Childlessness: Choice and Circumstances

Abstract

Increasing the population has exercised nations throughout history; a large population was deemed desirable for military and economic purposes, and perhaps also for prestige. In England, though, once the population began to grow at such a fast rate, in the late 1700s, there was greater awareness of its increase and size, and its adverse consequences — that of poverty and starvation — were increasingly recognized as obvious evils. Marriage was seen as the key factor in population growth; when Malthus wrote his ‘Essay on the Principle of Population’, marriage was pursued by the aspiring classes (vide Jane Austen’s novels) and widely recognized as the central pillar of family building, support and stability in society; however, family planning was probably negligible; and sexual activity naturally, and almost inevitably, led to children.

Laws to encourage marriage and increase fertility … designed to promote population growth … were enacted by Augustus Caesar nearly 2000 years ago …(but) there is no evidence that these measures had any effect on fertility. According to Tacitus, who like many of the eminent Romans of his time, was a childless man, the legislation of Augustus failed to achieve its object, ‘so powerful were the attractions of childlessness’.

(McCleary 1941)

It is evidently necessary, in order to prevent the society from starving, that the rate at which the population increases should be retarded. But who are the persons that are to exercise the restraint thus called for, and either to marry late, or not at all?.

(Malthus 1817, p. 282)