birth control

birth control techniques appear to have been widely available long before the 19th cent. Herbal mixtures were advocated to reduce the sex drive or induce abortion. Such mixtures usually worked by causing violent vomiting or diarrhoea, although recent research has indicated that some ingredients, such as the herb savin, might well have produced uterine contractions. Contemporaries also seem to have been aware of the withdrawal technique since at least the early 18th cent., when the practice of coitus interruptus was linked by quack literature to an awesome list of debilitating medical complaints, including deafness, blindness, and loss of memory. Male contraceptives, known since at least the 16th cent., were advertised by the early 18th cent., when such ‘armour’, made of animal gut, was used, largely by upper-class men, to avoid contracting venereal infections from prostitutes. The 1820s and 1830s saw the first open discussion of birth control techniques, and the dissemination of (sometimes inaccurate) contraceptive knowledge amongst the working classes. More public debate followed the creation of the so-called Malthusian League (1877–1927) which distributed some 3 million pamphlets advocating birth control during its existence.

Before the third quarter of the 19th cent., however, there is little statistical evidence that English couples were practising much family limitation. The only important qualification is that marital fertility was on the low side (i.e. significantly lower than its potential biological maximum) due apparently to the contraceptive effect of relatively long periods of breast-feeding. Birth control before 1870 was restricted to higher social classes and some groups of industrial workers, such as those in the textile industry.

All this changed after 1870 when, within a few generations, Britain, in common with most other European countries, underwent the so-called fertility transition. Between 1880 and 1930 the fertility of women of child-bearing age declined by over 60 per cent and the average size of British families fell by almost two-thirds. This declining birth rate was due largely to the adoption of birth control within marriage. It is also clear that the contraceptive techniques used in the early stages of this decline were largely traditional methods such as abstinence, coitus interruptus, and ‘safe periods’ rather than mechanical aids such as condoms, caps, or sponges. It remains unclear why couples, particularly working-class couples, chose to limit the size of their families from the late 19th cent. Since traditional birth control methods were used, fertility decline was not ‘caused’ by any increase in the supply of mechanical contraceptives. It is unlikely, too, that improving survival chances of infants promoted a desire to reduce completed family size, since the fertility decline appears to have antedated the fall in infant mortality. In the end, the adoption of birth control within marriage may have been due to a new determination of women to limit the size of their families, prompted by the impact of feminist arguments, growing medical information regarding the dangers of repeated childbirth, and the impact of universal compulsory schooling in 1880, which reduced the contribution children might make to the household economy.

The most dramatic effect upon family and social life, however, came in the later 20th cent. with the increasing use of ‘the pill’, including, late in the century, the ‘morning-after’ pill. Among the consequences were an increase in the number of couples cohabiting rather than marrying, and in the number of single-parent families. See also children.

Jeremy Boulton