The Association Between Religio-Ethnic Identification and Fertility Among “Contemporary” Protestants and Jews

Abstract

IT is a major thesis of demographic theory that full scale involvement in an urban-industrial system ought to result in a small size family.' Fertility study after fertility study in European countries, in Israel, in Japan, in Lebanon, and in Formosa show that as people become a part of an urban-industrial society they achieve greater fertility control and move toward a small size family.2 Nevertheless, there does exist a major exception to this general demographic trend, and that exception is the American Roman Catholic community. Large scale national fertility studies by Freedman et al. (1959b:103-115), Westoff et al. (1961:178-211; 1963:79-105), and Whelpton et al. (1966:69-73) have repeatedly shown a sizable Catholic fertility rate and a strong and consistent association between a greater degree of Catholic religiosity and bearing a large number of children with close child spacing. Furthermore, upper status Catholics display this high fertility pattern to a greater degree than do lower status Catholics, and they are also more religiously involved.3 Finally, this association between Catholic identity and a high fertility pattern is quite pronounced among Irish descendant Catholics, and this ethnic group is concentrated in the upper socioeconomic levels of the Catholic community.4 In summary, then, as American Catholics have become well integrated into the modern urban-industrial world, they have maintained a high fertility pattern and made such a pattern a specific and clear-cut Catholic issue. What about the association between identity and fertility among the vast numbers of Protestants who are deeply involved in our urban-industrial society