The height of birthrates in Colonial America occurred from the 1740s to the early 1760s, and they began to decline during the mid-1760’s. According to Susan Klepp’s book Revolutionary Conceptions, at the dawn of the American Revolution, and through the early 19th century, the development of new attitudes and the desire to govern family size led them towards substantial control over definitions of fertility, motherhood and family.
During the first 60 years of the Eighteenth Century, Colonial American women were more than objects of sexual desire, they were vital to the populating the colonies, and for production of offspring to work the land of the settlers. In Colonial America, a women’s fertility was celebrated as much as the fertility of the fields they farmed. Metaphors used by colonists to describe pregnant women, included "flourishing, teeming, breeding and fruitful" (64) as a reflection of their agricultural counterparts. …show more content…
These changes in attitudes were a large departure from colonial norms, “The majority were putting off childbearing by marrying somewhat later than colonial women. They were spacing births both to limit childbearing and, particularly in the city, to concentrate child-bearing into the earliest years of marriage. Almost all women were stopping childbearing at even earlier ages” (54)."The fertility transition was a sudden and radical change for those first generations of individual women and men who made a conscious decision to disavow past practices and switch to various family-planning strategies"
During the first 60 years of the Eighteenth Century, Colonial American women were more than objects of sexual desire, they were vital to the populating the colonies, and for production of offspring to work the land of the settlers. In Colonial America, a women’s fertility was celebrated as much as the fertility of the fields they farmed. Metaphors used by colonists to describe pregnant women, included "flourishing, teeming, breeding and fruitful" (64) as a reflection of their agricultural counterparts. …show more content…
These changes in attitudes were a large departure from colonial norms, “The majority were putting off childbearing by marrying somewhat later than colonial women. They were spacing births both to limit childbearing and, particularly in the city, to concentrate child-bearing into the earliest years of marriage. Almost all women were stopping childbearing at even earlier ages” (54)."The fertility transition was a sudden and radical change for those first generations of individual women and men who made a conscious decision to disavow past practices and switch to various family-planning strategies"