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Revolutionary Conceptions: Women, Fertility, and Family Limitation in America, 1760-1820
In the Age of Revolution, how did American women conceive their lives and marital obligations? By examining the attitudes and behaviors surrounding the contentious issues of family, contraception, abortion, sexuality, beauty, and identity, Susan E. Klepp demonstrates that many women--rural and urban, free and enslaved--began to radically redefine motherhood. They asserted, or attempted to assert, control over their bodies, their marriages, and their daughters' opportunities.
Late-eighteenth-century American women were among the first in the world to disavow the continual childbearing and large families that had long been considered ideal. Liberty, equality, and heartfelt religion led to new conceptions of virtuous, rational womanhood and responsible parenthood. These changes can be seen in falling birthrates, in advice to friends and kin, in portraits, and in a gradual, even reluctant, shift in men's opinions. Revolutionary-era women redefined femininity, fertility, family, and their futures by limiting births. Women might not have won the vote in the new Republic, they might not have gained formal rights in other spheres, but, Klepp argues, there was a women's revolution nonetheless.
Late-eighteenth-century American women were among the first in the world to disavow the continual childbearing and large families that had long been considered ideal. Liberty, equality, and heartfelt religion led to new conceptions of virtuous, rational womanhood and responsible parenthood. These changes can be seen in falling birthrates, in advice to friends and kin, in portraits, and in a gradual, even reluctant, shift in men's opinions. Revolutionary-era women redefined femininity, fertility, family, and their futures by limiting births. Women might not have won the vote in the new Republic, they might not have gained formal rights in other spheres, but, Klepp argues, there was a women's revolution nonetheless.
312 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2009
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March 23, 2014In Revolutionary Conceptions: Women, Fertility, and Family Limitation in America, 1760-1820 (2009), Susan E. Klepp explores childbirth and family planning from the colonial period through the early nineteenth century, specifically why Americans were among the first in the Western world to limit family size. The interdisciplinary work combines statistical research with close examination of an impressive array of cultural sources – including letters, diaries, medical treatises, almanacs, novels, and visual images – to reconstruct shifts in how people thought about reproductive issues. What emerges is not only a bold analysis of what could be the earliest signs of women’s agency in reproductive politics, but also of the relationship between limited childbearing and the American Revolution.
Klepp opens her work with an assessment of the previously documented fertility transition, but adds several new analyses that explore residential, social, religious, racial, and ethnic differences. Using crude birthrates, child-women ratios, age-specific marital fertility rates, and the proportion of births before age thirty-five – conceding that each calculation has its problems – Klepp asserts that on the whole, most married women bore large numbers of children in the colonial era, while average family sizes began to shrink during and after the Revolution. Moderately wealthy and middling city dwellers, along with rural Quakers, led the trend; English-speakers, members of mainstream religious groups, and easterners proved to be the most amenable to innovation. “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” (Klepp, p. 54).
The remainder of Klepp’s study is devoted to changing attitudes about pregnancy and childbirth, most notably linking the transition away from abundant childbearing to the American Revolution. Despite the failure to grant women political rights, Klepp argues that the experience enhanced their desire for greater independence and control over their own bodies. The shift began around 1765, along with the first rumblings for independence, and gained momentum with the rebelliousness and radicalism of social and political upheaval. Thousands of women began to apply the fundamental principles of the Revolution – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – to their private situation, and along with their husbands, produce fewer children. “By the 1790s the ideal of limited family size was so widespread, so unremarkable, that it saturated the public prints and common language of average Americans” (Klepp, p. 86).
No longer the naturally and perpetually breeding colonial woman, they became republican women of rational mind, sentimental heart, and prudent managers of production and family size. Klepp explains that another major factor in this transition was revolutionary debates about luxury and extravagance that caused women and men to emphasize prudence. As the political term “virtue” became associated with women’s sexual restraint, so too did the economic virtue of “prudence” come to be linked to women’s restraint of births. Yet, Klepp discounts demographers who have assumed that numeracy was mainly concerned with the number and economic costs of children themselves. “What most of these women were counting was the tax of childbearing on women’s time, health, and marital commitments. They measured women’s contributions to a loving marriage and indicated the point when enough was enough” (Klepp, p. 117).
