United States People

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Growth through Natural Increase: Births

While the influx of immigrants contributed to the growth of the American population and helped build American society, the major factor affecting population growth in the United States has always been the surplus of births over deaths, or the natural increase of the population. American women at the beginning of the 21st century bear an average of two children over the course of their lives. Their great-grandmothers and great-great-grandmothers in 1890 had an average of four children, because in the 19th century fewer women had access to reliable methods for controlling fertility. A century earlier, around 1790, women might expect seven births throughout their lives, if they survived into their late 40s.

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Birthrates in Early America

Little is known of the birthrates of Native American societies before the arrival of Europeans. There are hints that the birthrate was relatively low because Native American women often breastfed their infants for three or four years. Since breastfeeding has a contraceptive effect, it appears that women gave birth about every four years. On the other hand, since many Native American women traditionally married soon after the onset of puberty, at around age 15, they might have had six or seven children if they lived to at least age 45. Some researchers have suggested that when European diseases and warfare killed large numbers of native peoples, women increased their childbearing in order to compensate for the excessive deaths in the community. Native Americans may have gone from low birthrates to high birthrates, but any increases in fertility could not make up for the deaths from disease, starvation, and war. The birthrate among Native Americans would not produce population growth until the 20th century.

European colonists had high birthrates compared with the birthrates in Europe at the time. Free, white colonial women typically bore children every two years and had an average of eight children, four of whom might survive to adulthood. This was twice as many children as European families had. Fertility was higher in the colonies because of the need for labor on colonial farms, the availability of land to support the larger numbers of children, and early and nearly universal marriage.

The enslaved African American population in the 17th century had more men than women and more deaths than births. By the 18th century the ratio of black men to black women was more equal and the population was holding its own. By the early 19th century the African American population was growing rapidly, but because of higher death rates and the absence of immigration after 1808, the overall growth of the African American population remained lower than that of the white population. African Americans became an increasingly smaller proportion of the population from the late 18th century to the early 20th century.

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Declining Birthrates

The European American population doubled every 20 to 25 years until late in the 18th century, after which birthrates began to decrease and growth rates slowed. This decline in fertility rates early in America’s history is a distinctive characteristic of American society. In the early 19th century white women who lived through their childbearing years were bearing 7 children over the course of their lives; by 1850 it was 5.4 children, by 1950 it was 3.0, and in 2007 it was 2.1. While the longer-established American population experienced a decline in fertility and family size during the 19th century, newer immigrants had higher birthrates. It took two or three generations for these immigrants to conform to the prevailing American fertility standards.

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Women’s Education and Birthrates

Decisions to limit family size are based on complex personal, social, and economic factors. The beginning of any fertility decline is most strongly linked to increased education for women. Female academies appeared after the American Revolution, public schooling became common in the early 19th century, and the first women’s colleges and coeducational institutions were created in the mid-19th century. Women read novels, newspapers, magazines, and religious tracts. Women learned about individuality and self-control and about planning for the future, and they applied these concepts to fertility. They established reform groups and literary and religious societies, indicating their interest in the world outside of marriage and childbearing.

Although wives in early America had been most concerned with the production of food and clothing, 19th-century families became child-centered, and motherhood was exalted as a special calling requiring education. Women had fewer children in order to provide each child individualized attention and the best possible upbringing. Declining fertility rates also reflected the increased cost of child-rearing during the industrial age, as advanced education became increasingly necessary; housing, food, and clothing costs rose; land became scarcer and more expensive; and child labor became less acceptable. Instead of being a potential source of income, children became a major expense, as well as more cherished individuals who deserved every opportunity. African American birthrates, which were high under slavery, fell rapidly once freedom was achieved in the wake of the Civil War, when families could hope to provide the best possible education for their children. By the end of the 19th century, most families were investing substantial amounts of time and money in each child’s future. Parents did not want to shortchange their children and so had fewer.

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Birth Control

Women attempted to control child bearing in various ways, including prolonged breastfeeding, abstaining from sex, taking herbal remedies, jumping rope, horseback riding, and having abortions. By the early 19th century, condoms, originally intended to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted infections, were being used to prevent pregnancy. The vulcanization of rubber after 1839 and the invention of latex in World War I (1914-1918) made condoms, cervical caps, and diaphragms, more widely available. From 19th-century newspaper advertisements, it seems that abortion was a common method of controlling family size. These were usually performed by untrained men and women, some of whom were skilled but many of whom were not. Doctors, who were organizing the first state and national professional organizations during the mid-19th century, saw these abortionists as unprofessional competitors and a public danger. Concern about the safety of abortion led to the first state laws, enacted just before the Civil War, restricting the practice.

By the 1870s religious reformers who were worried about prostitution and the perceived spread of vice and sin began to connect contraception and abortion with immorality. The Comstock Law of 1873 declared birth control and abortion information obscene and banned it from the U.S. mail. Many states passed laws against contraception. One reason people supported bans on birth control was the fear that immigrant groups, who tended to have larger numbers of children than native-born white Americans, would come to dominate society if white, Protestant women did not have more babies. Despite the Comstock Law, birthrates continued to fall.

A small number of reformers spoke out publicly in favor of birth control. The most famous of these advocates was Margaret Sanger, who in 1921 founded the organization that would become Planned Parenthood. Sanger worked to help poorer women obtain what was still illegal information on birth control. Planned Parenthood led the fight to have the Comstock Law overturned.

The Comstock Law was declared unconstitutional in 1938, although state laws against birth control remained. In 1965 the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the last of state laws against contraception, asserting that married men and women have a right to privacy. That right was extended to unmarried persons in 1971. In 1973 abortion was legalized in the United States. Since then various restrictions have been placed on abortion, and the issue is one of the most divisive in contemporary America.