s/off BC, since not many questions seem to be off limits here...some historical ones

[Onceuponatime]

I know a little something about BC, historically speaking. I mean, what you can pick up from just reading a lot. I've always had some burning questions but was never motivated (or brave enough) to do the research. So here goes :001_smile:. If you know anything about this could you chime in?

 

Did the ancients know about ovulatory cycles in any way? How long ago did people figure this out?

 

I know there were abortifacients (sp) and ways to terminate a pregnancy, or get rid of living children, so I don't really want to get into that aspect. Then there were high mortality rates, but I'm not counting that as birth control.

 

Was fertility lower in most places on earth until the modern era, because of lifestyle and diet? I've read so many stories, Biblical and non-Biblical, about being "barren."

 

When I read books about the 18th century and on, I see that many women kind of expected their husbands to have mistresses after they no longer wanted children. Or maybe it was the husband who decided that after his wife no longer welcomed his advances. Was that really usual practice? (I just can't imagine wanting this)

 

I know long term breast feeding did/does provide a measure of relief in many cases, but that seems to work better in societies with different diets than modern American.

 

It seems to me that the most common practice for women throughout the ages until modern times was "pop til you drop." :001_huh: Unless you were lucky enough to be strong and vigorous, or less fertile than average.

 

What I really want to know is why I've read so many true stories and novels, written or taking place in Europe and America from the late 1800's to the Early 1900's, where many married couples only have 1 or 2 children. You even read of couples who never have any children, or at least don't seem in the least worried about the possibility of pregnancy. This seems to have been most common among the upper middle class and wealthy. Was it really that common to have so few children? How did they manage to do that, if BC wasn't commonly accepted at the time?

Or is that all an illusion?

 

Maybe I'm weird, but haven't you ever wondered what June Cleaver did about birth control?

[Mommyfaithe]

:bigear: not weird. I have often wondered the same thing. :lurk5:

Sorry, no answers though. I always assumed the pop til you drop or luck...

 

One thing I do know...according to Jewish or rabbinical marriage cleanliness laws....having to do with menstruation and marital relations....these laws would lead me to believe that ovulation and days of fertility were known about...and plans for sexual relations revolved around the most fertile time of the cycle.

 

Marriage relations are forbidden...even to the point of a husband sleeping in the same bed or even touching his wife's hand.....from the first sign of blood until the wife has been declared clean and has been through a ritual bath. This timing would put relations at the highest fertility days, thus large families.

 

These laws have been in effect si ce old testament times...which does show a knowledge of ovulatory cycles. It also could be a reason many men were

polygamist.

 

 

Faithe

[Violet Crown]

You want to find a copy of John T. Noonan's Contraception. While Noonan's interest lay primarily in the theological (Jewish and Christian) aspects of contraception, he has a thorough historical analysis. Noonan is currently a federal judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and is very judicial in his approach, going out of his way to lay out all the evidence available, where many other presentations of the history of contraception, aiming toward some ideological point, tend to exaggerate or minimize various aspects of the history.

[FaithManor]

Well, I think there are many, many variables. I'm pretty certain the ancients had a working knowledge of when they were fertile. But, I also think that lifestyle, diet, genetics, etc. all came into play which is why large families could be common, uncommon, and all manners in between.

 

Some women stuffed themselves with flax before relations in order to absorb as much "seed" as possible in the hopes of not getting pregnant. So, I guess I would call that a fore-runner of the first diaphram.

 

Mistresses amongst the nobility were common and since those marriages were arranged and many women found themselves in rather bad marriages (Xerxes, King Henry the 8th, King John, etc. come to mind), I would imagine that a mistress was a welcome thing. Produce an heir to the throne and then hope he never touches me again!

 

Most societies did not have a prohibition against marrying close relatives. The genetics of this can cause infertility and also cause many embryos to not implant. Additionally, it leads to congenital birth defects and lots of miscarriages and preemies. Since this phenomenon wasn't widely talked about until modern times, many families who only had 1 or 2 children may have in fact have incurred many, many pregnancies but did not record those pregnancies. I have a great great great grandmother who married her first cousin and out of 16 pregnancies only two children lived past the age of two months. Most were stillborn or died very shortly thereafter birth and probably from congenital anomalies. But, they never talked about it ever. Their family didn't talk about it. To hear the family talk, this couple had two children. But, later family historians found the hill on the farm where fourteen babies were laid to rest in unmarked graves, unnamed.

