Full Citation

Title: Rocking the Cradle: Downsizing the New England Family

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2006

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Abstract: Sometime around the year 1800, if not before, couples throughout New England began talking to each other about the desirability of postponing children. Why they did so is something of a mystery, but the consequences of those conversations are unmistakable: The median size of completed families in the region halved for cohorts marrying between 1790 and 1840. The number of children per family fell in the rural interior as well as in crowded coastal communities. How couples in the period actually managed to control family size is also a mystery, because no magic pills or rubber condoms were then available. No one at the time even understood the physiology of human reproduction. People obtained their health information from gossip or folklore, and women shared recipes for herbal remedies. The timing of ovulation was utterly unknown even to university trained doctors. Any rhythm method was necessarily based on false assumptions and any success with it based on luck. The only contraceptive barriers available in the early decades of the nineteenth century were clumsy sheaths made of animal organs used by city prostitutes and their customers. Their unsavory connotations aroused disgust and revulsion among the respectable few who knew about them, yet no acceptable alternatives existed.

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Authors: Main, Gloria L.

Periodical (Full): Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Issue: 1

Volume: 37

Pages: 35-58

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Family and Marriage, Fertility and Mortality

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