They probably had a lower rate of premarital sex and illegitimate births than either nation's current society, although that's hard to tell.
Certainly hard to prove. But I suspect it's not a lot different. there may be short periods of time where there is a variance. Sex is too powerful of a human drive.
There was a study done a few years ago of a small town in England where they did genetic testing of the town and did a "validation" of who the father was [or who the person thought it was]. There was something on the order of 15%+, that were mistaken about their father.
I mentioned this to a friend of mine, who had read a study of the studies on the subject. It didn't make any difference on the culture, country, or time period, they always came up with the same ballpark discrepency....Of course, genetic testing wouldn't necessarily determine any close relatives, e.g., a brother, of the alleged father.
Then there are really wierd anomolies. I was talking to a an aquaintance that had researched the history of a small village in England. In reviewing the old Church records from the 1700s, she observed a unique characteristic. Women got married only after they gave birth to their first child. Exactly why that occurred is speculative. There's no written explanation from the village, but the characteristic was recorded for over a decade.
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