British marital fertility in the 1930s

Abstract

Britain’s fertility at the end of the nineteenth century and start of the twentieth century has been the subject of a certain amount of debate in recent years.  Szreter (1996), Garrett & Reid (1995) and Anderson (1998) argue that birth spacing played a larger role in the Britain fertility transition than was previously thought.  An implication of their argument is that there appear to be two distinct groups of players in the fertility decline; the late marrying couples, who through the use of birth control (Szreter stressing the role of abstinence), tend to space their children widely and thus end up with small families; and the early marriers, whose fertility patterns follow traditional lines, and thus end up with larger families.

This thesis explores the marital fertility experienced in Britain in the 1930s.  The 1930s were a period of unprecedentedly low fertility, the Total Period Fertility Rate never going above 1.89 throughout the decade, and reaching a nadir of 1.72 in 1933.  It is also known that by the 1930s a high proportion of couples ended up with only one child.  Indeed, the 1946 Family Census (Glass & Grebenik, 1954), shows that of those couples marrying in 1925 as many had a completed family size of one as had a completed family size of two (25% in each case), a further 17% of couples remaining childless.  This study uses data from the Royal Commission on Population 1944-1949 and from the 1944-1945 Mass Observation study, Britain and her Birth Rate.

Throughout the decade there are distinct social class differentials in marital fertility, with the ‘middle classes’ achieving lower fertility than the ‘artisan and skilled working classes’ who in turn achieved lower fertility than the ‘unskilled working classes’.  Both quantitative and qualitative techniques have been employed to attempt reasons for the low fertility of the decade in general, and more specifically for the apparent social class differentials.

The study also addresses the subjective nature of research in general, and the position of traditional theories of fertility and their applicability to the British experience.

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