A recent news article about a woman in Bangladesh who gave birth twice nearly a month apart (See CBS News) started me thinking about some of the traditional assumptions we make about the world as genealogists. More than thirty years ago, when I first became involved in serious genealogical research I was introduced to some "assumptions" about families, marriages, ages, and over the years these "rules of thumb" have become almost codified.
For example, one such "rule of thumb" is that when you find a marriage record, you can estimate the date of birth of the individuals. The time period is around 19 to 20 years before the marriage. I still see these birth dates appearing regularly online with "about" dates. Granted such an estimate may be helpful in finding a birth record if one exists, but too many times, that estimate becomes codified into an exact birth date even in the absence of any birth record.
Now, with the story above, we have an example, if you believe the story, of a woman who had three babies 26 days apart, a single birth and then twins. If I ran across this situation in a historical record, I would automatically assume that the second birth had to be a different family. Two children born less than a month apart could not be siblings. Perhaps, this assumption fits the general community, but there appear to be exceptions. Does the exception prove the rule in all cases? I never did understand how an exception could prove anything. If there are exceptions then the rules are not rules but assumptions.
The history of Science (with a capital S) is full of theories and rules that have been disproven when exceptions were found. Isn't it about time we revise our way of thinking about genealogy and start looking at genealogical research as true historical research where we rely on actual sources and stop filling in the gaps with speculation? Another example. If we go back in history, we soon learn that the age at which young could marry was and is mostly culturally determined. What is the "law" about the age of marriage in the United States" Well, that turns out to be very complicated. The age range, either with or without parental consent, between any age in Kentucky with parental consent, to 21 without parental consent in Mississippi. So, depending on the state, the estimated birth date could be off as many as 6 years or more. From a practical standpoint, for some genealogists, this means that a search for a birth record should begin much sooner before the marriage date and continue for many more years than would otherwise seem necessary and what about counties where children can be "married" at birth?
If you look at a chart of the average age of first marriage by country (See Wikipedia: List of countries by age at first marriage) You will see something very interesting. Around the world, the average age for marriage in men varies from around 36 years old in Sweden to a low of about 21 years in various other countries. The marriage age for women varies from a low of about 16 in Bangladesh to over 30 in many countries. How did those ages change as we go back in time? With any average, there has to be a substantial number of people who marry either younger or older to "pull" the average either up or down.
Now, with the gaps between the dates of birth of children called into question, I am suggesting that we throw out our "traditional" birth, marriage, and death estimates and start doing systematic, year by year searches for records. Let's stop deluding ourselves with estimates that can clearly be off by tens of years. If we don't know the date that an event happened, let's fess up to the fact and start leaving the dates blank and that goes for places also. A blank space in our genealogy is not a admission of failure, it is a challenge to find the records.
From Wikipedia:
ReplyDelete""The exception proves the rule" is a saying whose meaning has been interpreted or misinterpreted in various ways. Its true definition, or at least original meaning, is that the presence of an exception applying to a specific case establishes ("proves") that a general rule exists. For example, a sign that says "parking prohibited on Sundays" (the exception) "proves" that parking is allowed on the other six days of the week (the rule). A more explicit phrasing might be "the exception that proves the existence of the rule."
"An alternative explanation often encountered is that the word "prove" is used in the archaic sense of "test".[1] Thus, the saying does not mean that an exception demonstrates a rule to be true or to exist, but that it tests the rule. In this sense, it is usually used when an exception to a rule has been identified: for example, Mutillidae are wasps without wings which cannot fly, and therefore are an exception that proves (tests) the rule that wasps fly. The explanation that "proves" really means "tests" is, however, considered false by some sources.[2][3]"
This article further states:
"The phrase is derived from a legal principle of republican Rome: exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis ("the exception confirms the rule in cases not excepted") .... This legal principle is classically referred to as inclusio unius est exclusio alterius (Inclusion of one is to exclude the others). The idea is that if the promulgator of law finds reason to enumerate one exception, then it is only reasonable to infer no others were intended. The Ninth Amendment of the United States Constitution was enacted to explicitly suppress this principle by stating that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.""
As far as believing the story about the births you relate, this is completely believable and I have read about such before. I haven't read about this case, but this is most likely to occur when the first child is born dangerously premature, and the women's doctors do everything they can to get labor stopped before the rest of the set deliver. Keeping them in there one more month would greatly increased their chance at survival.
Here is the abstract from a journal article:
"In the past decades, we have observed a large increase in the number of multifetal pregnancies, which is mainly associated with the introduction of assisted reproductive techniques. Even though neonatal intensive care of very premature infants has improved significantly, the risk of mortality and long-term morbidity is still much higher among these newborns. A longer interdelivery period may reduce perinatal mortality and morbidity. The authors report the case of a delayed interval delivery in trichorionic, triamniotic triplet pregnancy. After the labor of the first fetus in the 22nd week of gestation, a 75-day interval was achieved before the delayed delivery. To save the surviving fetuses, the umbilical cord was ligated at the cervical level immediately after the first delivery. The patient received antibiotics, tocolytics, and corticosteroids. A baby boy who weighed 1750 g and a girl who weighed 1700 g were successfully delivered by cesarean section in the 33rd week of pregnancy. The babies were discharged home at the age of 28 days. A follow-up examination 20 weeks later showed that their neurological development was normal and without any major problems. The maternal postpartum course was uneventful; the patient stayed in hospital taking care of the babies." (Case Reports in Obstetrics and Gynecology
Volume 2013, Article ID 451360, 4 pages)
Thanks, next time I'll do my homework. If delayed births are going to become more common, it is another good reason to forget the old rules of thumb.
DeleteIn this case the woman has two uteruses and had twins in one and a single baby in the other. Rare, but possible.
ReplyDelete