"Five daughters successively entered the world, but yet the son was to come; and Mrs. Bennet, for many years after Lydia's birth, had been certain that he would. This event had at last been despaired of, but it was then too late to be saving."
[Chapter 50, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen]
Children were an important resource to both rich and poor families and giving birth to a child was a little like buying a lottery ticket.
For the poor, children meant more money may eventually come into the family in the form of wages. It also meant that one or more children would hopefully be around to support and/or care for their parents when they became too old or infirm to work. This outweighed the early disadvantage of more mouths to feed.
For the higher status families, each pregnancy meant another chance to produce the all-important male heir; vital for inheriting entailed property and titles that the family had built up over the years. Even in a wealthy family, a mother might need to rely on the care and compassion of her adult children later in life if her husband died before her, leaving her financial situation greatly reduced from the lifestyle she was used to. Jane Austen shows one example of this in Sense and Sensibility when Mrs Dashwood and her daughters left their family home to live in a cottage after her husband's death.
The marriage of a daughter into a wealthy or socially superior family could indirectly improve the social standing of the parents, and provide a springboard for other siblings to meet suitable husbands or wives. The disadvantage was the need to provide them with dowries to attract those husbands or the worry that they might not find a husband to care for them.
Family sizes
"Her mother was a woman of useful plain sense, with a good temper, and, what is more remarkable, with a good constitution. She had three sons before Catherine was born; and instead of dying in bringing the latter into the world, as anybody might expect, she still lived on—lived to have six children more—to see them growing up around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself."
[Chapter 1, Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen]
A lack of accessible or affordable contraception meant that regular pregnancies were an unavoidable side effect of being married. In an average family, couples might have children every 18-24 months, and the average woman who married at eighteen could look forward to fifteen pregnancies over a period of thirty years. Women suffering through extreme poverty may have given birth less frequently if they were subsisting on very little food, as malnutrition and low body weight could affect fertility. Pregnancies could also end in miscarriages or stillbirths for various health or environmental reasons.
The main cause for the delay between births was due to the mother breastfeeding her baby. Breastfeeding can be a form of contraception. However, even in the Regency period, not all mothers fed their own children. Some chose to use a Wet Nurse instead.
A wet nurse was a woman whose baby was currently breastfeeding or had been recently weaned onto solid food. The wet nurse would be paid to feed another woman's child if the mother could not or would not feed it herself. A mother who was not breastfeeding could therefore fall pregnant sooner than 18 months after the previous child had been born.
"A few days ago, at Beccles, in Suffolk, a woman was safely delivered of four children, making seven within one year, having three at a former birth: they are all dead, but the mother is now quite well."
[Lancaster Gazette, 18th October 1806]
Multiple births were uncommon enough that they usually warranted a report in the local newspaper:
"Births: The wife of R. Partington, in Park Street, Stockport, was lately delivered, on Friday sen'night, of three children, two boys and a girl. It is remarkable that she has had twins four times,and seven single births in fourteen years."
[Staffordshire Advertiser, 24th July 1802]
The most reliable method of contraception at this time was abstinence; a concept most husbands would not consider. Wives whose husband was a soldier or a sailor had fewer opportunities to become pregnant. For the wives trapped in a loveless, unhappy marriage, a husband who spends most nights with his mistress could be a blessed relief. The death of a husband or wife would also leave a smaller family than might have been expected.
Once a child came into the world, their chances of it surviving were a little better in a rich family, who had housemaids to clean and provided plenty of food to keep them well-nourished. But overall, you were more likely to die between birth and two years old than at any other time of life. One child in every two hundred died during the birth itself and overall the chance of dying within the first seventeen years of life was 50%.
Children who were sent to wet nurses were also more likely to die than those fed by their own mothers. Smallpox had an eight per cent mortality rate and was more likely to kill girls than boys. Inoculation for smallpox was very effective but limited to those families who could afford it.
Being in a wealthy household didn't guarantee that a couple would have lots of healthy children. Lady Caroline Lamb was nineteen years old when she married, but she struggled with her pregnancies and took time to recover from each one. She gave birth to only three children, two of whom died soon after birth. Her surviving child, a son called William, suffered seizures and was described in the 19th century as "a hopeless idiot". Despite his challenges he was, according to one book, "the object of his father's tenderest love and care."
Taking into account the lack of contraception, balanced against miscarriages, stillbirths and high infant mortality, the average number of surviving children in a household would have been around six. It was unusual for parents not to lose any children during their lifetimes.
