A social history of marital property is concerned in the first instance with the bundle of rights sorted out among spouses, children, families of origin, and a wider set of kin, as demonstrated in Chapters 7 and 8. But equally important are the terms of the “balance of trade” between spouses. They are the subject for this chapter.

We have noted that in Neckarhausen there was no general distinction between the kinds of property brought to a marriage by men and by women. The fact that women almost always included land in their dowries is a rather unusual feature of Württemberg family life considered in a European context. Does that mean that marriage portions balanced each other, one wealthy spouse attracting another? The way the discussion among historians and ethnologists has developed suggests a return to the problem of the “house,” that is the continuity over generations of the household, which combined both social and demographic reproduction. To provide for children and to ensure continuity, the family farm had to remain a viable economic unit: Hence, all those strategies to favor one son at the expense of others or to prejudice the descent of land in favor of sons over daughters. No matter what the formal rule, so the expectation goes, children had to be treated unequally if the system was to reproduce itself.