Fertility

Childbearing was an activity that defined women’s lives in early America. Reproduction was essential to the survival of the colonies, and most women repeated the two - or three-year cycle of pregnancy, birth, and nursing an average of eight to 10 times between marriage and menopause. Perhaps one in five women died from causes associated with childbirth, and newborns died at a rate of one in 10. The birth rate was very high: approximately 50 births per 1,000 people (compared to fewer than 15 per 1,000 in the United States today). This rate of reproduction was key to the success of the English colonies.

In the 17th-century Chesapeake region and in New England, native-born women typically married at age 16, younger than did their immigrant mothers. Women generally bore their last children at about age 37, which allowed for two decades of childbearing and led to a completed fertility rate of eight children per family. As the ratio of women to men equalized and as infant mortality rates decreased in the late 17th century, the Euro-American population began to increase naturally.

The growth of the slave population was a factor in the evolution of American slavery. The first few generations of slaves in British mainland America suffered a natural decrease in population as their deaths outnumbered their births. However, by the 1730s the establishment of slave families produced a rapid natural increase in births. This, in turn, contributed to the growth of a native-born, self-reproducing slave class by the end of the colonial period. American-born slaves had higher birth rates and lower death rates than did African-born slaves. The result was an increasingly Creole (native-born) slave population and a more balanced male-female ratio. Because the population increase was unusual in a New World slave society, it has been argued that the evolution of a mature slave society consisting of African Americans several generations removed from their African origins led to the uniquely American system of slavery.

Compared to Euro-Americans, Native American and African weaning customs generally caused wider intervals between births, because nursing in preindustrial societies tended to inhibit the new mother’s fertility. Slaves commonly nursed their babies for up to 30 months, while

Indian mothers sometimes weaned children at age five or six. Both groups sometimes abstained from sex for several years in order to control the spacing of births. Toward the end of the 18th century fertility among Euro-Americans declined sharply to a completed rate of five or six children per family, nearer that of England and France. Increased efforts to limit family size, such as withdrawal during intercourse and prolonged nursing, suggest the advent of a new idea that fertility could, and perhaps should, be controlled.

Among white people less than 3 percent of babies were born outside of marriage. There was little understanding of fertility, and therefore attempts at contraception were often ineffective. Folk medicine prescribed herbal teas and female douches to prevent unsanctioned pregnancies, although coitus interruptus was probably the most commonly used method of contraception. Because of inexact medical methods for determining pregnancy, quickening, or the first perception of fetal movement that occurred during the fourth or early in the fifth month, was considered proof of the existence of life. Before quickening, abortion was common, legal, and culturally accepted; it was used primarily to terminate illegitimate pregnancies rather than to limit family size. After the fetus showed signs of life, abortion without due cause was considered a crime. The most common technique used to abort an unwanted fetus was the ingestion of an abortifacient, an herbal potion that induced miscarriage. Arbortifacient brews contained aloe, pennyroyal, or savin, an extract from juniper bushes. Less common and more dangerous was the use of instruments to mechanically abort a pregnancy.

The birthing process in early North America was the domain of women. Facing an often dangerous and dispiriting experience, women gathered to share in and help with birth, led by experienced midwives. Men were allowed only if no women were available, and the community ritual created female solidarity and spiritual closeness as well as control over a primary rite of passage. Because medical knowledge was limited, midwifery skills were considered as much spiritual as medical, and a supportive group of experienced and caring women must have been reassuring and empowering.

For many in early North America, children were a gift from God and not to be questioned or planned. Childbirth was also God’s trial, and deformed or unusual babies or births could be proof of either spiritual worth or failure. The inevitability of fertility and birth, their attendant dangers, as well as the exhausting work of caring for a seemingly endless stream of babies made life difficult for women.

Further reading: Robert V Wells, Revolutions in Americans’ Lives: A Demographic Perspective on the History of

Americans, Their Families, and Their Society (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982).

—Deborah C. Taylor