Abstract Marriage and birth registrations for the Canadian province of British Colombia have been 'linked' by computer into family groupings to provide reproductive histories of married couples. The usefulness of the approach is illustrated by a comparison of the early productivities of marriages contracted in 1961 and in 1951, taking into account the age of the bride, the duration of the marriage, and the religions of the groom, bride and officiating clergyman. Older Catholic brides are shown to run counter to the otherwise general trend towards increasing productivity in the early years of marriage.