Their connections were those of fathers and sons-in-law, brothers-in-law and distant in-law relations.
Parents with no daughters developed close relationships with their daughtersin-law and parents without sons became close to their sons-in-law.
Some were even quite pleased because they had never much liked their sons-in-law anyway.
Given the expected importance of gender for informal ties, tables present figures separately for older men and women, sons and daughters, and sons-in-law and daughters-in-law.
Despite the dominance of intra-family support, the reported figures may well be under-estimates since some in the ' other persons ' category may be parents-in-law, daughters/sons-in-law or other relatives by marriage.
These indicators of expressive support show relatively less reliance on friends and neighbours followed more distantly by daughters-in-law and sons-in-law.
However, the remaining heirs include two women and three sons-in-law, or the adopted spouses of heiresses.
Heirs were assumed to be natural sons and were replaced by adopted sons or sons-in-law if there was no natural heir.
