The Ladies TeaStop in and grab a quick cup of tea! All sorts of ladies issues are disscussed here. Both Ladies and Gentlemen are welcome to join in the conversations.
Kim, I originally found the article when I was looking up research of maternity and pregnancy during the Victorian era. But I can honestly say I don't know where I came across it. I just googled the above and your article poped up. I sent Dawna the link because I just loved the article and the unbelievable things they did to prevent pregnancies.
I guess where I was led to believe that it was so hush hush was that one book about Sex in the Civil War, and the History Channel did that episode of the X/Y factor. They really made it sound like Victroian women, any proper woman, would never talk about sex and actually really thought of it as more of a chore and a duty then the love and lust that is written about in romance novels, that that was left for the loose women of the time. And Hooker's ladies! Wow they had to have used something, otherwise there would have been a huge population explosion!
On the other had, I had read that because of the infant mortality rate being so high, that families kept their numbers up so that they would be able to continue, and that allot of farm families had lots of children to help with the ever expanding chores and land.
Jenna, As to the book about sex in the Civil War are you speaking about The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell? If so, that particular book doesn't really go
much into the aspect of love and marriage during the era. While it
certainly has some interesting info, it doesn't really touch on the mores.
As to the History Channel, I have not seen the program, but I do know that
one so-called expert who has appeared on it was the one who got me started
writing articles on the subject. The "expert" uses the stereotypical
secondary sources which often repeated the extreme advisors from the
era. Advice literature tells little about how people actually behaved, but
even so, I find it interesting that it's always the extreme advisors who
are usually cited, and not the Dr. Ruths of the era.
The love letters from the era reveal an entirely different picture than
the stereotypical view. A couple of things--Victorians often used
metaphors and euphemisms, but once you read past them, you'll find women
were women.
Most of my research has been with the growing middle class and upper
class, so I'm uncertain that farm families specifically had a lot of
children because of the infant mortality rate or to take care of
chores. I'd be interested in reading about it if anyone has done some
research in this area, but I'd hazard a guess that some of the reasons
farm families (by farm family I presume you're speaking of lower class
families?) may have had more children was because they had less
accessibility to contraception. Think about it. If they're a poor farmer,
they wouldn't be able to afford the most reliable methods (not that the
methods during the era were totally reliable anyway!). They would also
likely be less well read. Food for thought. Again, I'd love to see some real sources on the subject.
As I stated earlier, I know little of contraception, but after forty years of genealogy I know a bit about large farm families. I think there is much truth to a lack of knowledge about contraception during that period, but the necessity of farm hands (not slaves) was a fact of life and certainly a factor in survival. Large families were not expensive, given the fact that food, clothing, and shelter were produced in totality on the farm. Many hands on the farm made life better for all involved. Class, social or economic, had very little to do with it. Children were a gift from God, and yes, these folks knew how and where they came from. The amazing thing to me has always been the survival rates for a lady producing children every two years for perhaps 10-20 or more years.
Last edited by larry_cockerham; 04-23-2005 at 04:56 PM.
Reason: type-o
Kim, I had a chance to read your other article and I must say it was very very interesting. Thanks for all of your research. I quite honestly can't remember where I read about the farm families. I've been looking for it all day. When and if I ever come across it again I shall be sure to note it.
On a similar note, I had been reading the "Civil War Civilians" book by Juanita Liesch, and she has some intereting things to say. One such item is as follows:
From pg. 14: Young couples (generally) looked forward to raising large families. Infancts were welcomed with love, affection, and -relief. Mortality rates for wemen in childbirth and new born infants were extrememly high, and any birth without a death was a cause for celebration. Indeed, death in childbirth was so common that pregnant women typically made arrangements for the oster care of their children, should they die while in labor. There was at least one incident in which a pregnant woman became so confident of her impending death in childbirth that she specified the box shw was to buried in afterwards.
Scarey!! Thank goodness for modern medicine.
And yes George, it never ceases to amaze me what we all keep learing from this site. It's the best one out there!!
