Before the 1800s, children were educated at home or in church. Children became more expensive to care for and less helpful around the house once public schooling became available. At the same time, women were freed up from all-day children-rearing, allowing mothers to enter the paid labor force.
However, money isn't the only incentive for smaller families, experts say.
"We know for sure that you don't have to reach a high level of per capita income for fertility to decline, but we don't know exactly what sets it off," said historian George Atler at Indiana University. "Whether it's general change or attitudes about birth control is still a question debated among demographers today.
It's interesting, but still doesn't help answer why some Muslim countries have such high birth rates. I can't say I have ever seen much explanation of that.
Not sure why this guy is coming over all ignorant.
ReplyDeleteThe causal factors have been well established for many decades, and it starts with the level of eduction of women, rather than women working.
Fertility declines with female education, prosperity, and to a lesser extent work, and, of course reliable and safe contraception, with use of the latter, most likely being linked to eduction (and therefore understanding of contraceptives - this is my guess and assumption). Access to safe abortion, of course, is also important.
I love the way that the endless demands of captialism for more workers is never mentioned, as if women live in a social and economic vacuum. Selfish little clods making there selfish little decisions,
Feminism (such that it was and is) would not have got off the ground (beyond the right to vote) if not for economic drivers. Yes, it was a happy coincidence, a lovely little confluence of needs in the 1960s & 70s. The world was changing, indeed, but so too were economies.
Of course, the seeds of destruction of exponential and never ending growth might, parodoxically, be built into an econmic system that requires both men and women to work, therefore, significantly reducing any time or inclination they might have to breed.
Caz, I find it kind of difficult working out where you stand politically. Tying feminism to 'the endless demands of capitalism' sounds a tad quasi-Marxist to me. But it is not really a topic I have spent much time on.
ReplyDeleteNot suggesting there was any conspiracy or anything planned, it was a confluence of factors, without which neither the economy nor feminism would have flourished. Social and economic change is like that - happy confluence of developments, like the steam train, or the electric light bulb, blah, blah.
ReplyDeleteI am one person who would never ever tie Marxism in with feminism, and I snort at the many feminists who try, oh so valiantly to do so. And they STILL do it! Aaaaahhhhh!
Marx had nothing to say about women. Not a jot.