Courtship and Dating.
Colonial Americans generally cared more about the suitability of their marriage partners than about love, which they expected to develop after marriage. As a result, couples courted publicly and received aid and advice from families and neighbors. Premarital pregnancy rates were low during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and premarital sexual relations, even if pregnancy did not result, produced strong social and even legal pressures for marriage. Toward the end of the ... ...
Access to the complete content on Oxford Reference requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.
Please subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.
For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.
