(no subject)
Jan. 12th, 2015 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naathDied on this day in 1321 aged 66 Marie of Brabant(my toy,wikipedia). Queen consort of France and mother of Edward I's wife, as the 2nd wife of the King she was not the mother of the next King of France. She had married the Philip when she was 20, which is an improvement on Philip's first wife who was 14... Young marriages were not especially common at the time, but were quite common amongst royalty and the nobility.
Born on this day in 156 Duke Charles I of Savoy(my toy,wikipedia). He married one of the daughters of Philip II of Spain, who was the husband of Mary I; she (the wife) was his 2nd cousin. He was the only child of his parents, and had 10 children with his wife; this range of number-of-children is not especially unusual.
So, one of the things people (visitors) can be very Wrong about is the number of children we all "should" have (vs the number actually there). Which it turns out to be hard to answer easily when you are pretending you know nothing about either biology or statistics. I can't actually find a useful source for the actual birth rate; it was higher than now, but that really doesn't mean that everyone had a dozen children.
Deliberate things:
Even though reliable, safe, effective contraception and generally safe, effective abortion are modern inventions... the notion of wanting to control family size is not new. Very rich people probably weren't trying - they generally wanted to have families as large as possible for social and financial reasons.
*Abstinence has always been effective (if you can manage it), some people put down "delaying marriage" as a tactic for restricting family size although of course that only works if you don't have sex outside of marriage; some people chose (or were forced into) lives of celibacy as priests, monks, or nuns.
*Natural Family Planning methods work *better* when you understand biology, but many people would be willing to give it a go on insufficient information, works better than nothing, especially if your intention is "fewer children" and not "no children".
*Pulling out works as well now as it ever did. You only need to understand that semen-->babies to figure that it *might*; statistics these days suggest in "typical use" possibly even as effective as condoms (although "typical use" of condoms is... not very good use at all afaict)
*The condom isn't exactly new either. But probably ones made of sheep-intestine by a non-expert work less well; afaict mostly thought of as a way to avoid venereal disease, but a possibility.
*A huge range of herbs and chemicals have been alleged to suppress fertility, induce abortion, or both. Some of them even work (sometimes) but are correspondingly dangerous (taking poison is a good way to induce abortion; but getting the dose sufficient to cause abortion and insufficient to kill you is tricky)
*Also probably not safe - throwing self downstairs to induce abortion, and other physical assault.
*Many substances were also believed to work as (essentially) spermicide. Crocodile dung is PROBABLY NOT MEDICALLY RECOMMENDED (would it even work? maybe it just put the men off...)
*Breastfeeding suppresses female fertility. Not 100% reliably, but quite a lot. This is one of the reasons *rich* women employed wet nurses (they wanted lots and lots of babies). According to Jared Diamond "traditional" hunter-gather societies average about 4 years between children, largely due to long-term breastfeeding.
*Prayer and magic charms have no plausible mechanism for working, unless you think that humans can unconsciously control their own fertility. It was tried anyway.
Sad things:
*Some people are naturally infertile, or have very low fertility, either individually or as a couple. Before the 20th century there wasn't really anything that could be done to help (well, you could go fuck the master of horse and pass the baby off as your husband's...)
*Malnutrition suppresses fertility, sometimes having long-term effects after the food supply has become sufficient again. A great many people didn't have enough food.
*Poor health generally probably decreases the age of menopause, and increases the age of menarche, for the average woman.
*Some women ended up married to people who hated them and faced a life of involuntary celibacy (or if they were boffing other people trying very hard not to get pregnant, or not admitting they were if they did, because socially that would be a disaster).
*Some women had a huge number of miscarriages and still births (presumably the distinction being how far along you are?). Queen Anne for instance, loads of pregnancies, many fewer babies.
*Infant mortality was very high. Many children born alive never made it to puberty. Additionally many young adults died before marrying and (or) having children - young men who went off to war had a high chance of never coming back, young women were more likely to die from setting themselves on fire cooking.
*Those last two things mean that even if you had dozens of pregnancies you might well have no living children.
*Maternal mortality was high too, every pregnancy meant a high chance of death. I'm not sure if that increases with number of pregnancies or not.
*Some people ended up in sexless marriages, perhaps because of impotence, homosexuality, or general "I HATE YOU". Abstinence that gets forced on you because your husband hates you but won't divorce you is as effective as abstinence you chose for not getting pregnant, also kinda sucks if everyone is saying "Y NO BABY?"
Infant mortality is my go-to answer at Kentwell; probably because it doesn't involve talking about *gasp* sex, which might make visitors complain (we're "family friendly"). Sometimes that makes people all sorry for having asked (fortunately in my case it is a lie, elsewise I might just cry at them) but one lady last? (previous?) year did not take that as an answer... was tempted to say there had been a terrible plague, but she grumbled and went off.
Anyway, in conclusion, whilst *some* people would manage a baby a year for 20 years and end up with 20 adult children; *most* people would not, even if they desperately wanted to, and if you didn't want to you had some (not great) options that you could try.
