This chapter considers the ways in which the age and incidence of marriage and the spacing of births in marriages have resulted in distinctive levels of fertility within various systems of household formation that predate the Fertility Transition which began in Europe in the nineteenth century and is still ongoing globally. It first discusses a framework adopted by Thomas Robert Malthus, particularly with reference to nuclear family households in western Europe in which what he termed the ‘preventive check’ associated with age and incidence of female marriage predominated. It then proceeds to assess fertility constraints specific to joint household systems in Asia and matrifocal households lodged within lineages in West Africa, in which age and incidence of marriage were far less important as fertility suppressants, although females did marry at early ages and few avoided marriage altogether. It concludes that practices influencing the spacing of births in non-European settings could deliver low fertility levels in the absence of marital restraint. There is a brief assessment of the extent to which elements of behaviours associated with these differing household systems have continued to manifest themselves in transitional and post-transitional fertility regimes.