lots of spinsters and bachelors

[Skoosh]

Scottish casualties in the Great War were 26% and many of the survivors were in very poor nick & died as a result of the war! the total figures are unknown. Others emigrated at the first opportunity. Of course there was a shortage of men!

Skoosh.

[Rena]

When I was young in 1940s I was told that we had to take special care of baby boys as they tended to fall seriously ill and die.

A couple of decades ago when I started researching my father's family, this seemed to have a grain of truth in it when I discovered one of his direct paternal ancestors had had baptised three babies "John", two babies "Robert" and two babies "William. None of the baby girls had been "replaced"

There was some research published ln 2017 on immunity:-

" Genetic differences between the sexes mean newborn baby girls are less likely to fall ill with acute infections than newborn boys, a new study by researchers here has found. ... Girls have two copies of the X chromosome, while boys only have one and it is this chromosome that has more of the genes involved in immunity."

[bykerlads]

The comments about the relative robustness of baby girls and boys reminds me of what nurses in special baby care units often said: that premature girls had a bit more "fight"and resistance  in them than boys.Interesting that the genetic research seems to confirm this.
I was once told that following times of great communal stress such as war, more boys than girls are born, as if to replace the males lost in battles or who have migrated to find a better life. Do the stats bear this out?
Anecdotally, impoverished, stressed communities in modern times often have a gender imbalance towards more boys being born. Large numbers of  young males in a deprived neighbourhood will inevitably give rise to disruption, which in itself creates a vicious circle of pressured environments.( eg. Most teachers will confirm that a class with 20 boys and 10 girls is very different from one with 20 girls and 10 boys)
No criticism intended here of the male of the species. ( indeed I have bred a couple myself!) But an acknowledgement of the more subtle influences on the lives of the disadvantaged is worth making.

[Sloe Gin]

It's not true that WWI caused a "shortage of men".  I don't have statistics to hand, but the number of young men killed in the war was a very small percentage.  Most survived and came home. 

Come on, SG - you can't make dubious claims like that, and then say you have no statistics to hand!  It's obvious that the men killed (and there were quite a lot, as mentioned above) reduced almost exclusively the marriageable age-band.  One of my unmarried great-aunts (also mentioned) was said to have lost her young intended and never found another, either from grief or bad luck.  The result was the same.

OK then, here's an analysis which arrives at a figure of about 10% for deaths of men in the fighting age bracket of 19-41.  It's less than most people assume.
https://www.forces.net/heritage/history/what-were-actual-odds-dying-ww1

There would have been plenty of women who lost their boyfriends/fiancés and were too grief-stricken to find someone else.  But as I said, many war widows did remarry.  Some of them may have married older or younger men and some may have been marriages of convenience because they had children to support.  So I do think that pretty much any woman could have married if she chose.  Clearly some chose not to.

[conahy calling]

I wonder was poverty a factor for some of those who did not marry.

[Sloe Gin]

I wonder was poverty a factor for some of those who did not marry.

More the reverse, I'd guess.  Women from well-off families didn't need to marry for support.  But poorer women were more likely to marry for practical reasons, perhaps "settling" for someone who might not have been their ideal choice.

[Rena]

I wonder was poverty a factor for some of those who did not marry.

I think much was to do with the "station" the family held.  Of five girls whose father had paid for them to be taught a skill (school teachers and a nurse) none married.  By the time he died the spinster nurse had become a matron in charge of a nursing home.  She subsequently married and the rest of the family agreed that she'd married beneath her "station".  She was in her 40s when she married the head gardener of the nursing home.

I never met any of them but as a child I did see oil portraits of them and they all looked pretty to me 

[Andrew Tarr]

Some of them may have married older or younger men and some may have been marriages of convenience because they had children to support.  So I do think that pretty much any woman could have married if she chose.  Clearly some chose not to.

Well, even accepting your 90% figure, that meant about 10% of wishful women couldn't marry, which means a fair number - not 'pretty much any woman' ...

[Andrew Tarr]

When I was young in 1940s I was told that we had to take special care of baby boys as they tended to fall seriously ill and die.

Some marriages either failed to produce children, others were clearly destined to be unlucky with boy children.  My grandmother was one of ten children, six of whom died in infancy, including all four boys.  Aged four, she lost her 42-year-old mother trying to have an eleventh child.

Strangely, her eldest sister married and had no children at all - one supposes because of some conceptual difficulty.  These days I guess medical science would strain every sinew to satisfy the maternal wish.