Deviations in Reproductive Behaviour of Russian Peasant Women in the Middle Ural (19th – early 20th centuries)

Abstract

The article explores the variants of Russian women’s reproductive behaviour, which were regarded in the peasant environment as deviations. The aim of the article is to examine the specific types of deviant behaviour and to reveal the factors that contributed to their emergence and persistent presence in the everyday life of Russian peasant women of the Middle Ural. The main sources represent certain unpublished materials (judicial investigation cases) and number of published sources (recordings of folklore). The study allowed the “tender points” in the reproductive culture that existed in the Russian peasant environment in the 19th – early 20th century: premarital intimate relations, subsequent out-of-wedlock pregnancy, the desire to conceal it using different methods (abortion, murder of the already-born child), deviant parenthood in the form of child abandonment. These phenomena were deemed to be deviations from the norm since the main accepted aim of women’s life was marital childbearing, when the wedlock was considered as the only birth controller in the traditional society. Women were expected to be punished in various ways for departure from the accepted norms, ranging from moral condemnation to real penal servitude. Despite of the above, the abovementioned deviations regularly took place in peasants’ everyday life. The authors conclude that the factors contributing to deviant reproductive behaviour of peasant women included psychological (dependence on public opinion, the concept of sin and crime), sociocultural (reproductive “purpose” of women, low level of women’s literacy), material (young woman’s inability to provide for her illegitimate child). Copyright © 2023 by Cherkas Global University.