Why aren’t women having more babies?

Mar 13, 2020 by

By Mary Harrington, UnHerd:

Did feminism kill the birth rate? The circumstantial evidence is damning. The ‘Women’s Liberation’ movement kicked off in earnest in the Sixties and Seventies, demanding (among other things) free contraception and abortion on demand. And over the same decades, the fertility rate crashed.

This should not be a surprise. Human babies take a long time to reach independence, which confers significant obligations on their parents. Before the existence of the welfare state, or reliable contraception, societies attempted to hold both men and women to these obligations by stigmatising sex outside marriage, and as far as possible forcing marriage on any couple whose illicit fun resulted in an unplanned pregnancy.

The alternatives to a ‘shotgun wedding’ were terrifying: in the 19th century, unmarried pregnancy could leave a woman indigent, imprisoned in near-slavery in places like the Magdalene laundries, as or at grave physical risk in the hands of a backstreet abortionist. Without easy access to divorce, too, a shotgun wedding could leave a mother dependent for life on an abusive spouse.

It is no wonder, then, that the 20th century women’s liberation movement sought economic independence and control over fertility for women. Feminists founded organisations such as Women’s Aid to challenge domestic abuse and violence, agitated for equal pay and, more fundamentally still, demanded greater control for women over their own fertility.

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