Birth Control Campaign Research Articles

Facilitating fertility decline through economic development: a principal-agent analysis of local bureaucratic incentives in China’s fertility transition

Despite close associations, political science had weak explanatory power for fertility transition. It often depicts the political processes of fertility transition as direct and coercive policies and mechanical execution without consideration of indirect bureaucratic processes. Drawing on principal-agent and economic-driven theories, this study established a novel model using 1980–2000 Chinese provincial panel data: local officials facilitated fertility decline through economic development for career advancement. System generalized method moments (GMM) and ordered logistic regression (OLM) results showed: (1) gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth (OR = 0.012) and total fertility rate (TFR) decline (OR = 0.026) increased promotion odds, while excessive TFR decline (over 37% within one term) decreased it; (2) the critical age (59) and tenure year (one year before leaving office) positively associated with GDP per capita, industrialization, and lower TFR; (3) GDP per capita and industrialization negatively associated with TFR. Facilitating fertility decline via economic development was an efficient, low-risk strategy for local officials compared to radical birth control campaigns. It was the first study applying principal-agent theory to explain how bureaucratic processes enabled fertility transitions. It combined political and economic-driven theories on fertility transition, advancing political demography and refining the social science paradigm on fertility transition.

Assessment of Mass media utilization preference in birth control campaign among health care providers in Delta State, Nigeria

This study examined the most preferred and effective mass media channel that health workers often use to campaign for birth control practice in Delta State of Nigeria. To accomplish this, a structured questionnaire was used to answer three research questions that bother on the most preferred, effective, as well as the factors that affect the preferred channel, used for the campaign of birth control. Though all media channel, including the traditional and social media platform was found to be useful and effective, the television, with an outstanding score of 37 percent, followed by the radio that had 25 percent, was found to be more preferred, and effective. Though the radio, with a score of 40 percent, was found to be the most cost effective channel, health workers in the state observe that the television is more accessible and commendable in the campaign for birth control in the State. Despite the effectiveness of the television, results show that the educational level, sociocultural and religious practice of Deltans, were found to impinge on the practice of media campaign for birth control. The study therefore conclude that a robust budget should be made available for the continuous running of mass media campaign, especially the television, for birth control. Furthermore, mass media experts are advised to design media messages that will eradicate the misconceptions, sociocultural, as well as the religious components often associated with mass media campaign for birth control.

Birth Control, Border Control

Betty Mary Goetting opened the first birth control clinic on the U.S.-Mexico border in 1937. The rhetoric she used to advocate for contraception in El Paso, Texas, paralleled eugenic trends in the birth control movement nationwide, focused on curbing fertility rates among those considered of poor mind and body. Where previous studies focus on the urban North, this borderlands case study places the birth control movement’s attention to overpopulation within the context of immigration restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border. Goetting’s birth control campaigns, supported by the movement’s pioneer Margaret Sanger, targeted Mexican-origin women as part of a larger process that sought to protect the body politic from non-white immigrants while simultaneously exploiting their labor. Despite Catholic backlash against birth control and the racist rhetoric of Anglo birth control advocates, Mexican-origin women enthusiastically visited the El Paso birth control clinic. Given the dearth of health care afforded working-class, Mexican-origin women at this time, hundreds of women used the clinic’s services for their own purposes—reminding us that birth control movements offer a paradox of coercion and choice.

Family-to-family child migration network of informal adoption in China

Historically, informal adoption has been a prevalent Chinese social phenomenon that has altered typical family structures and the lives of children. Due to ambiguous definitions and the scarcity of data on informal adoption, the patterns and processes of informal adoption are not well understood. Therefore, in this study, data from commonwealth websites were used to explore the temporal and spatial patterns and network evolution of informal adoption from 1924 to 2018. The results indicate that severe famine and birth control campaigns increased the number of informal adoptions. Son preference was highlighted during the strict implementation of the one-child policy. From a spatial perspective, the data are distributed in provinces and zones with higher population densities. Major cities also play a key role in information transfer. We expect the findings to provide basic knowledge on informal adoption in China and serve as a reference for the protection of children’s rights.

