Fertility Class And Gender In Britain 1860 1940

This book offers an original interpretation of the history of falling fertilities in Britain between 1860 and 1940. It integrates the approaches of the social sciences and of demographic, feminist, and labour history with intellectual, social, and political history. It exposes the conceptual and statistical inadequacies of the orthodox picture of a national, unitary class-differential fertility decline, and presents an entirely new analysis of the famous 1911 fertility census of England and Wales. Surprising and important findings emerge concerning the principal methods of birth control: births were spaced from early on in marriage; and sexual abstinence by married couples was a far more significant practice than previously imagined. The author presents a new general approach to the study of fertility change, raising central issues concerning the relationship between history and social science.

Simon Szreter's book Fertility, class and gender in Britain, 1860-1940 argues that social and economic class fails to explain the cross-sectional differences in marital fertility as reported in the 1911 census of England and Wales. Szreter's conclusion made the book immediately influential, and it remains so. This finding matters a great deal for debates about the causes of the European fertility decline of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For decades scholars have argued whether the main forces at work were ideational or social and economic. This note reports a simple graphical and statistical re-analysis of Szreter's own data. We show that social class does explain cross-sectional differences in English marital fertility in 1911.

What did sex mean for ordinary people before the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, who were often pitied by later generations as repressed, unfulfilled and full of moral anxiety? This book provides the first rounded, first-hand account of sexuality in marriage in the early and mid-twentieth century. These award-winning authors look beyond conventions of silence among the respectable majority to challenge stereotypes of ignorance and inhibition. Based on vivid, compelling and frank testimonies from a socially and geographically diverse range of individuals, the book explores a spectrum of sexual experiences, from learning about sex and sexual practices in courtship, to attitudes to the body, marital ideals and birth control. It demonstrates that while the era's emphasis on silence and strict moral codes could for some be a source of inhibition and dissatisfaction, for many the culture of privacy and innocence was central to fulfilling and pleasurable intimate lives.

In 2012 Barnes and Guinnane published a revised statistical analysis of the critical evaluation of the official 1911 social class model of fertility decline that was presented in chapter 6 of Szreter's Fertility, class and gender in Britain, 1860-1940 (FCG). They argue that the official model of five ranked social classes is, after all, a satisfactory statistical summary of the fertility variance found among the married couples of England and Wales at the famous 1911 fertility census, and so they conclude that, pace Szreter, the official model provides a satisfactory account of the nation's fertility decline as one of social class differentials. It is acknowledged here that Barnes and Guinnane have deployed superior statistical techniques. However, it is pointed out that FCG identified fundamental problems with the design of the 1911 official model. It was a social evolutionary model privileging male professional occupations, not a modelling of recognized social class theory at the time or since. In FCG it was therefore termed 'the professional model'. The central historiographical claim of FCG is re-affirmed: that in order to study fruitfully the historical relationship between social class and fertility decline, an alternative approach is needed which explicitly integrates gender relations with social class.

This volume is an important study in demographic history. It draws on the individual returns from the 1891, 1901 and 1911 censuses of England and Wales, to which Garrett, Reid, Schürer and Szreter were permitted access ahead of scheduled release dates. Using the responses of the inhabitants of thirteen communities to the special questions included in the 1911 'fertility' census, they consider the interactions between the social, economic and physical environments in which people lived and their family-building experience and behaviour. Techniques and approaches based in demography, history and geography enable the authors to re-examine the declines in infant mortality and marital fertility which occurred at the turn of the twentieth century. Comparisons are drawn within and between white-collar, agricultural and industrial communities, and the analyses, conducted at both local and national level, lead to conclusions which challenge both contemporary and current orthodoxies.

A Companion to Contemporary Britain covers the key themesand debates of 20th-century history from the outbreak of the SecondWorld War to the end of the century. Assesses the impact of the Second World War Looks at Britain’s role in the wider world, including thelegacy of Empire, Britain’s ‘specialrelationship’ with the United States, and integration withcontinental Europe Explores cultural issues, such as class consciousness,immigration and race relations, changing gender roles, and theimpact of the mass media Covers domestic politics and the economy Introduces the varied perspectives dominating historicalwriting on this period Identifies the key issues which are likely to fuel futuredebate

Through analysis of key areas of social life, Irwin breaks with convention and develops a conceptual and analytical perspective of social change, focusing on relationality, context and interdependence.

This book is published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This open access book provides an overview of childlessness throughout Europe. It offers a collection of papers written by leading demographers and sociologists that examine contexts, causes, and consequences of childlessness in countries throughout the region.The book features data from all over Europe. It specifically highlights patterns of childlessness in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, Austria and Switzerland. An additional chapter on childlessness in the United States puts the European experience in perspective. The book offers readers such insights as the determinants of lifelong childlessness, whether governments can and should counteract increasing childlessness, how the phenomenon differs across social strata and the role economic uncertainties play. In addition, the book also examines life course dynamics and biographical patterns, assisted reproduction as well as the consequences of childlessness. Childlessness has been increasing rapidly in most European countries in recent decades. This book offers readers expert analysis into this issue from leading experts in the field of family behavior. From causes to consequences, it explores the many facets of childlessness throughout Europe to present a comprehensive portrait of this important demographic and sociological trend.

Why are some parts of the world so rich and others so poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution--and the unprecedented economic growth that came with it--occur in eighteenth-century England, and not at some other time, or in some other place? Why didn't industrialization make the whole world rich--and why did it make large parts of the world even poorer? In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark tackles these profound questions and suggests a new and provocative way in which culture--not exploitation, geography, or resources--explains the wealth, and the poverty, of nations. Countering the prevailing theory that the Industrial Revolution was sparked by the sudden development of stable political, legal, and economic institutions in seventeenth-century Europe, Clark shows that such institutions existed long before industrialization. He argues instead that these institutions gradually led to deep cultural changes by encouraging people to abandon hunter-gatherer instincts-violence, impatience, and economy of effort-and adopt economic habits-hard work, rationality, and education. The problem, Clark says, is that only societies that have long histories of settlement and security seem to develop the cultural characteristics and effective workforces that enable economic growth. For the many societies that have not enjoyed long periods of stability, industrialization has not been a blessing. Clark also dissects the notion, championed by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, that natural endowments such as geography account for differences in the wealth of nations. A brilliant and sobering challenge to the idea that poor societies can be economically developed through outside intervention, A Farewell to Alms may change the way global economic history is understood.