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The article presents the authors' views in response to a comment on their paper "Patterns of Low and Lowest-Low Fertility in Europe," published in a 2004 issue of the journal "Population Studies." In their comment, the critics have argued that the cohort-fertility analysis in the aforesaid paper is weak on theoretical grounds and the empirical analysis is incomplete. The authors affirm that they agree with the comment that, as a society, the Netherlands differs from Southern Europe and even more from Central and Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, from a contemporary global perspective, these differences should not be overemphasized. They say that in their analyses, they used the Netherlands as a reference case of a country with an extraordinary pattern of late childbearing that is not associated with lowest-low fertility levels. However, the critics believe that these unusual characteristics invalidate the use of the Dutch example in the paper. So, this criticism is misconceived. It is precisely the unusualness of the fertility pattern in the Netherlands that makes it a useful reference point in the study of low and lowest-low fertility.

The modernization of reproductive behaviour in the Netherlands was late and slow in comparison to other European countries. In this paper marital fertility (Ig) and nuptiality (Im) between 1850 and 1960 are described and analysed, in this way adding the Dutch case to the studies of the European Fertility Project. In the analysis a model is used in which economy, attitudes and infant mortality are the (clusters of) independent variables, and either Ig or Im is the dependent one. To avoid multicollinearity the interdependencies of the explaining factors are eliminated. An analysis is made of both the level and the development of fertility and nuptiality. The model used fits the data well, and the distinction between level and development is of great importance. If analyzed statistically the variance in Im and Ig between the provinces can for the most part be explained by the attitudinal factor, while when analyzing the changes in nuptiality and marital fertility the economic factor has the strongest explanatory power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]