender and the Making of Welfare States: Norway and Sweden,’’119.
44.
Michel Foucault, ‘‘La gouvernementalité’’ in Michel Foucault Dits et écrits Volume III (Paris : Gallimard, 1994), 635-57.
45.
Anne Skevik, ‘‘A Gilded Cage? Help and Control in Early Norwegian Social Policy ,’’ Journal of Family History3 (2004), 216-7.
46.
Christina Carlsson Wetterberg has analyzed the political debate about the incomplete marriage. See Christina Carlsson Wetterberg, ‘‘Äktenskapet, äran och den individuella friheten. Debatten om de ofullkomnade äktenskapen vid 1915 års riksdag,’’ in Könsmaktens förvandlingar. En vänbok till Anita Göransson (Göteborg: Institutionen för Arbetsvetenskap, Göteborgs universitet, 2003).
47.
Folke Schmidt , ‘‘The Prospective Law of Marriage,’’213.
48.
‘‘Förslag till lag om äktenskapets ingående och upplösning 1913,’’ Kommittébetänkande 1915 [‘‘Bill on the Entrance into and Dissolution of Marriage,’’ Swedish Committee Report 1915], 385.
49.
‘‘Discord’’ as a grounds for divorce was revised in the process of legislation to ‘‘long and lasting discord.’’
50.
Folke Schmidt, ‘‘The ‘Leniency’ of the Scandinavian Divorce Laws,’’112. In other words, he interpreted the Swedish way of settling divorces in court instead of settling them administratively as satisfying liberal demands of uniformity of process.
51.
‘‘Förslag till lag om äktenskapets ingående och upplösning 1913,’’ Kommittébetänkande 1915 [‘‘Bill on the Entrance into and Dissolution of Marriage,’’ Swedish Committee Report 1915], 391.
52.
‘‘Förslag till lag om äktenskapets ingående och upplösning 1913,’’ Kommittébetänkande 1915 [‘‘Bill on the Entrance into and Dissolution of Marriage,’’ Swedish Committee Report 1915], 392.
53.
In the Norwegian case, the law of mediation was not as extensive as in the Swedish and Danish case.
54.
‘‘Förslag till lag om äktenskapets ingående och upplösning 1913,’’ Kommittébetänkande 1915 [‘‘Bill on the Entrance into and Dissolution of Marriage,’’ Swedish Committee Report 1915], 392.
55.
Folke Schmidt , ‘‘The ‘Leniency’ of the Scandinavian Divorce Laws,’’115.
56.
During the period of separation, the marriage was still considered intact, while the ceiling applied to the maintenance allowance was not valid during this time. Furthermore, the ceiling did not include child allowances. ‘‘Förslag till lag om äktenskapets ingående och upplösning 1913,’’ Kommittébetänkande 1915 [‘‘Bill on the Entrance into and Dissolution of Marriage,’’ Swedish Committee Report 1915], 460.
57.
Sven Nordell, ‘‘PM angående ändrade bestämmelser för jämkning av underhållbidrag till frånskild make p.g.a. väsentligt ändrade förhållanden och därmed sammanhängande spörsmål,’’ appendix in prop 22, Swedish Justice Department in 1952. Norway changed the categorical alimony ceiling in 1937 in favor of the maintenance eligible spouse.
58.
After 1935, mutually agreed settlements were included in the rule of adjustment in the Swedish law, that is they could only be lowered, not raised.
59.
Carol Lee Bacchi , Women, Policy and Politics. The Construction of Policy Problems (London: Sage , 2006), 47.
60.
Olof Sundby, Luthersk äktenskapsuppfattning. En studie I den kyrkliga äktenskapsdebatten i Sverige efter 1900 (Stockholm: Diakonistyr, 1959), 171.
61.
See Margareta R.Matovic, Stockholmsäktenskap. Familjebildning och partnerval i Stockholm 1850-1890 (Stockholm: Liber Förlag, 1984).
