Timeline for Why did people have so many children in Victorian times?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
19 events
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| Jan 23 at 15:54 | comment | added | JonathanReez | those who rely on withdrawal as a contraception method - such people are referred to as "parents" => it's actually quite reliable if done properly, especially if one takes the ovulation cycle into account. It being unreliable is a fake news story, for the most part. | |
| Sep 14, 2023 at 13:36 | comment | added | Etack Sxchange | There's also this claim that being poor results in stress and depression. and being stressed and depressed result in more sexual activities (more in men) to relieve one's mental mood. The overall result is production of more children; because poor people (especially in the past) didn't think of contraception. | |
| Oct 24, 2022 at 8:41 | comment | added | TheHonRose | My mother, born 1920 and RC, genuinely believed when young that it was a sin to refuse a husband's sexual demands. OTOH, until relatively recently, children were potential wage earners at a very young age. | |
| Mar 1, 2021 at 0:51 | comment | added | user48479 | 'There is a name in the medical community for those who rely on withdrawal as a contraception method - such people are referred to as "parents".' hahaha +1 | |
| Aug 28, 2018 at 17:27 | comment | added | Greg | Considering that children were able to work at a farm or in a shop, in a factory, or helping at home and few of them had tuition problems or costs associated with ballet classes, having many children was financially manageable. You guys also forget a thing called religion which actually encourages people to raise many children as a morally good thing. | |
| Aug 27, 2018 at 17:09 | comment | added | TomD | Another reason to add is that most people during that time (particularly in the US) were farmers, so the more children you had, the more people you had helping run the farm and feed the family. Also, there wasn't really a concept of single serving. When you were hungry, you slaughtered a pig, which has a lot of meat, so the economics worked out better as well. Another reason was religion. Christianity was fervently followed during the period and there are many passages where it praises children. openbible.info/topics/having_a_baby | |
| Sep 4, 2017 at 23:32 | comment | added | WS2 | (France) was the only European country in which the absolute number of births fell during the nineteenth century. In 1826-30 it averaged 975,000 a year, in 1906-10 only 830,000 M.S.Anderson The ascendancy of Europe (2000) p.122. I seriously doubt the incidence of famine was as high in France (in C19) as in many parts of Europe e.g. the Austro-Hungarian Empire? Ireland? - yet its birth rates lagged. It is a well-documented phenomenon. | |
| Sep 4, 2017 at 23:02 | history | edited | MCW♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Sep 4, 2017 at 22:44 | comment | added | MCW♦ | I think a great deal of that has to do with miscarriage due to starvation. | |
| Sep 4, 2017 at 22:04 | comment | added | WS2 | As regards your comments on "withdrawal" , I would only ask that you look at the 19th century demography of France. Inescapably, it does appear that millions must have practised abstention, for their birth figures to have been so much lower than the rest of Europe. And this may, in turn, have had something to do with the French system of land inheritance. Emile Zola does touch on the matter in his novel La Terre. | |
| S Sep 1, 2017 at 11:04 | history | edited | MCW♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| S Sep 1, 2017 at 11:04 | history | suggested | NVZ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Sep 1, 2017 at 10:53 | review | Suggested edits | |||
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| Aug 31, 2017 at 15:26 | comment | added | Cees Timmerman | @Bregalad unrealfacts.com/condoms-illegal-united-states | |
| Aug 31, 2017 at 14:14 | vote | accept | Charlie | ||
| Aug 31, 2017 at 8:18 | comment | added | TripeHound | For information: This Gapminder page leads to a flash-based chart that can show average children-per-woman against time (among other things). For the UK, it was mostly level around five from 1800 to 1880, then dropped steadily to just below two prior to WWII. For the US, it dropped more-or-less steadily from seven in 1800 to two prior to 1940 (both had a post-war upswing). | |
| Aug 30, 2017 at 21:12 | history | edited | MCW♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Aug 30, 2017 at 20:02 | comment | added | T.E.D.♦ | Upvoted. One could argue the current human body evolved (is designed) for a world without modern medicine, where your genes' best chance for long-term survival was to get you to pop out as many babies as physiology allows to try to overcome the death rate. If there were ever humans capable of avoiding pregnancy through their own efforts, those offending genes were fished out of the gene pool long ago. Devices completely independent of genetics are pretty much required. | |
| Aug 30, 2017 at 19:44 | history | answered | MCW♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |