Mothering Reshaped: Fertility Decline, ‘the Selfishness of Women’ and the Smaller Family

Mothering is as subject to social and cultural change as any other phenomenon. When in the late nineteenth century there was a decline in the birth-rate, in Australia there was a rush to explain it. A Royal Commission was set up which concluded that women were to blame: they were limiting births within marriage. A similar decline was observed over much of the western world. Historical demographers set out to explain this transformation noting large forces such as industrialisation, modernisation and secularisation. These left little room for women’s agency. Historians of women are restoring agency to women by exploring the impact of education, the suffrage movement and opportunities for work. All gave women more bargaining power, which they could use to choose smaller families.