how ever did people get pregnant 30 years ago and beyond?

I think the same that it was probably because 30 years ago women were starting families at a younger age. I also believe that factors such as fast food, conveneince fods, high tech products also have an impact on women conceiving.

ie Food was fresh and meals were mostly prepared from scrath. Also didn't have modern items such as computers which apparently can affect fertility etc...

Yes, average age for marriage and first child has historically been in mid- late twenties, certainly not teenage years.

From medieval times to industrial revolution, age of marriage in England and Wales was high compared with remainder of Europe (sorry, am unclear whether same applies to Scotland) - around mid-twenties for both men and women. This was because there was a big taboo against living with your relatives (given some of the threads on MN you can see why) - it was required in this culture to wait until you could afford to set up your own establishment (richer families tended to have earlier marriage ages as they could help out the young couples). The women in particular could only reliably make money during their unmarried years due to the probability of thereafter having small children (there you go) and had to create the whole foundation of their future economic security between I guess puberty and 25 or so. Family sizes up until late 18th C actually not that huge (average under 3) although a lot of that is obviously high infant mortality.

Some people never did get pregnant - history is full of infertile and subfertile people, including our own Kings and Queens. Those modern stats on one in six couples..etc are almost irrelevant because they relate to people seeking advice and/or treatment about infertility. Before treatments existed people didn't seek advice and treatment, because there wasn't any! And most of those couples who worry about infertility will conceive naturally provided they are young enough. There is some evidence that sperm counts have fallen slightly but it is by no means conclusive. When people talk about fertility rates they mean birth rates, which are often a matter of choice, not biology.

well I dont know about any ttc stuff, but then I used to get a baby every time my ex smiled at me, so never needed to luckily.

dont forget that years ago, people used to get married around 18 or so, so they had many more years of trying.

There was a fascinating bit in some correspondence I was reading from c.1800. The couple in question had more children than they could really afford and the wife had a hell of a time with pregnancies, nearly dying several times. The husband was writing to his best friends saying 'She wants to lock me out of the bedroom to stop any more, but I think the brats will come no matter how you manage it.'
Love the idea that either a. he was not quite clear about the relationship between babies and sex (unlikely) or b. he knew they would end up at it like rabbits under the drawing room table even if they did stop sharing a bedroom....

It used to be not possible for a woman to be raped by her husband, at least in law. It was assumed that you couldn't say no to your husband, at all.

So yeah, I bet a lot of women didn't really have a say in the whole thing, although I'm sure there were reasonable men, too.

I think MN "blackouts" have caused a couple of baby booms on here.....

THats an interesting question Kathy.

Have always been giving the impression by older lady folk that sex is dirty etc etc. I wonder whether it was more common 60 odd years ago to do what you gotta do for your husband whether you liked it or not.....?

I think it is probably a different flavour of difficulty now from then, IYSWIM. Because having babies was what you were supposed to do back then. If you didn't, there was far more of an idea of having failed, I think. Now it's an option, or at least more of an option.

LOL at CQ on blackouts and tv!

Would love to know if people had more or less sex in the past.

Also, one of the reasons the birth rate (as opposed to the fertility rate) has dropped is that more women decide not to have children.
My DP's mother was talking about how in her youth, you met a man and assumed that you'd have children together; and for how my generation, that was different (she was talking in terms of the difficulties of making active choices. Very nice woman, she was).

They had more black outs (for all you 70's babies) & less T.V ie more time to get jiggy

but seriously they were probably not pumping their bodies and enviroment with chemicals either.

Agree expat. It probably wasnt recorded much either - was more a "fact of life".

My nan was HIGHLY unusual in starting her family in her mid thirties. She was also, apparently unusually - a single parent family shortly after.

I think the hormones in plastic products etc are certainly a factor. I wonder whether STD's are more common these days because people have more sexual partners? (Just guessing on that last one obv)

people didn't discuss it ad nauseum back then either .. you either got pregnant or you didn't

now you have the internet

as someone who would only have had one child if I'd been ttc 30 years back I'm very grateful that I could take a pill that cost 70p and end up with DD too ..

I was totally obsessed with being pregnant a 2nd time .. I lurched from one period to the next ... I understand the total absorption that makes those who conceive easily (or have conceived easily as I did first time round) cross / narked / bored ,.... experience of infertility is a wonderful teacher of patience

But lots of people these days don't take any notice of all that ttc stuff either, and there have always been old wives' tales. I know there is evidence that fertility has fallen, but I don't believe it impacts on how the majority of people go about having babies.

'they did the deed and ivariably they got pregnant'

Plenty of people never did.

My mum has plenty of friends - now in their mid-60s - who were never able to have a baby.

Just that back then, w/few to no fertility treatments available, people unfortunately had to look to adoption or remaining childfree.

yes fair enough. and there's less and less completely unpolluted space left.

Yes I suppose you are right about the pollution acnebride. I think a lot of the environmental "pollutants" peculiar to modern society must take a lot of the blame though - mobile phones, possibly pc usage ?, paraben preservatives, pesticides etc

Oh yes, and another - '"K says that if you put your legs up afterwards, you're more likely to get pregnant. That's a good tip". [long soliloquy about the 19-year-old heroine not wanting to get pregnant].' From Confusion, which is even more lightly fictionalised account of, inter alia, Elizabeth Jane Howard's marriage to Peter Scott at 19 in the late 30s.

Quote (roughly) from In the Mink by Anne James, a lightly fictionalised account of editing a fashion magazine, 30s to 40s:

'I came to the conclusion that half the married women of my acquaintance were trying and failing to have a baby. "How on earth do you do it, Liza?" said one in despair. "I presume you've tried the normal methods?" "Yes, like anything. But we don't seem to get results." "Never mind, love, don't despair. You must try my doctor - he could grow a baby from an apple pip." And I gave her the name of the distinguished gynaecologist who brought James into the world.'

So not that different, maybe. But certainly the age thing is a big factor. My mum had my brother after 2 years of trying at the ancient age of 27 -she'd been fending off nasty comments for a year. Then it took her 6 years to conceive me.

Reading Jessica mitford (sorry, I always quote this) she was told she was MAD to have a fourth child at [gasp] thirty - 'imagine, you'll be 45 when it's a teenager!'. That again was in the late 40s.

F&Z, sorry, but I would say pollution was if anything worse, at least for urban dwellers, 50, 60, 70 years ago.

Wannabe, I agree with the point you are making, it should happen for us that way but then again I get a niggling feeling that as I am older than my mother's generation were, have taken far more hormones then she ever did and as a result know so little about my body that I need all the info I can get.

I also think that there were those 30 years ago that it just didn't happen for and if they had known what we know now, things could have been different. I guess there is a balance to be struck between being informed and being obsessive about it isn't there.

It is a very interesting topic for debate though