2.2  The New Zealand family to 1945

The population of New Zealand as measured by census data has been largely non-Maori for the latter part of the 19^th and all of the 20^th century as shown in Figure 1. Statistics on the “total population” for much of the period therefore refer essentially to the Pakeha or non-Maori population.

Figure 1 – Total population and Maori population, 1858-2000

Source: Census data, presented in Statistics New Zealand (2001b: Table 1.02)

2.2.1  The Maori family

Most available information on the pre-contact Maori family comes from Maori oral traditions, from archaeological evidence and from accounts from early explorers and from settlers who lived among the Maori. There is considerable uncertainty and complexity in the picture.

The main units of pre-contact Maori social organisation were whanau, hapu, iwi and waka[2]. Whanau, like the English word “family”, could include just parents and children or a wider group (just as, in English, a “family” get-together may include aunts, uncles and cousins). The whanau was the basic domestic unit, whether in the form of a nuclear or an extended family.

The wider social unit consisted of hapu—numbering from a dozen to possibly over 100 people—who combined in a variety of economic pursuits, sometimes in conjunction with other hapu depending on the scale of the activity. Belich (1996) includes this as an additional classification—the hapu grouping. The pattern of kin affiliations meant that an individual could have links with multiple hapu, and the distinctions between hapu could disappear over time. Alternatively, part of a hapu could break away and form a separate hapu group. Iwi were collections of hapu or hapu groupings, inter-related by lineage and custom. In many cases hapu had multiple iwi links.

The nuclear family—parents in an exclusive sexual relationship plus their children—played a role in the system. However, the core domestic unit commonly contained other members either un-related, such as servants, or related, such as parents. Fertility has been estimated to be 4-5 births per woman before 1840 (Pool 1991:48).

Marriages were frequently used to further alliances between whanau and hapu, although there is evidence of marriage based on mutual affection. Polygyny was common among high status males (Orbell 1978).

Perhaps the most noticeable factor affecting the Maori family in the 19^th century was the increase in mortality due to warfare and lack of immunity to introduced diseases. The resulting decline in population was rapid until the 1870s when it slowed and eventually reversed in the 1890s. Maori made up less than 6% of the total population by 1901, from over 50% in 1858. Accelerating the decline was the fact that many women failed to reach childbearing age. Even in 1900 when the population was increasing, female life expectancy at birth was estimated at 30 years, although women who reached the age of 15 could expect to live to 50 (Pool 1991:48).

The fall in population was initially greatest in those areas in which Maori had come into greatest contact with Pakeha. It was in these areas that the population also began to recover the most quickly, presumably because of the build up of resistance to disease.

In the 1870s Maori women gave birth to as many children as European women, but many Maori children did not survive into adulthood. In subsequent decades, birth rates increased gradually and mortality rates declined, leading to a gradual increase in population. This population increase was interrupted by the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed an estimated 4% of the Maori population (Pool 1991:117).

Nineteenth century land losses put pressure on the increasing Maori population, leading to greater mobility and a gradual drift to towns and cities. However, until the late 1930s most Maori lived in small communities with minimal contact with Pakeha. This will have helped to preserve some of the features that made Maori families distinctive. Maori were more likely to live in extended families and/or have regular contact with members of the wider family group, who would often rely on each other for support. This was exemplified by the introduction of old age pensions from 1898, where payments to Maori over 65 would frequently supplement the incomes of the wider whanau group (McClure 1998: 27-28). The main characteristics of the Maori economy in the early decades of the twentieth century were semi-subsistence agriculture and food gathering in conjunction with income from casual labouring and domestic service. When casual employment dried up in the 1930s, this sparked increased urban drift once economic conditions improved. By 1945, a quarter of Maori lived in towns and cities and the isolation of the Maori family from Pakeha influences began its rapid decline.

2.2.2  The Pakeha family

The early New Zealand Company settlements were founded with the aim of establishing in the country a cross-section of Victorian British society, shorn of its undesirable elements of poverty and crime. Families were a central part of the plan, and the company aimed to recruit complete nuclear families to travel to the colony rather than single people (although many children failed to survive the arduous journey).

One of the main drivers of population increase in the decades after 1840 was the gold rushes, which brought to the country what Wakefield, who organised settlements, would have considered quite the wrong sort of colonist. This pattern continued to a lesser extent with the assisted migration of the 1870s—large numbers of young men seeking economic advancement and smaller numbers of young women seeking husbands (Belich 1996). Marriage for practical rather than romantic reasons was the norm.

The result of the migration imbalance was a large excess of males, a high proportion of whom never married. The ratio of males to females in 1874 (including Maori) was 131 to 100, dropping to 112 by 1911 and 104 by 1921. Censuses until 1901 showed that over 20% of European males over 45 had never married. As this proportion declined, the number of never-married females over 45 increased to pass 12% in the 1940s (higher than the male rate). The 19^th century Pakeha community was thus polarised to a degree between single, often itinerant, males and settled families. Assisted passages for women from the 1860s, although they increased the number of women in the colony, appear to have done little to reduce the imbalance of the sexes, despite the opposite problem in Britain (a shortage of men).

Divorce was rare due to the limited grounds allowed, but became increasingly common from 1898 when the grounds for divorce were progressively extended.

Ties with the extended families were weaker than in Europe, as families were split by migration. Legislation such as the Destitute Persons Act 1877 required family members to look after their indigent relatives. However, extended families were rare and there is little evidence of intra-family assistance in practice. The rate of dependency on family members would have been comparatively low due to the youth of the population (only 1% over 65 in 1881), the fact that fitter, healthier people tend to emigrate and survive the journey, and a high rate of property ownership that increased the independence of the elderly once they became more numerous from the 1890s.