 

Then when one considers the hard, physical labor of poor women through the centuries, it's entirely possible that their general health was so low that their fertility was affected. But, again, that is just unpredictable because for every one poor woman with only one or two children, there would be another with 12 or 13!

 

I think there are too many variables to draw any significant conclusions.

 

Faith

[Amy Jo]

You might check your library for a book which (I think) is titled Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing. It has statistics from rural countries where the life style is different. It talks about how habits (frequent nursing, mother and baby being together, co-sleeping, etc.) can lengthen the amount of time between pregnancies. Remember to nursing could have lasted much longer - I think the World Health Organization mentions 3 years? Of course, some women had wet nurses for the baby so .... ?

 

While most women would be highly fertile, a few women with short cycles + early ovulation would be basically barren with the Jewish laws, because ovulation would have already taken place before they were 'cleansed'.

 

And I don't think the question is weird, I've wondered the same thing myself.

[Mrs Mungo]

Did the ancients know about ovulatory cycles in any way? How long ago did people figure this out?

 

Mostly, they did not.

 

 

 

Was fertility lower in most places on earth until the modern era, because of lifestyle and diet? I've read so many stories, Biblical and non-Biblical, about being "barren."

Women typically did not have as many cycles due to: starting menstruation later, pregnancy, extended nursing and often a poor diet. Many women today do not ovulate until they wean or until baby is only nursing a few times a day. Ancient women usually nursed until a child was 3 or 4 (sometimes older). More women today have a return to fertility because our diet is better, they carry more fat (therefore have more estrogen), etc. It's estimated that prehistoric women only menstruated 50 times in their lives.

 

Here is an interesting paper:

http://www.drury.edu/multinl/story.cfm?ID=9891&NLID=166

 

When I read books about the 18th century and on, I see that many women kind of expected their husbands to have mistresses after they no longer wanted children. Or maybe it was the husband who decided that after his wife no longer welcomed his advances. Was that really usual practice? (I just can't imagine wanting this)

Just because it was fashionable, doesn't necessarily mean it was typical.

 

It seems to me that the most common practice for women throughout the ages until modern times was "pop til you drop." :001_huh: Unless you were lucky enough to be strong and vigorous, or less fertile than average.

I'm not sure what this means? You mean keep having babies until you die? That was not common practice in all societies at all. Some, but definitely not most.

 

What I really want to know is why I've read so many true stories and novels, written or taking place in Europe and America from the late 1800's to the Early 1900's, where many married couples only have 1 or 2 children. You even read of couples who never have any children, or at least don't seem in the least worried about the possibility of pregnancy. This seems to have been most common among the upper middle class and wealthy. Was it really that common to have so few children? How did they manage to do that, if BC wasn't commonly accepted at the time?

Or is that all an illusion?

Even ancient women had access to some form of birth control (which did include abortificants).

 

The Talmud mentions soaking sponges in lemons and inserting them vaginally before intercourse.This served as a barrier method and the acid killed sperm. Barrier methods have been common throughout history.

 

Pennyroyal, wild carrot, blue cohosh, dong quai, cotton, mercury, unripe papaya, silphium, common rue-there are herbs in most ancient cultures to prevent pregnancy or to use as an abortificant early in pregnancy.

Edited April 26, 2011 by Mrs Mungo

[Chris in VA]

Wow, Mrs. M--I'm impressed! How did you know this?

You constantly amaze me with what you know! LOL

[Mrs Mungo]

Wow, Mrs. M--I'm impressed! How did you know this?

You constantly amaze me with what you know! LOL

 

I took a lot of anthropology classes in college. You should see some of the women's studies books I still have. They have titles like "Goddesses, Wh*res, Wives, and Slaves." Mostly though? I google and discern between good and bad sites pretty quickly.

[Peela]

I find it s very interesting topic too. I mean, we are really a rare and privileged generation to even be able to consider having so much choice available to us, and such a high % of our children surviving.

 

Mrs Mungo just covered a lot of what I was going to say about contraceptions, abortificants etc

I imagine it varied between cultures too- even how aware they were of their cycles.

 

I am not sure if men wandering was any different from it is now. It seems to be something built in by nature to keep the gene pool as wide and varied as possible. Supposedly a full 10% of children born today do not have the father they are told they have. We might do it less openly? Or not.

