|
|
|
SECTION II
GENDER AND SEXUALITY
SEXUALITY AND CONTRACEPTION IN MODERN ENGLAND: DOING THE HISTORY OF REPRODUCTIVE SEXUALITY
| By Hera Cook |
University of Birmingham |
| Historians of sexuality have almost completely ignored reproduction as a factor relevant to, and potentially influencing, sexual mores or sexual change. Yet, before the mid-twentieth century, the absence of effective contraception made reproduction central to the regulation of sexuality and to the shaping of sexual experience. Pregnancy is one of the great desirable outcomes of sexual behavior, but prior to the development of effective birth control in the mid-twentieth century, conception was also an uncontrollable risk. Pregnancy, and the resulting child, is both a physical demand upon the mother and a continuing economic cost for the best part of a decade. In many cultures, if the biological parents could not, or would not, fulfill that burden it fell upon their community. |
1
|
|
I have described the dramatic changes in English birth rates and sexual mores from 1800–1980, which demonstrate the existence and impact of this connection, in my book The Long Sexual Revolution: English Women, Sex and Contraception 1800–1975.1 This covers the transition from communal to individual control of fertility and the accompanying shifts from the relative sexual license of the Regency era to Victorian constraint, followed by the relaxation of sexual mores from the mid-twentieth century. In this article, I draw upon this research to argue how and why this economic burden provided the major motivation for individual control of sexuality and for societal attempts to control the sexual activity of individuals. |
2
|
|
In England, prior to the late nineteenth century, effective contraception was not available, alternative sexual practices were not acceptable substitutes for coitus, and children were a major economic cost. Where these conditions existed, it was necessary to control sexual activity in order to control reproduction. The sexuality of those who were subject to this source of regulation can be called reproductive sexuality. The record of birth rates from the early 1700s to the present day shows that periods of relative sexual license were periods of high fertility, and vice versa, prior to the wide availability and use of contraception. The effort to control fertility, to which the development of birth control becomes central only in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, has shaped the history of opposite sex sexuality. Identifying reproductive sexuality as a different form of opposite sex sexuality enables greater understanding of the changes that have taken place in the construction of sexuality during the past two and a half centuries. |
3
|
| |
|
|
. . . |
There are about 8394 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