China’s Hidden Children: Abandonment, Adoption, and the Human Cost of the One-Child Policy

The world in the twentieth century witnessed quite a few gargantuan social engineering projects, from forced massive collectivization in the Soviet Union, compulsory villagization in Africa, to planned economies in a large number of socialist countries following the Second World War. Aimed at transforming societies and modeling human lives, such projects demonstrated the might of the state power, not infrequently with terrifying horror and human tragedies of massive scales. A particular and extreme example was the birth control campaign in the People’s Republic of China, the world’s most populous country. In the context of a global fear of population explosion in the latter half of the century and with a trade-mark known as the one-child policy, China’s birth control campaign came after most of its fertility decline had already been achieved. In three-and-half long decades, enforcement of the policy deprived Chinese families and individuals of their reproductive rights, resulted in tens of millions of sterilizations, IUD insertions, and induced abortions, almost all born by women, and forcefully altered the family and kin network of hundreds of millions of Chinese families. Kay Ann Johnson’s book, China’s Hidden Children, offers a penetrating political analysis of this social engineering project, interweaved with gut-wrenching stories of parents and children, who were the victims of this unprecedented and extreme birth control policy.

We Must Not Allow a Contraception Gap: Planned Parenthood's Campaign for New Birth Control and Feminist Health Activism in the 1990s.

In 1990, Planned Parenthood Federation of America launched a nationwide public relations drive called the Campaign for New Birth Control in reaction to reports that Americans were being deprived of contraceptives available in other parts of the world. This article will use Planned Parenthood's Campaign for New Birth Control as a case study of how reproductive rights activists organized around emerging contraceptive technologies in the late twentieth century. It will discuss how Planned Parenthood tried to rally a diverse range of constituencies around the notion of a "contraception gap." This construct was based on the presumption that developing new contraceptive technologies was unmistakably feminist because it gave women more options to control their fertility. However, other actors involved in the New Birth Control campaign believed the "contraception gap" was an inappropriate strategy for mobilizing broad support for birth control innovation.

Birth control campaigns for youths and young adults: From the perspectives of different organizations

Objectives: To describe the common features of birth control campaigns for youths and young adults, designed by public and private organizations. Methods: Our team conducted a scan for birth contro...

Re-imagining the Noir Femme Fatale on the Renaissance Stage

[Introduction]: Traditionally, the femme fatale has been closely associated with a series of noir films (such as Double Indemnity [1944], The Maltese Falcon [1941], and The Big Heat [1953]) in the 1940s and 50s that necessarily betray male anxieties about independent women in the years during and following World War II. However, the anxieties and historical factors that precipitated the emergence of the noir femme fatale similarly existed in the sixteenth century and, as a result, the femme fatale can be re-imagined in a series of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. In this context, to re-imagine is to imagine or conceive of something in a new way. It involves taking a concept or an idea and re-imagining it into something simultaneously similar and new. This article will argue, first, that the noir femme fatale’s emergence coincided with a period of history characterised by suspicion, intolerance and perceived vulnerability and that a similar set of historical factors—namely the presence of a female monarch and changes to marriage laws—precipitated the emergence a femme fatale type figure in the Renaissance period. Second, noir films typically contain a series of narrative tropes that can be similarly identified in a selection of Renaissance plays, which enables the production of a new, re-imagined reading of these plays as tragedies of the feminine desire for autonomy. The femme fatale, according to Rebecca Stott, is not unique to the twentieth century. The femme fatale label can be applied retrospectively to seductive, if noticeably evil women, whose seduction and destruction of men render them amenable to our twenty-first century understanding of the femme fatale (Allen). Mario Praz similarly contends that the femme fatale has always existed; she simply becomes more prolific in times of social and cultural upheaval. The definition of the femme fatale, however, has only recently been added to the dictionary and the burden of all definitions is the same: the femme fatale is a woman who lures men into danger, destruction and even death by means of her overpowering seductive charms. There is a woman on the Renaissance stage who combines adultery, murder, and insubordination and this figure embodies the same characteristics as the twentieth-century femme fatale because she is similarly drawn from an archetypal pattern of male anxieties regarding sexually appetitive/desirous women. The fear that this selection of women elicit arises invariably from their initial defiance of their fathers and/or brothers in marrying without their consent and/or the possibility that these women may marry or seek a union with a man out of sexual lust. The femme fatale of 1940s and 50s noir films is embodied by such women as Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Maltese Falcon), Phyllis Dietrichson (Double Indemnity), and Ann Grayle (Murder, My Sweet), while the figure of the femme fatale can be re-imagined in a series of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, including The Changeling (1622), Arden of Faversham (1592), and The Maid’s Tragedy (1619). Like the noir femme fatale, there is a female protagonist in each of these plays who uses both cunning and sexual attractiveness to gain her desired independence. By focusing on one noir film and one Renaissance play, this article will explore both the historical factors that precipitate the emergence of these fatal women and the structural tropes that are common to both Double Indemnity and Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling. The obvious parallels between the two figures at the centre of these narratives—Phyllis and Beatrice-Joanna respectively—namely an aversion to the institution of marriage and the instigation of murder to attain one’s desires, enable a re-imagined reading of Beatrice-Joanna as a femme fatale.

