Adventures in Family Limitation

Many theories of demographic transition stem from attempts to explain fertility differentials across economic and social groups. These differentials typically emerge once a decline in natality commences. Thus it is commonly observed that the fertility of urban populations falls short of that recorded for agricultural districts, that the upper classes tend to precede the working classes in the adaptation of family limitation, and the like. These observations are, in turn, used to justify economic and sociological theories which, by associating both social status and economic costs and benefits with occupation and residence, account for the fertility decline in terms of status and constrained choice.

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Antebellum Southern White Fertility: A Demographic and Economic Analysis

The Journal of Economic History ◽

10.1017/s002205070010823x ◽

1980 ◽

Vol 40 (2) ◽

pp. 331-350 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Richard H. Steckel

Keyword(s):

Economic Analysis ◽

Total Fertility Rate ◽

Time Trend ◽

Age At First Birth ◽

Demographic Analysis ◽

First Birth ◽

Distribution Of Wealth ◽

Socioeconomic Analysis ◽

Family Limitation ◽

Child Spacing

This paper investigates the decline and regional differential in antebellum southern white fertility using published census materials and the 1860 population schedules. Demographic analysis is conducted with a synthetic total fertility rate that has four components: age at first birth, age at last surviving birth, surviving-child spacing, and the proportion of women who eventually have surviving children. The socioeconomic analysis employs regressions and focuses on causes of the underlying changes in the components. Family limitation appears to have been unimportant in this population. The distribution of wealth was.probably an important factor shaping the time trend and regional differential in fertility.

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Family limitation and methods of contraception in an urban population

Population Studies ◽

10.1080/00324728.1963.10416455 ◽

1963 ◽

Vol 16 (3) ◽

pp. 286-301 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

L. T. Badenhorst

Keyword(s):

Urban Population ◽

Family Limitation

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“The Abominable Crime of Onan”: Catholic Pastoral Practice and Family Limitation in the United States, 1875–1919

Church History ◽

10.1017/s0009640700095706 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 71 (2) ◽

pp. 307-340 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Leslie Woodcock Tentler

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Major Depression ◽

Birth Control ◽

The United States ◽

Protestant Churches ◽

The People ◽

Family Limitation ◽

The Subject ◽

First Time ◽

Pastoral Practice

By the 1930s few Catholics in the United States could have been unaware of their church's absolute prohibition on contraception. A widely-publicized papal encyclical had spoken to the issue in 1930, even as various Protestant churches were for the first time giving a public blessing to the practice of birth control in marriage. Growing numbers of American Catholics had been exposed since at least 1920 to frank and vigorous preaching on the subject in the context of parish missions. (Missions are probably best understood as the Catholic analogue of a revival.) And by the early 1930s Catholic periodicals and pamphlets addressed the question of birth control more frequently and directly than ever before. As a Chicago Jesuit acknowledged in 1933, “Practically every priest who is close to the people admits that contraception is the hardest problem of the confessional today.” A major depression accounted in part for the hardness of the problem. But it was more fundamentally caused by the laity's heightened awareness of their church's stance on birth control and their growing consciousness of this position as a defining attribute of Catholic identity.

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