Size of Families and Households:
What the Census Figures Tell Us

To get an answer, we can use the census figures for the Tart villages to determine:

• the mean and median size of households in the these villages;

• the mean and median number of family members who resided in the household in 1836;

• and the mean and median number of residing children and residing servants.

Here are the figures:

Descriptive Statistics: Size of Households in Three Burgundian Villages in 1836
(Tart l’Abbaye, Tart-le-Bas, and Tart-le-Haut)

Although summary statistics of the center and spread of a distribution are always helpful in estimating average or typical quantities, it is equally important to examine the distribution of a set of numbers also.  The histogram or bar chart provides a good picture of the distributions of interest here.

Conclusions:

• Beyond a doubt, Edme Réstif's household was exceptionally large.   It surpassed all households that were enumerated by the census of 1836 in the Tart villages. Its size and complexity attested to a farmer who was scarcely a typical peasant or a mere "bon laboureur" [substantial farmer] of the day.  Although his actual economic standing was left purposely vague in the book, in reality his wealth alone put him at the top of the village pyramid, well above the vast majority of his neighbors and on a par with perhaps two or three others who made up the village elite.

• Boilly's painting represents an idealized vision of rural households. Compared to the census figures, even the sentimental portrait of rural folk by Boilly represents a household of unusual size and complexity.  Among the 252 households in the Tart villages in 1836, only one or two households could claim to have a dozen or so people living under the same roof.  The six or seven children portrayed in the painting--all adorable to be sure--serve to celebrate the child-centered family, the sentimental ideal of the urban bourgeoisie.  In reality, if the Tart villages are somewhat indicative, to find six or seven children in one household was a rare event.

• Qualifying the results. At least one qualification is in order, however.  The census provides only  a snapshot of an evolving process of family formation and change.  It enumerates the people living in a household at one particular moment, and it omits household and family members who were not co-resident at that time.  Like Edme who left home at the age 14 or Nicolas who left at 11, the children of peasants and farmers spent fewer years at home than might be thought.  The census, in other words, does not indicate reliably the size of the complete family. Nonetheless, it does help remind us that rural families and households were neither typically large nor typically complex with numerous co-residing servants or kin beyond the nuclear core of husband, wife and children. 

• Another question. Go to next page.

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