Midwife and Public Health Nurse Tatsuyo Amari and a State-Endorsed Birth Control Campaign in 1950s Japan.

Mrs. Tatsuyo Amari, a qualified midwife and nurse, served Japan's state-endorsed birth control campaign as a "birth control field instructor" in rural Minamoto Village of Yamanashi Prefecture just west of Tokyo. Her work sheds light on the role of female health-care workers in health and population governance in 1950s Japan. Amari not only facilitated the "top-down" transfer of the state-sanctioned idea of birth control and contraceptives, as did other birth control field instructors, but also enabled the "bottom-up" flow of knowledge about people's reproductive lives through her participation in the policy-oriented birth control research called the "three model-village study." Contextualizing Amari's engagement with the study elucidates how the state relied on the established role of female health-care workers as intermediaries between the state and the people. Finally, Amari's contribution to the scientific aspect of the campaign may motivate historians to recognize the politics around the participation of female health-care workers in the science of birth control.

Vera Houghton

Vera Houghton (Lady Houghton, CBE), who died on 30 November 2013 at the aged of 99, was a birth control pioneer and one of the most powerful national influences on...

Psychological problems of late adoption as observed in Brazil through a cultural-historical approach

This work discusses certain cultural-historical concepts relating to late adoption. This term is used for the adoption of children over 2 years old. Unfortunately most people do not wish to adopt children over 2 years old. Generally they seek newborn babies, which are a rare population, probably because of birth control campaigns. The children who are available in orphanages are older children who are unwanted. This paper tries to deal with this issue emphasizing that relationships are built within a family, transforming those involved. It lays out principles for a successful adoption and illustrates this matter with a case study. Relationships should be provided so that people can interact. This interaction will lead to the transformation of all of those involved within the established relationship, which constitute the human being. We intend to demystify the difficult matter of late adoption, which is one of the key aspects concerning the return of the child to an orphanage. The adaptation of late adopted children is said to be more difficult, but when we believe that human beings can change and be modified through the relationships they establish, we see a promising possibility for late adoption. Late adoption can be successful when we view it from a relational point of view, stressing that relationships transform all the individuals involved within the group.

The Racial Imperatives of Sex: birth control and eugenics in Britain, the United States and Australia in the interwar years

While most historical studies position Western birth control campaigns as arising out of the women's movement, this article suggests they were primarily eugenic, rather than feminist, even if many of the leading figures were women. Birth control gained support largely through its representation as a tool for (white) racial progress and population control, rather than as an issue of women's rights. Indeed, in the interwar years birth control and eugenics were so intertwined as to be synonymous. The article explores the Malthusian writings of Annie Besant; the remarkably similarly ways that Marie Stopes and Margaret Sanger promoted birth control as a eugenic tool; the support for birth control within both British and American eugenics organisations; and finally Australia's largest eugenic organisation, the Racial Hygiene Association, which founded the country's first birth control clinic in 1933 and later reinvented itself as the Family Planning Association. Recovering these links allows us to see how birth control was fundamentally linked to broader, transnational discussions of race and reproduction, and of how sex should be harnessed for racial purposes.

