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In New England, population increases gradually outstripped the availability of land. As the freehold ideal came under greater pressure, New Englanders responded in a variety of traditional and creative ways.
Farm Families: Women's Place
Men played the dominant role in both politics and domestic matters in New England society. Women were subordinate to their husbands and had few rights under law. Daughters typically had a lesser position than sons. A woman's place was in the home, serving as a dutiful daughter to her father or as a helpmate to her husband. Women were expected to bear and raise families that averaged six to seven children. While gradual reductions in farm size after 1750 prompted many families to have fewer children, women were kept in check by cultural expectations, colonial laws, and religious restrictions.
Farm Property: Inheritance
For many colonists, the availability of land prompted their migration to America. In New England, most land was held by common people who passed the land to their children so as to ensure that the family's needs would be met from one generation to another. By doing so, New England farmers were able to create communities composed of independent property owners, despite the fact that many individual farms were shrinking in acreage with each passing generation.
The Crisis of Freehold Society
By the eighteenth century, dramatic increases in population and overcrowding of the land threatened freehold society in New England, where good land had become difficult to find. Farm communities responded to this crisis by reducing family size, asking the government to open new land along the frontier, planting crops with higher yields, and sharing labor and goods. _________________________________________________________________________
Because diverse people from across Europe settled in the middle colonies, they lacked the cultural uniformity of New England. Nevertheless, amid diversity, the middle colonies
Farm Families: Women's Place
Men played the dominant role in both politics and domestic matters in New England society. Women were subordinate to their husbands and had few rights under law. Daughters typically had a lesser position than sons. A woman's place was in the home, serving as a dutiful daughter to her father or as a helpmate to her husband. Women were expected to bear and raise families that averaged six to seven children. While gradual reductions in farm size after 1750 prompted many families to have fewer children, women were kept in check by cultural expectations, colonial laws, and religious restrictions.
Farm Property: Inheritance
For many colonists, the availability of land prompted their migration to America. In New England, most land was held by common people who passed the land to their children so as to ensure that the family's needs would be met from one generation to another. By doing so, New England farmers were able to create communities composed of independent property owners, despite the fact that many individual farms were shrinking in acreage with each passing generation.
The Crisis of Freehold Society
By the eighteenth century, dramatic increases in population and overcrowding of the land threatened freehold society in New England, where good land had become difficult to find. Farm communities responded to this crisis by reducing family size, asking the government to open new land along the frontier, planting crops with higher yields, and sharing labor and goods. _________________________________________________________________________
Because diverse people from across Europe settled in the middle colonies, they lacked the cultural uniformity of New England. Nevertheless, amid diversity, the middle colonies