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Winner of the Whitfield Book Prize 2007
Awarded the Proxime Accessit for the Longman-History Today Book of the Year Prize 2007
*Choice* Outstanding Academic Book 2007
Birth Control, Sex, and Marriage in Britain 1918-1960
Kate Fisher
304 pages
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234x156mm
978-0-19-926736-1
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Hardback
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13 July 2006
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This item is printed to order and supplied on a firm sale basis. Items which are printed to order are normally despatched and charged within 5-10 days.
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- Challenges widely accepted views on changing contraceptive practices during the twentieth century
- First book to focus on the role of men in the decline of family size
The first half of the twentieth century witnessed a revolution in contraceptive behaviour as the large Victorian family disappeared. This book offers a new perspective on the gender relations, sexual attitudes, and contraceptive practices that accompanied the emergence of the smaller family in modern Britain. Kate Fisher draws on a range of first-hand evidence, including over 190 oral history interviews, in which individuals born between 1900 and 1930 described their marriages and sexual relationships. By using individual testimony she challenges many of the key conditions that have long been envisaged by demographic and historical scholars as
necessary for any significant reduction in average family size to take place.
Dr Fisher demonstrates that a massive expansion in birth control took place in a society in which sexual ignorance was widespread; that effective family limitation was achieved without the mass adoption of new contraceptive technologies; that traditional methods, such as withdrawal, abstinence, and abortion were often seen as preferable to modern appliances, such as condoms and caps; that communication between spouses was not key to the systematic adoption of contraception; and, above all, that women were not necessarily the driving force behind the attempt to avoid pregnancy. Women frequently avoided involvement in family planning decisions and practices, whereas the vast majority of
men in Britain from the interwar period onward viewed the regular use of birth control as a masculine duty and obligation. By allowing this generation to speak for themselves, Kate Fisher produces a richer understanding of the often startling social attitudes and complex conjugal dynamics that lay behind the vast changes in contraceptive behaviour and family size in the twentieth century.Readership: Scholars and students of modern British history, especially social and cultural historians, historians of sexuality, historians of medicine, demographers, and sociologists.
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Kate Fisher, Lecturer in History, University of Exeter
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"An engaging text with a wealth of information ... impressive and important because it uses both men and women's account of sex, contraception and gender roles to challenge historiography of feminism and family planning." - Hilary Young, Oral History "[A] tribute to the power of oral history...extremely meticulous." - London Review of Books "...a beautifully researched monograph...Fisher has done important revisionist work" - Stephen Brooke, English Historical Reviews "Fisher's revision of the history of birth control sheds new light on the production of male identity ... One hopes that other scholars will follow Fisher's example in using oral history to figure out the
individual dimensions of this major social transition." - Elizabeth Siegel Watkins, Social History of Medicine "This is a brave and ambitious book which breaks new ground." - History Today "... a mature piece of work, which cuts no corners and includes a wide range of sources, including the Mass Observation archive and oral history." - Longman-History Today Book Awards 2007 "...the themes are well illustrated and well chosen [and] highly convincing..." - Gigi Santow, Population Studies, Vol. 61, No. 2 "a veritable compendium of good sense, judicious argument, subtle exposition, painstaking research, and exemplary thoroughness"
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Introduction
1: The Maintenance of Ignorance
2: Deliberate Accidents and Casual Attempts to Avoid Pregnancy
3: The Survival of Traditional Methods of Birth Control
4: The Advantages of Traditional Methods of Birth Control
5: Gender Relations and Birth Control Practices
Conclusion
Epilogue
Appendix
Bibliography
Index
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Patrick Greenough, Duncan Pritchard
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from Alan Bullard Carols and X443
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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