Demography and Degeneration: Eugenics and the Declining Birthrate in Twentieth-Century Britain

Abstract

Richard Soloway offers a compelling and authoritative study of relationship of eugenics movement to dramatic decline in birthrate and family size in twentieth-century Britain. Working in a tradition of hereditarian determinism which held fast to premise that like tends to beget like, eugenicists developed and promoted a theory of biosocial engineering through selective reproduction. Soloway shows that appeal of eugenics to middle and upper classes of British society was closely linked to recurring concerns about relentless drop in fertility and rapid spread of birth control practices from 1870s to World War II. Demography and Degeneration considers how differing scientific and pseudoscientific theories of biological inheritance became popularized and enmeshed in prolonged, often contentious national debate about race suicide and the dwindling family. Demographic statistics demonstrated that birthrates were declining among better-educated, most successful classes while they remained high for poorest, least-educated portion of population. For many people steeped in ideas of social Darwinism, eugenicist theories made this decline all more alarming: they feared that falling birthrates among better classes signfied a racial decline and degeneration that might prevent Britain from successfully negotiating myriad competive challenges facing nation in twentieth century. Although organized eugenics movement remained small and elitist throughout most of its history, this study demonstrates how pervasive eugenic assumptions were in middle and upper reaches of British society, at least until World War II. It also traces important role of eugenics in emergence of modern family planning movement and formulation of population policies in interwar years.