• English
    • français
    • Deutsch
    • español
    • português (Brasil)
    • Bahasa Indonesia
    • русский
    • العربية
    • 中文
  • español 
    • English
    • français
    • Deutsch
    • español
    • português (Brasil)
    • Bahasa Indonesia
    • русский
    • العربية
    • 中文
  • Login
Ver ítem 
  •   Página de inicio
  • OAI Data Pool
  • OAI Harvested Content
  • Ver ítem
  •   Página de inicio
  • OAI Data Pool
  • OAI Harvested Content
  • Ver ítem
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Listar

Todo Globethics.net LibraryComunidadesPor fecha de publicaciónTítulosMateriasAutoresEsta colecciónPor fecha de publicaciónTítulosMateriasAutoresProfilesView

Mi cuenta

AccederRegistro

The Library

AboutNew SubmissionSubmission GuideSearch GuideRepository PolicyContact

Birth Control and the Good Life in America, 1900-1940

  • CSV
  • RefMan
  • EndNote
  • BibTex
  • RefWorks
Author(s)
MacNamara, Lawrence Trenholme
Keywords
Manners and customs
Social movements--Political aspects
Birth control
History
Demography

Metadatos
Mostrar el registro completo del ítem
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12424/2058608
Online Access
https://doi.org/10.7916/D80R9N8G
Abstract
This dissertation examines the roots of birth control's legitimacy in the United States. Americans were early adopters of fertility control: between 1790 and 1940, the average number of children born into U.S. families fell from seven to around two. During this period there were no major advances in contraceptive technology and very few outspoken advocates for reproductive rights. What changed were Americans' intimate ideas about the place of childrearing in a good life. The study uses letters, press items, and philanthropic field reports from the early twentieth century--when birthrates and birth control first became major civic issues in the U.S.--to uncover that transition, which has long perplexed scholars. Rather than focusing on the role of vocal activists or socioeconomic change, the dissertation emphasizes the changing "moral economy" of childbearing, as perceived by Americans addressing their own views and those of their peers and forebearers. It shows how economic calculations surrounding childbearing were embedded in matrices of morally-mediated ideas about progress, nature, God, and health--and how shifts in those ideas gave rise to a private, grassroots consensus which gradually nullified all attempts to make birth control illegal or taboo. The analysis pays special attention to the role of ideas about time. Birth control gained legitimacy, first, as Americans became progressively less concerned with eternal chains of being and more with the material present; and second, as they reevaluated birth control's place in history, impressionistically reframing a marker of collective decadence as a sign of individual modernity. Seeing the birth control movement through these Americans' eyes--as a quiet, gradual, furtive movement of living women (and men) who were not necessarily outspoken, feminist, or even civically active--helps us understand Americans' reproductive interests as they understood them, and the potential connections of everyday moral action to lasting historical consequence.
Date
2015
Type
Text
Identifier
oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:ac:207649
https://doi.org/10.7916/D80R9N8G
Colecciones
OAI Harvested Content

entitlement

 
DSpace software (copyright © 2002 - 2021)  DuraSpace
Quick Guide | Contacto
Open Repository is a service operated by 
Atmire NV
 

Export search results

The export option will allow you to export the current search results of the entered query to a file. Different formats are available for download. To export the items, click on the button corresponding with the preferred download format.

By default, clicking on the export buttons will result in a download of the allowed maximum amount of items.

To select a subset of the search results, click "Selective Export" button and make a selection of the items you want to export. The amount of items that can be exported at once is similarly restricted as the full export.

After making a selection, click one of the export format buttons. The amount of items that will be exported is indicated in the bubble next to export format.