Birth Control and American Modernity: A History of Popular Ideas by Trent MacNamara

Abstract

Reviewed by: Birth Control and American Modernity: A History of Popular Ideas by Trent MacNamara Susan Klepp Trent MacNamara. Birth Control and American Modernity: A History of Popular Ideas. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. x + 308 pp. Ill. $39.99 (978-1-108-65046-5). The title of Trent MacNamara’s Birth Control and American Modernity: A History of Popular Ideas is somewhat misleading. This is not, in its foundation, a study of fertility and fecundity in American history. Rather this study is a detailed, dense argument about profound change and the moral justification and practical consequences of any such change. How do private individuals come to support and partake in mass movements that involve substantial changes in both ideas and behavior? The Prohibition movement was among the possible choices for study, but MacNamara decided on an investigation of the demographic transition from “high” marital fertility to “low” marital fertility as apparent in a shift from “large” families to “small.” This demographic shift, roughly congruent with industrialization, began as private decisions by spouses in the late eighteenth century and became a publicly debated subject between about 1900 and the mid-1930s. In theory, humans could produce an average of thirty children per couple over the course of the marriage. This is based on an assumption of annual births over thirty fecund years. No human society and only the rarest of individuals have even come close to producing such numbers. Restraint of births has been the rule. [End Page 267] Some restraint in reproduction is biological: adolescent sub-fecundity, breast-feeding, and a subsequent pregnancy are examples. Some restraint in births is unintentional: poor health, nutritional deficiencies, trauma, heavy labor, and stress are among the events that can reduce sexual activity, lower sperm counts, interrupt ovulation, and lead to miscarriage or stillbirth. In the past, traditional birth control methods were primarily employed as temporary responses to unusual conditions. When the shift to deliberate, goal-orientated family planning emerged as an expected part of marriage, contraceptive techniques became more acceptable and more common. Demographers are most interested in the goal-orientated employment of birth control methods; MacNamara takes a wider view. He groups methods ranging from abstinence to abortion together. He is little interested in the types of devices promoted and not concerned with the efficacy of available techniques. Generally, he finds that birth control was already familiar to audience members who came to hear prominent advocates like Margaret Sanger. The public had already made up its mind about the practical and moral issues presented by birth control. The evidence of popular opinion is provided by two collections of unpublished letters: one series was sent to employees of a Margaret Sanger clinic, the other to a progressive radio broadcaster in Denver. Several mainstream newspapers with regional or national influence were also consulted. The three archival collections provided insight into the opinions of native-born, middle-class white men from the urban Northeast. Few women and fewer, if any, African Americans, Hispanics, or other groups were included or addressed in these archives—not exactly a “popular” segment of the country. For the included subset of Americans, birth control techniques were familiar and sometimes even effective. Consumers defended birth control as emblematic of the new age: progressive, modern, forward-looking, promoting comfort and health, economically prudent, and especially supportive of the welfare of women and children. The justifications of birth control were bound up with the core ideas promoted during the Progressive era. Meanwhile, ever-shrinking numbers of pronatalist Americans were critical of new values that decentered beliefs in an ordered, apparently hierarchical society, ruled by the law of nature or of God, and transcending the material things of the world for a concern with eternity and a trust in divine providence. Teddy Roosevelt was a central figure early in this public debate for his pronatalist campaign to raise white birth rates and prevent “race suicide.” Birth control, secularism, and greed were criticized for promoting selfishness and ignoring natural law and the commandment to multiply. Individuals, families, and states are debtors and are obligated to those who came before and those who will follow. Theology, especially Catholic doctrine, and philosophy give meaning to...