Larry, I come from a long line of farm families myself. I can easily say that large families did not always come about with the intent of supplying farmhands. As I have already pointed out, the knowledge of contraception was more widely available than people generally have thought to be the case. The Comstock Acts in the 1870s tried to close the availability and information highway down. Does that mean everyone used contraception during the Civil War? Of course not. Does that mean it was available for
everyone? Again, of course not. But contraception was widely available by druggists, by mail order, or making one's own. Other common methods were coitus interruptus and rhythm (not the same one as today!). With modern knowledge, we know how reliable some of these methods are. And the one most modern people don't wish to talk about is that abortion was common during the era. It was a hush hush subject then, but it was an accepted form of birth control, and I have come across a number of pregnancies that
ended with suspicious "miscarriages".
I question the statement that large families were not expensive, whether most everything was produced on the farm or not. That's getting onto another topic, but the large farm families that I personally knew when growing up, generally lived in poverty. Yes, they had extra hands to help with the farm chores, but they still had difficulty feeding and clothing so many mouths.
As for the survival rate of women producing that many children, at least 25% of *all* women died in child birth before modern medicine. The infant mortality rate was around 50%.
Thanks Jenna for the compliment. What you quote from Civil War Civilians is pretty much true (I have the book myself). I do question that most couples looked forward to large families. I can find many examples of that not being the case. But then with my anthropology background, I always question what people say they do as being very different from what people actually do.
I was told by a college administrator in the 1960s that I was poor. The thought had never occurred to me, for I had grown up on a farm with only minor utility cost for electricity. We ate very well and travelled when we wanted up and down the east coast. The level of poverty in the Appalachians had more to do with a lack of land or a lack of effort. Did that have anything to do with the subject? Probably not. Yes, if the equation of health and a place to toil the land did not come together prior to World War II, the result in most cases was as you stated, poverty. With a general lack of availablity of pre-natal medical assistance, I'm sure your statistics for mortality are accurate. My part of the mountains, in western North Carolina, were blessed with good land, a reasonably high level of education and some good country doctors. Large families there were more the rule than the exception. It was indeed a blessed land.
I guess I look at it this way, children were dieing of simple diseases and infections. A cold could kill an infant. To me, and of course this is just opinion, is that with the mortality rate being high, and parents knowing this, I don't think they ever stopped trying. The more the merrier I guess you could say. Again, just an opinion, but that would be my mind set if it were me 150 yrs ago. The idea of the family name continuing has been a main stay since the begining of time.
Larry, I fully understand your love for the land. It's true about a lot of families, but I still question that large families were generally to produce farmhands. I question any generalization because no matter the time or place, people were individuals. My mother at 80, who grew up on the land in a large family, has a closet full of nice clothes and shoes to go with every outfit. Why? Because when she was a girl on the farm, she
had one dress and one pair of shoes. She dressed me in the finest clothes when I was a girl because she didn't want to subject me to the hand-me-downs or tattered dresses. The land was rich with black earth in Illinois--good for growing almost anything. In good years, there was no shortage of food, but what about the years when the weather didn't
cooperate? Education was okay, but few kids ever finished high school. None of them ever dreamed of going to college. Most of them ended up poor dirt farmers, like their parents. Some even continue to struggle to manage the farm into their old age, even though their children have moved onto other occupations. Getting back to the topic at hand, many of these people had large families because they had few choices. Contraception was often too expensive, or it was something they hadn't read about. Friends of mine, who had middle-class parents that didn't grow up on the farm, used contraception and had smaller families. This reflects my research during the time of the Civil War as well.
Jenna, I disagree. To lose a child would be one of the hardest things in life to deal with. The more the merrier would not help parents' grief over the loss of a child. You see, if I had been one of those parents during the Civil War, I would have been one of those women who died in childbirth and lost my baby in the process. Even with modern medicine, I came close to losing my son. The fact that I might have been able to have another could not replace the grief for the one lost.
Something that I forgot to mention in my previous post, someone had said that children were a gift from God. I have found as many references to children being referred to as "love tokens". People were people. Let's treat them as such and respect their individuality.
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