Changing Morality.

In the eighteenth century some 10 percent of American brides arrived at the altar already pregnant with their first child, a level unequaled until the late twentieth century. In rural New England during the 1780s and 1790s as many as one-third of all young women were pregnant at the time they were married. Most people felt that so long as the couple married, there was little shame in premarital pregnancies. During the first quarter of the nineteenth century, however, this attitude underwent a significant change. By 1840 there were fewer than one in five premarital pregnancies in most New England towns, and by 1860 the rate had dropped to one in twenty. With the rise of the sentimental domestic ideal, which held American womanhood as an example of purity, Americans now set much stricter moral and sexual codes.

Courtship.

The typical courtship...