Birth Control means Controlling Births

Whenever people talk about pregnancy it is always in a warm, loving, gushy, feelings kind of way. The thought of a new bundle of joy arriving soon delights those in proximity to the expectant mother. Everyone loves a baby. Or do they?

In early history of the family, children were not always viewed as a godsend. Oh, they were needed and necessary for various reasons, but there was not the joy and delight experienced by modern expecting parents. Male children were extremely important. They would inherit the families wealth and carry on the family name. Boy babies were desperately wanted. And if a woman failed to deliver the 'man' child, there could be consequences. 

In many early cultures, men could dissolve a marriage or take another wife if a woman was infertile. However, the early Christian church was a trailblazer in arguing that marriage was not contingent on producing offspring. The early Christian church held the position that if you can procreate you must not refuse to procreate. But they always took the position that they would annul a marriage if a man could not have sex with his wife, but not if they could not conceive. Pregnancy has always mattered to men. Pregnancy for women, or the inability of, could be a time of anxiety and fear.

In modern society, it is almost tabboo to say you don't want to have any children. People can not fathom why someone would prefer to be childless. Some research found a negative relation between these variables: parenthood was associated with decreased marriage quality, increased marital conflict, more severe symptoms of depression, and decreased marital satisfaction–especially when pregnancy was unplanned. Having children is not all fun and games. 

Children are hard on a marriage. Not only is raising children time-consuming and tiring, it is also related to a frequent exposure to stressors. With each added child there is added stress taking time and attentian away from the married couple as they manage the stressors of child rearing. The stressors may outweigh the resources the couple has at some point. Even if partners are fulfilled as parents, their relational wellbeing may be threatened due to parental distress. 

So, throughout history, ways to decrease the number of children conceived has been practiced. People knew the number of children they had affected the entire family in varous ways. How many children were people having in the days when they were not successfully able to control births?

Who gave birth to the most children in history? Between 1725-1765, Valentina Vassilyev was apparently rather busy. According to a local monestary's records, the prolific Russian mother popped out 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets, ove 27 separate lobours. The grand total: 69 children. There are many skeptics regarding this record. But, if controlling births is not practiced, there is a probability of having a large number of children. Sixty-nine children may seem like far too many. For some, 3, are far too many. It all depends on the ability of the parents to be able to care for the children. Finances are important, but emotional and mental stability to raise a large number of children is a must.

The verified record holder for most births is a Ugandan mother named Miriam Nabatanzi, who has a rare genetic condition called hyperovulation, and gave birth to 44 children across 15 births from 1993 to 2016. She is a single mother to her 38 surviving kids.

For men, and the number of children they conceive are off the charts. While records are difficult to confirm, it probably is true that Genghis Khan has fathered the most children in history, as estimates range between 1,000 and 3,000 direct offspring from his enormous harem. A 2003 study estimated that 16 million men alive today are direct descendants of Genghis Khan. Similar studies have shown a Y-chromosome lineage linked to at least ten other extraordinarily prolific dads, including the Qing Dynasty ruler Giocangga. Why haven't science come up with an oral or injectable contraceptive for men?

More recently, a court case in the Netherlands exposed an alarming fact. A Dutch musician in his early 40’s named Jonathan Jacob Meijer, had fathered between 550 and 600 children through sperm donation. Meijer is a bit of a Dutch lion, with “a mane of curly blonde hair.” In online ads promoting his suitability as a sperm donor, Meijer has described himself as a “musical Viking donor.”

When we think about whether or not to have children, we believe it should be the sole decision of the future parents. But, that was not always the case.

In Ancient Rome the law provides too much freedom to householders whether to admit a newborn child or not. In order to make a decision, all family members including relatives and neighbors give their opinions. Because during that time unwanted and disabled children could be left to die on the streets. Law gives the father, who has whole authority on the family, the right to choose the life of his child. The accepted child would be welcomed by a ceremony in the family. There are several symbolic scenes such as the oldest man in the family putting the child to the ground and hanging a flashy crown outside of the house door to welcome a child. During the first 3-4 days, they hang a chain of amulet to the girl’s neck and bulla to the boy’s neck. Girls and boys get their names after 8 and 9 days of their birth respectively which is a day after die lustrous, a time period when it is no longer feared the infant would die. 

As we continue to travel through time, children are still not viewed as a gift. The medieval society was primarily an agrarian one (community whose economy is based on producing and maintaining crops and farmland). And the family unit made the agrarian economy work. From an economic standpoint, nothing was more valuable to a peasant family than sons to help with the plowing and daughters to help with the household. To have children was, essentially, one of the primary reason to marry. Children were valued for the labor and production they could add to a poor family. Poor people had many children and did not practice controlling births.

Among the nobility, children would perpetuate the family name and increase the family's holdings through advancement in service to their liege lords and through advantageous marriages. Some of these unions were planned while the bride and groom-to-be were still in the cradle. Children were still used to increase wealth and status of a family. They were born with a job to help their family.

In 1325 and the outbreak of the first plague epidemic (bubonic), testators (a person who has made a will or given a legacy) had on average 2.8 live children. Between 1350 and 1375, the average dropped to 1.9 and continued to decrease, reaching a low of 1.4 children per testator between 1400 and 1424. To acheive this low number of children within a marriage, before the invention of reliable birth control, there must have been abstinance. Currently, there is a turning tide against the use of contraceptives, IVF, and abortions. The 1300's proved conception can be controlled without medical intervention. You just may not like how it is accomplished though.

During the 1300's when births were more than likely controlled through abtinance, life was not easy. Life was harsh with a limited diet and little comfort. Women were subordinate to men, in both the peasant and noble classes, and were expected to ensure the smooth running of the household. Children had a 50% survival rate beyond age one, and began to contribute to family life around age twelve. In 1300-1400, the life expectancy was 45.4 years of age.