In a society where women are not considered equal- and most societies of the last 2000 years or more have been patriarchal- and where the survival of the individual depended on its connection to the village, the family, the group- I guess women would have generally accepted whatever cultural normalities they were brought up in.

 

I have always wondered how they really handled it, though.

I do think they had less expectation of personal fulfilment, the way we expect nowadays. We expect a lot. But when you are one step away from survival mode all the time, I guess life is different.

[Carol in Cal.]

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme was a recipe for an herbal abortifactant.

 

CA NA's used a specific herb for early abortion as well.

 

Historically there was a common view in Europe that a fetus was not human until 'quickening' (the perception of movement).

 

Abstinence was touted as heroic in the 1800's. People with mental illnesses or congenital physical ones were strongly discouraged from having children. That was consider the moral, responsible thing to do.

 

In my own extended family there are stories about horrendous child births leading the man to say, OK, I can't put her through this again. I love her too much. And that being considered a tremendous self-sacrifice. Shades of Ashley Wilkes in Gone With The Wind. So that mode of thought had a lot to do with small family sizes in the early 20th century.

[Mrs Mungo]

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme was a recipe for an herbal abortifactant.

 

I'm pretty sure this is a just a rumor related to the Simon and Garfunkle song. But, in older references it seems to be talked about as a love charm or as related to the black plague.

[Violet Crown]

I'm pretty sure this is a just a rumor related to the Simon and Garfunkle song. But, in older references it seems to be talked about as a love charm or as related to the black plague.

The more convincing explanation for the burden/refrain is that it's a corruption of the once-common "[nonsense syllables] goes the merry antime" (antime = burden, from antempme in ME, now anthem). This explains variants that show up in other ballads such as "green rushes grow merry in time" and "[...] maids grow/go merry in time".

 

(This is all from memory from a lecture many years ago, so alas I don't have a useful link.)

[Carol in Cal.]

I'm pretty sure this is a just a rumor related to the Simon and Garfunkle song. But, in older references it seems to be talked about as a love charm or as related to the black plague.

 

Really? I've read this as fact in some feminist medical history literature, but that might not be well-researched.

[Mejane]

This is a very interesting thread. Hope it doesn't... er, veer off course. ;)

[ktgrok]

There is also the old pull and pray method.....I'm fairly certain it has been employed for centuries.

[Crimson Wife]

My grandma told me that the Irish and Irish-Americans typically married later in life. She was in her 30's when she married and one of her sisters was 40. Neither were considered unusual. The genealogy research I've done on the Irish side of my family confirms this claim.

[katilac]

Regarding the 18th century, at least three forms of birth control were fairly well known: pulling out, barrier methods, and condoms.

 

In a non-fiction book I have, a woman living in America's frontier West writes a letter to her sister and advises her to use condoms. She tells her exactly where to buy them and exactly what to ask for (she even tells her what the more "proper" name to use is, in case she doesn't want to ask for a "p*sser" as they were commonly known - I'm pretty sure the other name wasn't condom, but I don't recall what it was).

 

More generally, various forms of birth control have been known and used since ancient times. If you lived in a more controlled, closed community, then you might never hear of them, but there were always plenty of people who did know about them.

[SnowWhite]

I'm not knowledgeable on the historical part, but having grown up among Amish people I do know that abstinence is often used as a method of bc. The men scorn their peers who "won't give their wives a break." I also think that our culture has grown toward a more frequent marital relations norm. Privacy is more available now, people have more spare time and energy, and s*x is popularized on television and in other media.

[FaithManor]

Snowwhite makes an excellent point. Stress and physical exhaustion really take the edge off the male appetite! So, many of our ancestors probably didn't have the drive for the frequency that modern man has...it's backbreaking labor plowing a field with oxen, chopping wood for hours, etc. I would imagine an awful lot of guys came in, ate dinner, and would have completely collapsed if there weren't other laborous chores to attend to - instantly asleep as soon as the head hit the pillow!

 

Maybe that's why the nobles needed mistresses, since they didn't have to work hard physically; they inherited money, land, and peasants so, they had more time to chase the ladies in which case the wife might be inclined to let him have another skirt or two to help take the pressure off! :D

 

With what we know today about heat affecting "swimmers", I think it would be an interesting historical research project - family size amongst glass makers and blacksmiths...hmmm...leather aprons, heavy clothing, working in the fire all day even in the summer....hmmmm.

 

Faith