"Edward Bridges and his friend did not forget to arrive. The friend is a Mr. Wigram, one of the three-and-twenty children of a great rich mercantile, Sir Robert Wigram, an old acquaintance of the Footes, but very recently known to Edward B."
[Letter from Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra, dated 14th October 1813]
Sir Robert Wigram did have twenty-three children, between two wives. Out of those children, seventeen were sons, six were daughters, and only three died before they reached 21 years. For every family with more surviving children than the average, there would be at least one or two who had lost every child they'd ever had.
Varied experiences of childhood
"To the education of her daughters Lady Bertram paid not the smallest attention. She had not time for such cares. She was a woman who spent her days in sitting, nicely dressed, on a sofa, doing some long piece of needlework, of little use and no beauty, thinking more of her pug than her children, but very indulgent to the latter when it did not put herself to inconvenience."
[Chapter 2, Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen]
It's difficult to describe the kind of childhood children might have experienced in Regency England, because there was no average childhood then, any more than there is today. Any description can only be an oversimplification that doesn't take into account variations between each family and their circumstances.
However, there would have been a number of common influences that affected the kind of childhood someone experienced.
A family's finances would have made a huge difference to the upbringing a child enjoyed. Money, or a lack of it, would affect the clothes a child wore, and whether they went to school, were educated at home, or received no education at all. It would also affect whether they spent their childhood working or not working, whether they were malnourished or well-fed.
Children born to the poorest parents would be as poor as you could imagine, and likely worse. Many families lived and slept in one room, sometimes even shared with another family, and some poor parents chose to starve to see food in their children's mouths. Clothes were always second hand, either bought cheaply from second-hand dealers or handed down from older brothers and sisters.
They would rarely have the chance to go to school unless there was a free Charity or Sunday School available nearby. It was not uncommon for a child to grow up unable to even write their own name.
"Edmund was not yet nine, but he was a stout-grown, healthy boy, and well disposed to work. He had been used to bring home turf from the bog on his back, to lead cart-horses, and often to go on errands for gentlemen's families, who paid him a sixpence or a shilling, according to the distance which he went."
[The Orphans, The Parent's Assistant, by Maria Edgeworth]
In a poorer household, children often started work when they reached seven years, with a few even working from the age of five years old. Girls would help their mother with household duties such as cleaning, washing or mending as soon as they were able. In rural areas, they could also look after animals like chickens or pigs, and help in the fields at harvest time.
Contrast that with the children born to peers, who had nannies to care for them, servants to wait on them, plenty of food and a (sometimes gilded) roof over their heads. At the age when poor children would be working, those born in a gentleman's household would most likely be sent to school or were being educated at home.
Of course, between those two situations was a wide variation among the middle and working classes. Working men would have sent their children, or at the very least their sons, to school if they could afford to pay for it. They also would have known the value of investing in an apprenticeship for their sons, allowing them to qualify in a trade. Just as today, skilled tradesmen earned more than unskilled labourers so an apprenticeship was a way of helping their children to a better life.
You could have a poor but happy upbringing, just as you could have a rich but isolated and unhappy one. Which child would be considered better off under those circumstances?
In Belinda, Maria Edgeworth contrasts examples of a "good" parent, Lady Anne Percival, with a "bad" parent, Lady Delacour, who shows no interest in her daughter Helen.
"Such a mother was never heard of," continued Mrs. Delacour, "since the days of Savage and Lady Macclesfield. I am convinced that she hates her daughter. Why she never speaks of her--she never sees her--she never thinks of her!"
"Some mothers speak more than they think of their children, and others think more than they speak of them," said Lady Anne."
[Chapter 8, Belinda, by Maria Edgeworth]
The personality and temperament of the parents would have had an equally important impact on a child's upbringing. A drunk, violent father is going to make his children's life miserable whether he is a gentleman or a pauper, and I'm sure just as many wealthy children were beaten as poor.
Likewise, a mother could teach her children love, kindness and industry, whether she was a working woman or a lady. However, just like today, there were mothers who were overly protective of their children and could have taken that protection to excess.
"Her ladyship had several sickly children--children rendered sickly by their mother's overweening and injudicious care. Alarmed successively by every fashionable medical terror of the day, she dosed her children with every specific which was publicly advertised or privately recommended. No creatures of their age had taken such quantities of Ching's lozenges, Godbold's elixir, or Dixon's antibilious pills. The consequence was, that the dangers, which had at first been imaginary, became real: these little victims of domestic medicine never had a day's health: they looked, and were, more dead than alive."
