Countless books have portrayed the lives of those chosen by the American electorate to occupy the White House, rent-free, for four-year intervals. There is hardly an aspect of the family lives of the 43 past presidents that hasn’t been exhaustively scrutinized, yielding battalions of tomes, texts, exposes and doctoral theses. But this being November, when elections are customarily held, a further demographic glance at the presidential families is justified. This, too, is a time in American history when family values have become a transcendent issue, deemed by many to be more important even than national security.

Forty-three men, not all elected to the presidency, have occupied the White House (or its residential equivalent): One resolute bachelor (Buchanan) and 42 married. (Grover Cleveland had also begun his presidency as a bachelor but married Frances Folsom in the second year of his presidency.)

The resolutely single president, James Buchanan, had been engaged to marry Ann Coleman of Lancaster, Pa., some 38 years before his elevation to the presidency; sadly, though, she died of an overdose of laudanum (opium) and Buchanan never entertained thoughts of marriage again.

Four of the 42 married presidents were childless (Washington, Madison, Jackson and Polk). Interestingly, three of these four presidents had married women who were widowed (Martha Washington and Dolly Madison) or who had previously been divorced. Rachel Doleson Jackson had been married to Lewis Robards but she misinterpreted the Virginia divorce laws as an actual divorce. Her subsequent marriage to Jackson was thus transiently bigamous until she obtained a legal separation, in 1793.

James Polk’s childless marriage may possibly be ascribed to a medical event in his childhood. At 17, suffering from severe abdominal pains, he was taken to the office of Dr. Ephraim McDowell in Danville, Ky. It was in 1812, when neither anesthesia nor aseptic surgery were known. Mcdowell operated on young Polk, using brandy as an anodyne. Some history texts assert that he removed gall stones, but more recent inquiries indicate that it was bladder stones that he extracted; and when incising through the perineum, he may have inadvertently interrupted the tubular pathways carrying semen, thus rendering Polk sterile. The surgery was otherwise successful and Polk, the first president born in North Carolina, went on to an eminent career as congressman, House speaker and 11th president.

Six of the 42 married presidents were married twice (Tyler, Fillmore, Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson and Reagan). The second marriages of Fillmore and Reagan were childless while Theodore Roosevelt’s second marriage yielded five children; Benjamin Harrison’s one child, and John Tyler’s seven (in addition to the seven children born to Letitia, his first wife).

And the wives of the presidents? The wives of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Jackson had married before. The wives of Wilson, Harding and Kennedy survived the deaths of their husbands and remarried. Some of the presidents, including Cleveland and Wilson, were married while living in the White House. Three presidents became widowers while in office: Tyler, Benjamin Harrison and Wilson.

Martha Jefferson, Rachel Jackson, Hannah van Buren, Ellen Arthur and Alice Roosevelt died before their husbands assumed the presidency. Actress Jane Wyman was divorced from her husband, Ronald Reagan, many years before his election to the presidency.

There were 90 male and 62 female babies born to those elected to the White House, a total of 152 offspring. The male:female sex ratio of this small sample, 1.45, is substantially greater than the general newborn 1.05 ratio in this nation.

Of the first 10 presidents (Washington through Tyler), there were an average of 4.6 offspring per president. In the next 10 (Polk through Garfield), there were an average of 3.9; in the next 10 (Arthur through Hoover), 3.0; in the final 12 (Franklin Roosevelt through George W. Bush) 3.1.

Can anything be concluded from these meager statistics? The fecundity of those elected to the presidency seems to have diminished since the office was established in 1789; the number of children per American family has gradually decreased in the 22 decades since Washington’s inauguration — for a variety of cultural and medical reasons, including more prudent family planning. The presidential fecundity may therefore be little more than a reflection of a general trend. The increasing stress of the office must also be considered.

And as a corollary observation, the deeper significance of which will be left in abeyance: Presidents aligned with the Republican Party have been more fertile than those who were Democrats.

smamd@cox.net