’If only this could be my last’: A re-consideration of the historic fertility transition

The Research seminar series in history and history of ideas invites you to a seminar with Alice Reid, Cambridge University, ”’If only this could be my last’: A re-consideration of the historic fertility transition”.

Abstract (på engelska): The traditional story about the Europe-wide decline in family size in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is that of a move from natural, ‘uncontrolled’ fertility to a regime where couples embark on childbearing soon after marriage and stop once they reach a desired or ‘target’ number of children. This paper uses new estimates of fertility calculated from British nineteenth and early twentieth century census data to argue that there is little evidence for the emergence of normative target family sizes during the early stages of the British fertility transition. Instead couples stopped childbearing at a wide range of different family sizes. The paper discusses the implications of this for the way that people negotiated and achieved lower fertility, for the concept of ideal family size, and for economic and cultural theories of fertility decline.