[Chapter 20, Patronage by Maria Edgeworth]
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, among the higher classes, it was common to give your children to the servants to look after from birth, so some children of peers would be in the care of nursery nurses, governesses and masters. Once old enough they could have gone straight from the nursery to school, only being allowed home for the holidays. In some families, children living at home may have been permitted to see their mother or father for up to an hour before dinner, but otherwise didn't spend a lot of time with their parents until they were capable of holding an adult conversation or needed vital social experience prior to entering society.
Those peers who spent time at court and in the Lords, or MPs who sat for many hours in the Commons, would be most likely to behave this way. Their social and political obligations, including the late nights out or holding dinners with their friends, wouldn't have given them much time for a family life. In September 1815, Countess Granville wrote to Lady Morpeth: "Your children must be delightful. I only wish I did not so perpetually live away from mine." At the time she wrote those words, her three children would have been aged four, two, and almost four months old.
The nurses, governesses and masters would have all had their own personalities, some kind and caring while others were not. One example was Mrs Gray, employed by Mrs Byron to look after the eleven-year-old Lord Byron. The solicitor John Hanson, who was the young lord's man of business, wrote the following to Mrs Byron in January 1799:
"My honourable little companion, tho' disposed to retain his feelings, could not refrain, from the harsh usage he had received at her hands, from complaining to me, and such is his dread of the Woman that I really believe he would forego the satisfaction of seeing you if he thought he was to meet her again. He told me that she was perpetually beating him, and that his bones sometimes ached from it; that she brought all sorts of Company of the very lowest Description into his apartments; that she was out late at nights, and he was frequently left to put himself to bed."
By the beginning of the 1800s, parents began to be worried that children who spent too much time with servants would pick up their bad habits and common speech patterns, but even then some parents relied on a Governess rather than take on the care of children themselves. An alternative to a Governess could be an unmarried or widowed aunt, in which case their personality would influence how happy the children were.
Families who lived away from court may have been more nurturing and would have shown more interest in their children's day to day needs and welfare. Those in the gentry and lower level of the peerage, who perhaps didn't have the money for a platoon of servants, were even more likely to spend time with their children when they were young.
Maria Edgeworth was particularly interested in children's education and wrote books that encouraged parents to widen their children's experiences from an early age. So some "enlightened" parents would have given their offspring a childhood more like the one we might recognise, with parental attention, affection and education through experiences.
The proverb Children should be seen and not heard was already hundreds of years old by the turn of the 19th century. Some parents would have taken it literally, while others may have preferred to educate their children in the art of conversation, so they learned the polite rules of when it was best to listen and when to speak.
Adoption
"Take her away," cried Lady Juliana in a tone of despair; "I wish I could send her out of my hearing altogether, for her noise will be the death of me."
"Alas! what would I give to hear the blessed sound of a living child!" exclaimed Mrs. Douglas, taking the infant in her arms. "And how great would be my happiness could I call the poor rejected one mine!"
"I'm sure you are welcome to my share of the little plague," said her sister-in-law, with a laugh, "if you can prevail upon Harry to give up his."
[Chapter 18, Marriage by Elizabeth Ferrers]
There was no legal framework for adoption during the Regency, and many reasons why a child could be given a new home.
If a family was struggling to look after their children, a relative might take over the care of one or more of their children to help them cope. This could be on a temporary or permanent basis. Similarly, one or more children might be taken in by other family members if their mother died, or if they were made orphans by the loss of both parents.
These circumstances were common enough to feature in other novels of the time. In Jane Austen's Emma, Frank Churchill was adopted by his aunt when his mother died, while in Mansfield Park, the Bertrams assist Lady Bertram's less prosperous sister by housing and educating one of her daughters.
Where a couple found themselves unable to have children, it wasn't uncommon for them to unofficially adopt a child to bring up as their own. They could choose a child from an orphanage, but in many cases, it would involve a child from their own family or a family already known to them. Of course, adopted children were not eligible to inherit any entailed land or titles, which had to pass to whoever was the "heir", but they could inherit unentailed property or personal wealth from their adoptive parents.
[Image: The Sailor's Orphans, by Robert Dunkerton and William Ward, pub. 1800. Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)]
Edited to add: further description and quote regarding Lady Caroline Lamb's son William.
Edited to add: quote from Countess Granville.