Users
In the Old Testament story of Onan (Genesis 38:8–10), Judah ordered his son Onan to sleep with Onan’s recently widowed sister-in-law, but Onan refused on the ground that “the descendants would not be his own, so whenever he had relations with his brother’s wife, he let [the seed] be lost on the ground.” As a punishment God killed him, although it is unclear whether the punishment was for his practice of coitus interruptus or for filial disobedience. Perhaps the earliest first-person account of contraception comes from the verbatim records of the Inquisition. During a trial of Albigensian heretics from the village of Montaillou in France in the early 14th century, Beatrice, the mistress of one of the accused, berates her lover, asking “What shall I do if I become pregnant by you?” He replies, “I have a certain herb. If a man wears it when he mingles his body with that of a woman he cannot engender, nor she conceive.” The method was almost certainly mystical and inefficacious. James Boswell in his London Journal, 1762-63 records a more practical experience (for May 10, 1763) when he picked “up a strong young jolly damsel, led her to Westminster Bridge and there, in armour complete, did I enjoy her upon this noble edifice.” It is notable that, prior to the Industrial Revolution, most accounts of the use of contraceptives relate to illicit sex.
The 17th-century European upper classes, many of whom had their infants wet-nursed, felt the pressure of excess births within marriage, both physically and emotionally. A French aristocrat writing in 1671 to her daughter, who had borne three children by age 22, recommends, “Continue the nice custom of sleeping separately and restore yourself . . . I kiss your husband. I like him even better in his apartment than in yours.” Queen Victoria later expressed a similar sentiment: “Men never think, at least seldom think, what a hard task it is for us women to go through [childbirth] very often.”
In the 19th century better diet, more stable political conditions, and improvements in water supply and hygiene and other simple advances in public health began to bring down the death rate. For the first and probably the last time in the history of industrialized nations a large family became the rule. Eighteenth-century France had seen an overall decline in the birth rate, probably brought about by increasing use of coitus interruptus, and most of western Europe followed suit in the 19th century. In 1860 a quarter of all marriages in England and Wales had eight or more children, but by 1925, 50 percent had only one or two children and one in six was childless. In the United States a similar decline in fertility began slightly later: in 1830 the crude birth rate for white Americans was 50 per 1,000, but by 1930 it was only 18 per 1,000.
Among English couples married before 1910 only 15 percent used a method of birth control, while among those married in the years 1935–39, 66 percent used a method. In 1982 in the United States 67.9 percent of married couples aged 15 to 44 used a contraceptive method and another 14 percent were seeking to be pregnant, were pregnant, or had just delivered. There was little variation by religion or race (61 percent of black couples and 69.6 percent of white couples using a method). The commonest method was female sterilization (one-quarter of all users), followed by the contraceptive pill (one-fifth). About 15 percent of couples used condoms, and another 15 percent relied on male sterilization. Fewer than one in 20 couples used periodic abstinence.
In developing countries where family planning services have been emphasized by the government or private organizations, prevalence of contraception usually rises rapidly. In Thailand, for example, use jumped from 15 percent in 1970 to nearly 60 percent in 1981. In Mexico it rose from 30 percent in 1976 to more than 40 percent in the 1980s and in Bangladesh from 8 percent in 1975 to more than 20 percent in 1984. There has been less success, however, in countries with weak birth control services.