Birth control in Britain

Abstract

Abstract The first nationally representative study of attitudes to contraception and of birth control practices has recently been undertaken by the Population Investigation Committee in collaboration with Social Surveys (Gallup Poll) Ltd. This paper presents some of the results obtained from interviews with about 2,350 men and women married since the first World War; almost all of these people were prepared to talk fairly freely about contraception, though some were initially reluctant to admit the use of non-appliance methods, and a few may have successfully concealed their practices altogether. A comparison of the attitudes to birth control of informants in successive marriage cohorts, i.e. of those married in each of the four decades from the 1920s onwards, shows growing and more definite approval: no more than 50 per cent of those marrying in the 1920s, but as many as 70 per cent of those marrying in the 1950s, favour birth control without qualification. Although the extent of approval increased from cohort to cohort for each sex, in each occupational class and in each religious group, the non-manual class consistently approved rather more than the routine (i.e, not skilled) manual, and the Protestants approved much more than the Roman Catholics. Birth control, increasingly adopted by each successive cohort, is now practised by as many as 73 per cent of the 1940 cohort. Among those more recently married, 70 per cent are already practising and a further considerable proportion may be expected to do so before the wives' childbearing years are over. Class differences in the ultimate extent of practice have very nearly vanished, although the tendency for the manual worker couples to start contraception rather later in their lives than the non-manual persists. Differences in practice between the religious groups are narrowing, but have not disappeared: Roman Catholics, especially those who are devout, continue to practise less frequently than the Protestants. In conclusion, the trend in mid-twentieth century Britain has been towards common acceptance of the idea, and much more widespread and equal use of birth control as a normal part of the family-building process.