Until about a century ago, many spouses died by their mid-forties, and many babies were born out of wedlock. Many children became orphans or were abandoned due to an inability to care for them. In medieval Europe, for example, people died early from disease, malnutrition, and other problems. One consequence of early mortality was that many young children could expect to outlive at least one of their parents and thus essentially were raised in one-parent families or in stepfamilies.

During the American colonial period, different family types abounded, and the nuclear family was by no means the only type. Children in colonial families were numerous and averaged between seven to ten in each household. The number of children at home varied, however, for a variety of reasons. The most common of these being (sadly) early death of children. Roughly half of the off-spring would not reach maturity. Nomadic Native American groups had relatively small nuclear families, while nonnomadic groups had larger extended families. Because nuclear families among African Americans slaves were difficult to achieve, slaves adapted by developing extended families, adopting orphans, and taking in other people not related by blood or marriage. Many European parents of colonial children died because average life expectancy was only 45 years. The one-third to one-half of children who outlived at least one of their parents lived in stepfamilies or with just their surviving parent. Mothers were so busy working the land and doing other tasks that they devoted relatively little time to child care, which instead was entrusted to older children or servants.

In 1800, most women in the U.S. had 7 children but that number has steadily decreased over the years, with the exception of the Baby Boom (when the U.S. fertility rate jumped to 3.62). In 2018, U.S. woman had 1.7 children on average.

By the 1900s, parents began to treat children more like little people and dressed them like kids, not mini adults. It was the custom to pose in front of a photographer's backdrop for family photos. Since there were no color photographs, artists sometimes painted over the black-and-white photos. This must have been the start of the wam fuzzy feelings towards having children. They were no longer viewed as bargaining chips for lucrative marriages, or free labor. Children were just children. Now a precious gift. So no need for trying to control births. Bring on the babies!

Moving much forward in US history, an important change in American families occurred during the 1940s after World War II ended. As men came home after serving in the military in Europe and Japan, books, magazines, and newspapers exhorted women to have babies, and babies they did have. People got married at younger ages and the birth rate soared, resulting in the now famous baby boom generation. Many families during the 1950s did indeed fit the Leave It to Beaver model of the breadwinner-homemaker suburban nuclear family. Following the Depression of the 1930s and the war of the 1940s, the 1950s seemed an almost idyllic decade. Life was easy and good. Why would anyone want to control births?

The pill was first prescribed exclusively for mestrual regulation, and only to married women. The emergence of the women's rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s was significantly related to the availability of the pill and the control over fertility it enabled. This capability allowed women to make choices about other life arenas, especially work. It reduced the risk of unintended pregnancy in the context of the sexual revolution of the '60s and established family planning as the cultural norm for the U.S. and in many other countries of the world. The first pill was effective and simple to use. The theory was that the risk of pregnancy and the stigma that went along with it prevented single women from having sex and married women from having affairs. Since women on the Pill could control their fertility, single and married women could have sex anytime, anyplace, and with anyone without the risk of pregnancy.

This sounds absolutely retched doesn't it? Women having sex free willy-nilly and dodging the consequences of pregancy. THOSE WITHOUT SIN CAST THE FIRST STONE, John 8:7-11. Men have always had the ability to decide when they wanted to engage in the duties of fatherhood. Notice I said men chose when to enter fatherhood and not when to become a father. There's a difference. 

Nearly half (46%) of men ages 15 to 44 with biological children report that at least one of their children was born outside of marriage, and 31% report that all of their children were born outside of marriage. There are also 2.9 million men (2.4%) who are living with an unmarried partner and have biological children with that partner. Nearly one in ten men have children with more than one person. Of the 72.2 million fathers, 5.9 million (8.2%) have never been married. Nearly half (46 percent) of fathers with multiple-partner fertility had at least one child within a marriage and one child outside a marriage.

A new Child Trends study estimates that 15 percent of men, or more than one in seven, will father children with more than one woman by the age of 40. According to the study, Men Who Father Children with More Than One Woman: A Contemporary Portrait of Multiple-Partner Fertility, five percent of men will father children with more than one woman by age 25. This increases to eight percent at age 30, to 12 percent at age 35, and to 15 percent at age 40. Moreover, these men have more children than men who have multiple children with the same woman: More than one-third of men (36 percent) who had children with multiple women had four or more children. 

These numbers could be higher, but men have the luxury of not being tied down by an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy. They do not even have to acknowledge a pregnancy. The child being born may not ever have an impact on his life. 43% of U.S. children live without their father. 90% of homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes. 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes. maybe this is one reason women say my body, my choice. 

I hate to say this but, women want to control their number of births, and men are not so concerned about controlling births. Sadly, women who want to be in control of births are viewed as promiscuous and careless. While throughout history, men have not been labled as permiscous and carless for having unplanned and unwanted pregnancies.

By the 1900's we entered a period where children were not seen as a burden or just another mouth to feed. People welcomed a new life into their home. Sexual freedom for both men and women, led to an increase in pregnancies. To solve the problem of controlling pregnancy, it will take both the man and the woman. just as it takes two to make a child. Taking away the freedom of one, while the other has no accountability is not a balanced solution. There are so many alarming statistics about pregnancy, such as teen girls are usually impregnated by an adult male. Teen girls are unable to give consent, but the adult fathers are not prosecuted. Pregnancy is complicated in many cases.

Birth control means controlling births. It has been practiced for centuries in various ways, some in not so pretty or kind ways. The life of the child planned or unplanned, can be beautiful or the substance of what tragic movies are made of. The ability to control births aids in the health of society.