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

[wannaBe1974]

it always amazes me when people talk about ttc how you should drink this, and take that, and have sex in this position, and lie like that for ex minutes, and watch your temperature, and assess your cervical fluid ..... that I can't help wondering how people ever got pregnant before all this sort of thing was public knowledge.

Years ago people got married, had sex and had babies. It was never scientific, they did the deed and ivariably they got pregnant. and yet today with all this knowledge the birth rate has gone down and the infertility rate has gone up (with one in six couples struggling to conceive).

So are we taking it all a bit far now? should we maybe just lie back and relax and let nature take its course? after all if we have sex regularly then chances are if we're fertile we'll fall pregnant?

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.

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.....?

there is actually evidence though of baby booms during black-outs. there was also a baby boom recently after 911 in New York, it's said that the stress/fear caused people to get closer and want to be with each other and ... 9 months later ...

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

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.

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....

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.

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.

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.

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

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...