Old age security and the family life course: A case study of nineteenth-century mennonite immigrants to Kansas

Abstract

According to life course analysis, age systems create socially recognized turning points, which outline life paths, channel people into positions and roles, and determine the distribution of rights and obligations. Yet few studies have examined these social parameters. Another problem with life course research is its ahistoricity. Even specifically historical studies have often been unable to measure the dynamics of change because of their use of cross-sectional household data, which only measures a small portion of kinship relations. This case study of the Mennonite family of Cornelius and Helena Richert Voth, who migrated from Russia to the Kansas Plains in 1874, analyzes the role that religious and ethnic traditions and inheritance rules play in preserving family stability, providing security in old age, and shaping the family life course. It contributes to our understanding of the social determinants of life course change by illustrating how traditional Mennonite patterns of family organization and property transmission, formed during centuries of community life in Prussia and Russia, shaped the timing of life course transitions and how the differing social, political, and economic conditions the immigrants encountered on the American frontier altered those traditional patterns.