The post-independence era saw a more overt emphasis on the behaviour of Irish citizens, most particularly because of the importance of nation-building and solidifying ideas of citizenship. Consequently, most historians agree that notions of appropriate behaviour circulated more consciously at this time than in previous decades. Akenson's assertion that the Catholic Church played a significantly under-appreciated role in influencing the ‘ideology of reproductive suppression upon generation after generation’ is persuasive in explaining not just the post-Famine demographic trends he has focused on but also the subsequent panic in post-independence Ireland that legitimate fertility and the growth of the nation were at stake. Had Irish Catholics learned the lessons of the church too well by then? Given high emigration, the low number of marriages and high celibacy rates, the high fertility rates within marriage were not enough to counteract population decline and it might have indeed seemed to some that Ireland was vanishing.

The dominance of the Catholic Church in such matters has been extensively researched and it is generally accepted that, as Angela Martin has argued, in the early decades of the Irish state the Church was involved in the ‘discursive regulation of sexuality’. The Church of Ireland shared many of its concerns, however, particularly about sexual morality, as examination of the GFS reveals.