How did women avoid pregnancy before the pill?

[ericcartman]

How come most families weren't the size of football teams back then? I mean bar any fertility issues or couples stopping having sex what else was there? I know condoms and abortions have been around for ages in one form or another but I doubt either was that common till the 20th century, especially when talking about married couples.

Yes, but that doesn't prove that knowledge was lost through witch hunts!

I read that anal sex was very commonly used. In some cultures today where virginity upon marriage is vital anal sex is very routine. Greek friend told me that.

It is possible not to get pregnant when not on the pill/implant!

Uhhm, not when you are a woman with virtually no rights and your husband has the right to have sex with you whether you want to or not. As much as women in the ‘old days’ may have known about good/bad times, it does not mean there husbands were at all cooperative.

That is a very good point actually HoppingPavlova. I stand corrected regarding my assumption of autonomy over ones one body.

My grandmothers next door neighbour was a back street abortionist. She didn’t charge money. Other than that there was a scolding hot bath/knitting needles/throwing yourself down the stairs etc. My grandmother talked about it quite openly. She had 6 kids herself.

My maternal gran and granddad only had One sibling each. My paternal grandad was one of 13 and my paternal gran one of 12. But all 4 were born wuthin 5 miles of each orher and withing 3 years of each other. Ive always been perplexed by who so many on one side.

The current stats are 1 in 5 couples will have fertility issues. If there any reason ro believe that would have any less 100 years ago?

Back then it would never really have been discussed. Just a couple haven't been blessed with children. Although more babies would have been available for adoption.

During the '40 my gran had 3 children in quick succession but none of her sisters were blessed with a family.

They used natural family planning and got to know their bodies and signs of ovulation and fertility and avoided sex on those days. Many failed tho and did have huge families

There were some very large families around then!I can remember my late DM saying that one of her friends (in her late 70s) was one of 10 children,and another (early 70s) was one of 9. Having sad that,my DM and my DDad were both only children,DM born in 1927 and DDad in 1924. So it seemed to go from extreme to the other. I know my DM was an only child because her DDad was out of work for 6 years shortly a couple of years after she was born and they simply could not afford any more.

@ericcartman, please note this:

Africa is 54, very different countries. Each has its own dynamics. Impossible to generalise across the whole continent.

Thank you to the poster who pointed this out. Geez.

My tiny two bed terraced was home to a couple with 8 children in the 1920s. They had 3 more children that died at birth and before the age of 5.

My Grandmother was one of 7 and one of my Grandfather's had 8 sisters.

The only reason my Grandparents only had 3 children each was due to marrying at a late age then the war intervening (hard to get pregnant if you see your husband twice in 5 years!). And even then, my uncle died at six months old due to an infection.

With great difficulty. Look up the story of Margaret Sanger. One of her inspirations for campaigning and pushing for the pill was women who were broken by endless pregnancy and not being able to say no to their husbands. We owe her so much

Actually I think the concept of 'sex being dirty' for women as mentioned by another poster isn't strictly true. I think that was a concept created mainly by the Victorians. Before then it was generally considered that a woman was more likely to become pregnant if she orgasmed.

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned yet: the idea that everybody married in their early 20s doesn't hold true for all social classes.

In rural society you can only marry once you can support a wife. If you are heir to a farm/come from a farm large enough to support another household, then fine. If you are working class, you will probably start your life in service, as a farmhand or a maid, maybe as a footman/kitchen maid etc in a large house. You are living in somebody else's house and can only marry when you have saved enough money to set up separately somewhere else. Marriage will certainly mean the woman loses her job, so you'll have to have enough to manage on only one income. This means people often have to wait until their 30s before they can marry.

Cory that make perfect sense about rural couples. It wouldn't be beyond the imagination to think the same could be true of town and city dwellers that men needed to be earning enough to support a wife.

There is always people who don't conform to stereotypes. One set of my GP,s were in their 20's the other set who had a long distance romance were into their 30's. Both must have married in the the 40's.

My dad is one of 9 children, he was born in rural NI in the 1950s. When I told my granny I was expecting dc3 she was horrified and told me to stop at 3. She adored him when he was born but told me to get myself sorted out to stop anymore babies.

Both my parents are one of 9. Also rural NI. My dad is the middle baby of 3 that we’re born in a 22 month period. He was very ill when he was born and my granny was ill after he was born too. Nonetheless his brother is ten months younger than him. she had no bloody say in the matter.

Ifiwasabird in today's world that would be classed as abuse, selfish man.
I was told recently that my grandfather was disgusted at my uncle (his son) getting his wife pregnant very quickly after having a baby.

Oh it definitely was. My grandfather was a rapist and an extremely abusive man to his wife and children. My father as never forgiven him. Some of the things he did to them are just beyond belief.

cactusplant Fri 14-Sep-18 23:39:01
Up the bum
--

Up yours maybe! Wouldn't let anyone near mine.

Some of the answers here are mad, but understandable when the majority of the posters were born a lot later than me.

I don't know the answer but I grew up in Northern Ireland before the pill and the protestant families were small and the catholic families were big. Infant mortality or maternal deaths were not worse than now.

Cory is right to factor in marital age to the economic picture. In rural Ireland, one son inherited the family farm, and wouldn’t be able to marry until it had been handed over (whereupon a wife’s work would include caring for ageing parents sharing the farmhouse as she was starting a family), and it could be difficult to find a wife even then, as so many single women moved to the towns and cities or emigrated for work. Hence the existence of rural matchmakers, and traditionally a high number of bachelor farmers..

So were the late marriers not having sex before then?a

Was that to me, LaDaronne? If so, of course there was always some illicit sexuality in mid-20th c Ireland — look at the Magdalen laundries and Mother and Baby homes, and the number of Irish children born outside marriage being adopted out of the country or ‘hidden’ within families (a friend of a friend discovered in 1994 when we were students that her ‘eldest sister’ was her mother). But an intensely Catholic attitude to carnal sin, contraception being illegal and unavailable, and the social consequences of extramarital conception meant there was no carefree extramarital shagging.