14 DAY TRIAL // There is an obvious worldwide trend towards smaller families. And the issue is becoming more and more a social policy, as many countries could face grim perspectives of caring for an increasing population.
The one-child Chinese politics is well-known. US families have become smaller during the last two centuries, and the birth control pill alone is not the only factor. Perhaps France was the country that triggered this process.
Socio-economic and cultural factors add to the issue, aspects shared also by most of Western Europe. "There are two reasons fertility rates can decline," said J. David Hacker, a SUNY Binghamton historian. "One explanation is that marriage declines. Not as many women get married, and if they do marry, they do so at a later age, so that there is less time to have children. The second explanation is that people consciously try to limit having children, which was revolutionary in the 19th century."
In 1800, an American woman raised on average 7 to 8 children in 1800, but by 1900 the number had already decreased to about 3.5 and currently is slightly more than two. Birth rates decreased form the East Coast towards the west, among pioneers colonizing the wild west.
In the current economic system, smaller families are a better approach. Before the 1800s, children received education at home or in church, but after that, public schooling made children instruction more costly, and the children were less helpful for home jobs. Meanwhile, women find themselves in the situation of disposing of free time, permitting them to be part of the paid labor force.
But money is not the sole explanation. "We know for sure that you don't have to reach a high level of per capita income for fertility to decline, but we don't know exactly what sets it off," said historian George Atler at Indiana University. "Whether it's general change or attitudes about birth control is still a question debated among demographers today."
Christian dogma, two centuries ago, banned abortion and divorce and in the US, the 1873 Comstock Act put in illegality the circulation of so-called "obscene" materials, including those about contraception. "Ironically, record sales of two family planning books published in the 1830s suggest that the public was eager to keep families small, regardless of religious or political pressure. There's a flurry of publications in the mid-19th century giving readers advice on how to control family size," said Hacker.
Two of the best sellers of that epoch were "Moral Physiology" by Robert Dale Owen, describing coitus interruptus (ejaculating outside of the woman's body) as a contraception method and Charles Knowlton's "The Fruits of Philosophy", that explained to women how to employ a spermicidal solution.