The embracement of bodily independence and self-control put women at the center of ensuing shifts in private discourse, public intellectual debate, and visual iconography that de-emphasized fertility and sanctioned other roles. Some women criticized the continued emphasis on childbearing as essential to femininity, while others began to express sympathy for women considered to have borne too many children too quickly. Klepp explains that more Americans also began to recognize that women shared, or perhaps with appropriate education could soon share, the mental and spiritual capacities that characterized mature, virtuous humanity – traits previously considered to be purely masculine. Wives and husbands together began to plan pregnancies and set goals of ideal family size and “soon would contrast their restraint to the supposed practice of having children…with little thought for the long-term consequences…Women, by using reason and prudence, could assume the important task of guarding and rearing the next generation – but only if they had fewer children” (Klepp, p. 127).
Women used a variety of methods in order to restrict their fertility, including delayed marriage, abstinence, extended periods of breast-feeding, herbal prophylaxis, and post-coital douching. There is also evidence to suggest that at least some took direct action to end unwanted pregnancy. As early as 1794, a syringe designed to dilate the cervix could be bought in a Philadelphia bookstore. Klepp also explains that a case from Connecticut proves surgical intervention was known and had been attempted much earlier. However, women facing unwanted pregnancy were perhaps more likely to use “emmenagogic” treatments intended to restore regularity to the menstrual cycle. Klepp explains there was enough uncertainty about whether a cessation of menstruation indicated illness or pregnancy to create ambiguity about women’s intentions when employing herbs, exercises, hot compresses, or other cures for amenorrhea. Although women had access to these methods into the mid-nineteenth century with little interference, Klepp warns against interpreting this as “a golden age of women’s power of reproduction. The failure rates were high, the methods painful, and the acceptable reasons for married women’s employing emmenagogues…limited” (Klepp, p. 205).
The legal status of contraception and abortion did not come into question until the mid-nineteenth century, under a variety of social, professional and legal pressures. Women had seized upon a brief hiatus between the moral policing of the seventeenth century and anxieties that would quickly reemerge to launch their own revolution in family planning. Sadly, women’s control over reproduction eroded throughout the nineteenth century even as they were freed of the nearly continual childbearing of their grandmothers. Shame was attached to women’s knowledge of reproduction and professional men stepped in to manage their fertility decisions. But, as Klepp effectively argues, women did lead the transition in limited childbearing, which resulted in a steady decline in both family size and marital fertility rates. “There was a power vacuum… that allowed women, particularly when inspired by the rights talk of the Revolution, to translate political liberty into a revolutionary reimagining of the meanings attached to body, sex, gestation, birth, and birth control and then to put these new ideals into action” (Klepp, p. 247).
Klepp opens her work with an assessment of the previously documented fertility transition, but adds several new analyses that explore residential, social, religious, racial, and ethnic differences. Using crude birthrates, child-women ratios, age-specific marital fertility rates, and the proportion of births before age thirty-five – conceding that each calculation has its problems – Klepp asserts that on the whole, most married women bore large numbers of children in the colonial era, while average family sizes began to shrink during and after the Revolution. Moderately wealthy and middling city dwellers, along with rural Quakers, led the trend; English-speakers, members of mainstream religious groups, and easterners proved to be the most amenable to innovation. “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” (Klepp, p. 54).
The remainder of Klepp’s study is devoted to changing attitudes about pregnancy and childbirth, most notably linking the transition away from abundant childbearing to the American Revolution. Despite the failure to grant women political rights, Klepp argues that the experience enhanced their desire for greater independence and control over their own bodies. The shift began around 1765, along with the first rumblings for independence, and gained momentum with the rebelliousness and radicalism of social and political upheaval. Thousands of women began to apply the fundamental principles of the Revolution – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – to their private situation, and along with their husbands, produce fewer children. “By the 1790s the ideal of limited family size was so widespread, so unremarkable, that it saturated the public prints and common language of average Americans” (Klepp, p. 86).
