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.
In 1961, the contraceptive pill was first made available. In 1968, the Abortion Act made it legal to terminate a pregnancy. And in 1974, health authorities were given permission to prescribe the contraceptive pill to unmarried women. The marriage rate promptly began to fall, and continued to do so steadily from its 1970 peak of nearly 60% before stabilising at around 20% at the turn of the century.
It seems that when marriage and raising babies becomes optional rather than inevitable, many women will choose to prioritise other things (I know – imagine!). Today, those couples who still marry do so an average of more than a decade later than they did in 1970. The average age of having a first baby has climbed from 23.7 in 1970 to 28.8 in 2016, and the same statistics show that more than half of first-time UK births are now to parents aged over 30.
And as well as (or in my case because of) starting later, we are also having fewer children: nearly half of households never have more than one. Only one in seven families has three or more.
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SubscribeWhy so down on “outsourcing” childcare to “poorer women”? As long as a mother pays a fair wage for childcare, it is ok for her to pay someone else to help take care of a child. That person may very well be less wealthy than the mother, but if the mother is a career-oriented hardworking smart woman whose parents gave her a good start in life, then she will be more wealthy than most people. When more wealthy people pay less wealthy people a fair wage for childcare, that helps the less wealthy rather than hurts them. Also, regarding the “women” part of “poorer women”, not all childcare workers are women.
Regarding the doom and gloom about “keep[ing] liberal populations static across generations”, what’s wrong with relying on a partner to be the primary caregiver? Yes, this means that the mother will be less involved, but she can still have a relationship with the child.
You can view traditional marriage as a man supporting a woman financially so that she can rear children and take care of the home. Why can’t this work in the other direction? A woman can support a partner (e.g., the father) financially while that person rears the children and takes care of the home. Yes, the mother will probably need to take a bit of time off work to give birth, but that doesn’t need to be a long time if her partner is a full-time caregiver and it doesn’t need to damage the mother’s career.
Certainly there are barriers to this swap of traditional gender roles, but they aren’t insurmountable, and this kind of arrangement is happening more and more.
I guess we have too small a pregnancy rate because we do not test enough. More pregnancy tests would give us more pregnancies.
PS: But I do not want to get pregnant myself!