The population grew very slowly until much more modern times; so clearly the average person was not having 20 children, although with the average person dieing before puberty those who did make it needed more than 2 children to sustain the population.
Born on this day in 156 Duke Charles I of Savoy(my toy,wikipedia). He married one of the daughters of Philip II of Spain, who was the husband of Mary I; she (the wife) was his 2nd cousin. He was the only child of his parents, and had 10 children with his wife; this range of number-of-children is not especially unusual.
So, one of the things people (visitors) can be very Wrong about is the number of children we all "should" have (vs the number actually there). Which it turns out to be hard to answer easily when you are pretending you know nothing about either biology or statistics. I can't actually find a useful source for the actual birth rate; it was higher than now, but that really doesn't mean that everyone had a dozen children.
Deliberate things:
Even though reliable, safe, effective contraception and generally safe, effective abortion are modern inventions... the notion of wanting to control family size is not new. Very rich people probably weren't trying - they generally wanted to have families as large as possible for social and financial reasons.
*Abstinence has always been effective (if you can manage it), some people put down "delaying marriage" as a tactic for restricting family size although of course that only works if you don't have sex outside of marriage; some people chose (or were forced into) lives of celibacy as priests, monks, or nuns.
*Natural Family Planning methods work *better* when you understand biology, but many people would be willing to give it a go on insufficient information, works better than nothing, especially if your intention is "fewer children" and not "no children".
*Pulling out works as well now as it ever did. You only need to understand that semen-->babies to figure that it *might*; statistics these days suggest in "typical use" possibly even as effective as condoms (although "typical use" of condoms is... not very good use at all afaict)
*The condom isn't exactly new either. But probably ones made of sheep-intestine by a non-expert work less well; afaict mostly thought of as a way to avoid venereal disease, but a possibility.
*A huge range of herbs and chemicals have been alleged to suppress fertility, induce abortion, or both. Some of them even work (sometimes) but are correspondingly dangerous (taking poison is a good way to induce abortion; but getting the dose sufficient to cause abortion and insufficient to kill you is tricky)
*Also probably not safe - throwing self downstairs to induce abortion, and other physical assault.
*Many substances were also believed to work as (essentially) spermicide. Crocodile dung is PROBABLY NOT MEDICALLY RECOMMENDED (would it even work? maybe it just put the men off...)
*Breastfeeding suppresses female fertility. Not 100% reliably, but quite a lot. This is one of the reasons *rich* women employed wet nurses (they wanted lots and lots of babies). According to Jared Diamond "traditional" hunter-gather societies average about 4 years between children, largely due to long-term breastfeeding.
*Prayer and magic charms have no plausible mechanism for working, unless you think that humans can unconsciously control their own fertility. It was tried anyway.
Sad things:
*Some people are naturally infertile, or have very low fertility, either individually or as a couple. Before the 20th century there wasn't really anything that could be done to help (well, you could go fuck the master of horse and pass the baby off as your husband's...)
*Malnutrition suppresses fertility, sometimes having long-term effects after the food supply has become sufficient again. A great many people didn't have enough food.
*Poor health generally probably decreases the age of menopause, and increases the age of menarche, for the average woman.
*Some women ended up married to people who hated them and faced a life of involuntary celibacy (or if they were boffing other people trying very hard not to get pregnant, or not admitting they were if they did, because socially that would be a disaster).
*Some women had a huge number of miscarriages and still births (presumably the distinction being how far along you are?). Queen Anne for instance, loads of pregnancies, many fewer babies.
*Infant mortality was very high. Many children born alive never made it to puberty. Additionally many young adults died before marrying and (or) having children - young men who went off to war had a high chance of never coming back, young women were more likely to die from setting themselves on fire cooking.
*Those last two things mean that even if you had dozens of pregnancies you might well have no living children.
*Maternal mortality was high too, every pregnancy meant a high chance of death. I'm not sure if that increases with number of pregnancies or not.
*Some people ended up in sexless marriages, perhaps because of impotence, homosexuality, or general "I HATE YOU". Abstinence that gets forced on you because your husband hates you but won't divorce you is as effective as abstinence you chose for not getting pregnant, also kinda sucks if everyone is saying "Y NO BABY?"
Infant mortality is my go-to answer at Kentwell; probably because it doesn't involve talking about *gasp* sex, which might make visitors complain (we're "family friendly"). Sometimes that makes people all sorry for having asked (fortunately in my case it is a lie, elsewise I might just cry at them) but one lady last? (previous?) year did not take that as an answer... was tempted to say there had been a terrible plague, but she grumbled and went off.
Anyway, in conclusion, whilst *some* people would manage a baby a year for 20 years and end up with 20 adult children; *most* people would not, even if they desperately wanted to, and if you didn't want to you had some (not great) options that you could try.
The population grew very slowly until much more modern times; so clearly the average person was not having 20 children, although with the average person dieing before puberty those who did make it needed more than 2 children to sustain the population.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-13 10:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-13 10:56 am (UTC)(Even without "horrible things" we are always going to have people who opt out of reproducing!)