No longer the naturally and perpetually breeding colonial woman, they became republican women of rational mind, sentimental heart, and prudent managers of production and family size. Klepp explains that another major factor in this transition was revolutionary debates about luxury and extravagance that caused women and men to emphasize prudence. As the political term “virtue” became associated with women’s sexual restraint, so too did the economic virtue of “prudence” come to be linked to women’s restraint of births. Yet, Klepp discounts demographers who have assumed that numeracy was mainly concerned with the number and economic costs of children themselves. “What most of these women were counting was the tax of childbearing on women’s time, health, and marital commitments. They measured women’s contributions to a loving marriage and indicated the point when enough was enough” (Klepp, p. 117).
The embracement of bodily independence and self-control put women at the center of ensuing shifts in private discourse, public intellectual debate, and visual iconography that de-emphasized fertility and sanctioned other roles. Some women criticized the continued emphasis on childbearing as essential to femininity, while others began to express sympathy for women considered to have borne too many children too quickly. Klepp explains that more Americans also began to recognize that women shared, or perhaps with appropriate education could soon share, the mental and spiritual capacities that characterized mature, virtuous humanity – traits previously considered to be purely masculine. Wives and husbands together began to plan pregnancies and set goals of ideal family size and “soon would contrast their restraint to the supposed practice of having children…with little thought for the long-term consequences…Women, by using reason and prudence, could assume the important task of guarding and rearing the next generation – but only if they had fewer children” (Klepp, p. 127).
Women used a variety of methods in order to restrict their fertility, including delayed marriage, abstinence, extended periods of breast-feeding, herbal prophylaxis, and post-coital douching. There is also evidence to suggest that at least some took direct action to end unwanted pregnancy. As early as 1794, a syringe designed to dilate the cervix could be bought in a Philadelphia bookstore. Klepp also explains that a case from Connecticut proves surgical intervention was known and had been attempted much earlier. However, women facing unwanted pregnancy were perhaps more likely to use “emmenagogic” treatments intended to restore regularity to the menstrual cycle. Klepp explains there was enough uncertainty about whether a cessation of menstruation indicated illness or pregnancy to create ambiguity about women’s intentions when employing herbs, exercises, hot compresses, or other cures for amenorrhea. Although women had access to these methods into the mid-nineteenth century with little interference, Klepp warns against interpreting this as “a golden age of women’s power of reproduction. The failure rates were high, the methods painful, and the acceptable reasons for married women’s employing emmenagogues…limited” (Klepp, p. 205).
The legal status of contraception and abortion did not come into question until the mid-nineteenth century, under a variety of social, professional and legal pressures. Women had seized upon a brief hiatus between the moral policing of the seventeenth century and anxieties that would quickly reemerge to launch their own revolution in family planning. Sadly, women’s control over reproduction eroded throughout the nineteenth century even as they were freed of the nearly continual childbearing of their grandmothers. Shame was attached to women’s knowledge of reproduction and professional men stepped in to manage their fertility decisions. But, as Klepp effectively argues, women did lead the transition in limited childbearing, which resulted in a steady decline in both family size and marital fertility rates. “There was a power vacuum… that allowed women, particularly when inspired by the rights talk of the Revolution, to translate political liberty into a revolutionary reimagining of the meanings attached to body, sex, gestation, birth, and birth control and then to put these new ideals into action” (Klepp, p. 247).
October 14, 2019
Read for class. This was pretty good for what it is. Largely discusses the shift from large families to limiting fertility mostly among wealthy or upper middle class white women. There is mention of other women but they are interspersed in the book.
October 6, 2025
Review soon
February 18, 2012
Felt like it repeated itself a little too much, but it interwove a lot of primary sources into the text which made it interesting in most chapters. Have to say I could have done without the chapter on paintings, especially the ones the author didn't include.
January 6, 2015
She mostly dealt with Philadelphia women, not necessarily all colonial women. Slightly important for a historian to know.
August 2, 2016
I really loved this one, particularly how Klepp blends so many historical techniques and how she brings so many subjects into discussion with each other through a single theme.
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