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Working Class Birth Control in Wilhelmine Germany
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
Extract
In his recent study,The Decline of Fertility in Germany, 1871–1939, John Knodel shows that in about two generations the ‘overall fertility declined by 60 percent, marital fertility by 65 percent, and illegitimate fertility by 54 percent.’ Given the facts that a greater percentage of women of child-bearing ages than ever before were married during this period, and that illegitimate births never counted for more than 10 percent of the total births, Knodel concludes that the decline was mainly due to a reduction of marital fertility. This decline became apparent in the 1870s and was already pronounced enough to be a matter of concern for a variety of sociologists, demographers, and physicians in the decades immediately before the First World War. One of the reasons for this contemporary concern sprang from the belief that the secular decline in fertility indicated that birth control, hitherto presumably limited to the effete French and to rather small numbers of German middle class and professional families, was now being practiced with a marked degree of success by large numbers of German working class families. In the minds of many nationalistic demographers, what had been the private vice of the publicly virtuous now threatened to become a mass phenomenon with potentially disastrous results.
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- The Family in Social Context
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- Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1978
References
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66 Ibid., #81, p. 41.
67 Ibid., #288, p. 102. Also #148, p. 61, and #298, p. 105.
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70 Ibid., #274, p. 98. Factory worker, age 27, Westphalia, married four years, one living child, two dead children, CI and douche.
71 Ibid., #54, p. 33. Painter's helper, age 24, SW Germany, married five years, three living children, one stillbirth, CI, sponge, douche, condom.
72 Ibid., #95, p. 45. Mason, age 25, Hesse, married one year after six years' premarital intercourse with present wife, one living child, CI.
73 Ibid., #108, p. 49. Harbor worker, age 27, Hansa town, married four years, 1 living child, one miscarriage, CI, sometimes condom.
74 Ibid., #154, p. 63.
75 Ibid., #18, p. 22, CI and diaphragm for past year.
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79 Ibid., #139, p. 58.
80 Ibid., #119, p. 52. Driver, age 38, Westphalia, married 17 years, 3 living children, two dead, two abortions, CI or nothing.
81 Ibid., #85, p. 42. Mechanic, age 39, Saxony, married 15 years, CI and douche.
82 Ibid., #9, pp. 19–20. Lathe operator, age 33, Hansa City, one living child, 1 abortion, CI, douche, later diaphragm.
83 Ibid., #40, p. 29. Wagon builder, age 25, Berlin, married 1½ years, condom.
84 Ibid., #22, p. 23. Mechanic, age 27, Prussia, married five years, no children, contraceptive techniques: ‘plenty of ways.’
85 Ibid., #299, p. 105. Master painter, age 40, Berlin, married nine years, one child, vaginal suppositories.
86 Ibid., #251, pp. 91–92. Carpet-maker, age 30, Berlin, married six months, l½ years premarital intercourse with wife, no children, CI, douche.
87 Ibid., #64, p. 36. Master mechanic, age 32, Berlin, married five years, one child, wife uses unknown contraceptive technique.
88 Ibid., #100, p. 46. Stucco worker, age 29, Berlin, married one year, no children, no contraception.
89 Ibid., #115, p. 51. Wagon builder, age 37, Berlin, married twelve years, two children, condom, tampon.
90 Ibid., #223, p. 83. Warehouse foreman, age 32, Berlin, married four years, no children, CI.
91 Ibid., #60, pp. 34–35. Shoemaker, age 26, Brandenburg, married two years, no children, CI.
92 Ibid., # 175, p. 69. Mechanic, age 29, Berlin, married two years, two children, oldest born before marriage, condom. These examples support the thesis ‘the greater the individualism, the less the familism.’ Scanzoni, John, Sex Roles, Life Styles and Childbearing (New York, 1975), p. 187.Google Scholar
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94 Linse, , ‘Arbeiterschaft und Geburtenentwicklung,’ p. 249,Google Scholar suggests that the SPD regarded birth control as a ‘private matter’ to be decided by the individual worker, but I think that the party leadership was often not only indifferent to the matter, but actually hostile to birth control, and thus hindered the spread of more dependable contraceptive practices among their constituents. Neuman, , ‘The Sexual Question,’ pp. 271–86.Google Scholar
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96 In his studies of working class sexual attitudes in America during the 1950s and 1960s Rainwater found a high degree of role splitting between working class husbands and wives that extended to their sexual relations, reducing the latter to ungratifying ‘functions’ among the majority interviewed. The studies described in Schmidt, Gunter and Sigusch, Volkmar, ‘Lower-Class Sexuality: Some Emotional and Social Aspects of West German Males and Females,’ Archives of Sexual Behavior, 1 (1971), 29–44,Google Scholar indicate that unlike Rainwater's subjects, young German workers do not de-emotionalize sexual relations, but rather see them as mutual gratifying sources of pleasure. However, the two studies are not contradictory. Rainwater's study was based on married couples, aged 30 or older, drawn from a class of unskilled, often unemployed workers. Sigusch and Schmidt studied mainly unmarried, regularly employed workers aged 21 or younger. They speculate that if a slightly older group of less well-off German workers were studied, the same role-splitting and sex-negativism Rainwater describes might also be found in West Germany. See Schmidt, Gunter and Sigusch, Volkmar, Arbeiter-Sexualität. Eine empirische Untersuchung an jungen Industriearbeitern (Neuwied-Berlin, 1971), pp. 133–38.Google Scholar
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