Problemas y tendencias contemporáneas de la vida familiar y urbana en Medellín

This article, based on secondary bibliography, deals with some contemporary family issues and tendencies in the city of Medellin. These changes in family structure stand out as a result of complex processes such as the decline of the patriarchal family, the massive entry of women into the labor force, and the culture and the success of birth control campaigns in Colombia since the middle of the twentieth century. It also deals with the problem of the new places of infancy and youth within the family and in school, where they occupy central positions with greater recognition than in the past, displacing adults from the center and challenging their authority; and in the forms of urban socialization, defining new cultural paradigms. As in other contexts of the western cultural world, the family has somehow become the refuge of urban life, due to the deterioration of public life, and its supposed crisis is closely associated to the appearance of other forms of socialization in large cities. These and other problems such as the new gender identities and the end of the heterosexuality on which the family and patriarchal society were based, are inscribed within the processes of internationalization of culture, with its distinctive traits in a city like Medellin.

Who Is Frightened of Reproductive Freedom for Women and Why? Some Historical Answers

In addition to commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the court decision recognizing birth control as a legal right, this conference marks for me a personal anniversary: ten years have passed since the publication of my book on the history of the birth control movement. If I were rewriting that book now, I might shift its emphases somewhat, in light of the events of the last decade. First, I would underscore the historical continuity of the situation in which we find ourselves today. Reproductive rights have been one of the most consistently controversial issues in U.S. domestic politics for nearly 150 years. Second, a stable guarantee of women's reproductive freedom will require a new social consensus regarding gender and family arrangements. Third, to win reproductive choices for all women is to ask for a profound change in our whole society, and it is better to recognize the radical implications of what we are asking. Let me argue for these conclusions with a bit of history. The twenty-year anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut that this conference marks calls our attention to the fact that the political struggle for abortion rights is inseparable from a longer history of campaigns for birth control rights in general. When I was first involved in the late 1960's revival of a women's movement, and then learned that our nineteenth-century predecessors had also worked for women's reproductive freedom, I looked at first for a simple story of feminists against anti-feminists. No such luck. Moreover, oversimplifying the story into against them would disadvantage us today as well in our efforts to build effective political strategies. Women and occasionally men have attempted to regulate their fertility since ancient times, but the first political movements about reproduction occurred in the nineteenth century. In Europe a few neo-Malthusians attempted to argue for birth control to reduce the population of the poor. In the United States, underpopulation meant that there was little basis for that logic. Instead the first American reproduction struggle was the anti-abortion campaign beginning in the 1840's, led primarily by physicians, who used the abortion issue as a weapon against midwives and other popular medical practitioners. By 1880 this previously legal and extremely common practice was rendered illegal in all states-for the first time. Meanwhile, in the 1870's, the first organized expressions of pro-birth control sentiment emerged among feminists. The birth control motive was accompanied by another of equal intensity: to give women control over their sexual activity as well, and to subvert the norm that marriage entitled men to women's sexual submission. Thus the first birth control campaign, called Voluntary Motherhood, demanded for women the right to refuse sex altogether. In other words, their birth control technique was abstinence. No doubt these women were prudes by contemporary standards, but their basic premise continues today: campaigns for women's reproductive rights have usually

Birth Planning and Fertility Transition

In 1971 the government of the People's Republic of China launched the third birth control campaign. The goals were to raise the age at marriage, lengthen the birth interval, and limit the number of births per family to two in the cities and three in the countryside. A birth-quota and pregnancy-authorization system was instituted. The campaign was greatly facilitated by the nationwide network of free community-based contraceptive and abortion services and generous incentives. By the early 1980s the contraceptive prevalence rate rose to 70 percent, and the total fertility rate fell to about 2.5 children per woman of reproductive age. The year 1979 saw the introduction of the one-child campaign. By 1982 first births accounted for 47 percent of total births, and 42 percent of the one-child families had pledged to have no more children. The successful implementation of the one-child campaign will, however, lead to a rapid aging of the population. The percentage of the population older than 64 years of age will increase rapidly, from 5 percent in 1982 to 7.3-7.7 percent in 2000 and to 23-27 percent in 2050. With such a high aged-dependency ratio, caring for the aged will entail heavy fiscal outlay in the twenty-first century.

Consequences of China's New Population Policy

After several ebbs and flows a new high-tide in population control has been gathering force since 1978. This new birth control campaign has three major features which separate it from earlier ones: consensus as to its desirability among the top leadership, the high priority being awarded to it, and a sense of urgency in achieving results.

China's Fertility Transition: The One-Child Campaign

T HIS ARTICLE deals with the latest phase of China's population development, covering the years since the introduction of the one-child-per-couple concept in 1979. Following a brief outline of the country's present demographic circumstances, it examines the impact of the current birth-control campaign on China's population growth. Provincial-level analysis reveals uneven progress in family-planning work across the country. The most significant variation occurs between urban and rural areas, with the major cities of Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin outperforming the provinces and autonomous regions. The same pattern repeats itself within these municipalities, with the rural counties lagging behind the urban districts. A number of factors are held responsible for the regional differentials. Population policy based on ethnic background, for example, explains the poor performance of the minority-nationality provinces and autonomous regions. In the final analysis, of course, it is in the overwhelmingly rural provinces that the one-child campaign will succeed or fail. Since the provincial authorities are very much left to themselves to determine local goals, varying results among regions are due to differing degrees of compliance with national policy.

Politiques démographiques et évolution de la population en Chine

Although relatively little has been known about the Chinese population in recent centuries, figures are available for more remote times. In the year 2 the Chinese population was recorded at 60 million. In 1928, when the last pre-Revolution census was conducted, China had a population of 475 million. The population was not believed to have grown very much due to internal disorders, war, and foreigh invasion, but the 1953 census counted 582 million to which were added 18 million to include Taiwan and overseas Chinese. The figure of 600 million appears to mark the beginning of concern over demographic problems. The crude birth rate was estimated at 37/1000 and the death rate at 17/1000. The 1953 census was conducted with Soviet aid and was given some publicity. The period 1953-58 was marked by a mortality decline and a steady fertility rate, but the population is believed to have declined from 647 million in 1958 to 643 million in 1962, the end of the Great Leap Forward. A census suppressed until recently gave a total of 694 million for 1964. Population growth was considerable from 1961-66. In the 1st part of the Cultural Revolution from 1966-70, no effort was made to control population growth; in 1971, the crude birth rate was estimated at 30-35/1000, the mortality rate was 8/1000, and the growth rate was 2.6%. 1971-79 marked the 1st phase of birth limitation, which became more pressing with time. The population was counted at 1 billion 8 million in 1982, with a birth rate of 21/1000, a death rate of 6/1000, and a growth rate of 1.5%. Because of China's comprehensive system of population registration, the results of the 1982 census were not completely unexpected. Wide differences in growth rates were noted between provinces, and the minorities grew at a faster rate than the Han majority. Immediately after the Revolution, population was relatively neglected in China in favor of greater attention to economic growth. The 1st warnings about the consequences of overly rapid growth were criticized as Malthusianism. The 1st true birth control campaigns occurred around 1956, but the idea of Malthusianism was incompatible with the enthusiasm of the 1st part of the Great Leap Forward. A 2nd campaign at the end of the Great Leap Forward ended with the coming of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. The 3rd campaign, from about 1971-79, called for later marriage, wider spacing of births, and fewer children. Efforts were made to reconcile the antinatalist stance with Marxist theory particularly in the earlier years of population control efforts, but they have been largely abandoned. In recent years China's demographers have become more active in international demographic circles and have furnished a wider array of population data.

Birth Control: A View from a Chinese Village

Research Article| April 01 1982 Birth Control: A View from a Chinese Village Stephen Westley Mosher Stephen Westley Mosher Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Far Eastern Survey (1953) 22 (4): 356–368. https://doi.org/10.2307/2643839 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Stephen Westley Mosher; Birth Control: A View from a Chinese Village. Far Eastern Survey 25 March 1953; 22 (4): 356–368. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2643839 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAsian Survey Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1982 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Birth control in China: local data and their reliability.

In 1979, at about the same time that the birth control campaign received renewed impetus, China released impressive data on demographic trends. If these and other more recent data are reliable, the decline of the natural increase rate has been both belated and spectacular. Contrary to what has been assumed the birth rate would seem to have reached its peak during the 1960s (43·6 per 1,000 in 1963). After a secondary peak in the late 1960s, it then declined precipitously during the 1970s, declining by almost half (46·7 per cent) over nine years (33·59 per 1,000 in 1970; 17·9 per 1,000 in 1979). The natural increase rate was, for its part, more than halved during the same period (25·95 per 1,000 in 1970; 11·7 per 1,000 in 1979).