Week 5 - Birth and Death - Fertility, Population Policies, Eugenics, and Infertility

Understanding Fertility

  • Biological: Physical ability to reproduce.
  • Social: Opportunities and motivations for child-bearing.

Factors Affecting Fertility

  • Fertility varies:
    • By level of sexual activity.
    • By risk of sexual activity becoming a conception.
    • Fecundity: Some individuals are infecund.
    • By age.
    • Within a menstrual cycle.
    • If breastfeeding.
    • If ill or malnutritioned.
    • Use of contraception.
    • By risk of conception resulting in a live birth.

Measures of Fertility

  • Crude birth rate (‘birth rate’):
    • Number of live births per 1,000 population.
    • Formula: number of birthstotal population×K(1,000)\frac{\text{number of births}}{\text{total population}} \times K (1,000)
    • Highly sensitive to age structure.
  • General fertility rate (‘fertility rate’):
    • Number of live births per 1,000 women of childbearing age (15-49) in a given year.
    • Formula: Number of birthsNumber of women ages 15-49×K(1,000)\frac{\text{Number of births}}{\text{Number of women ages 15-49}} \times K (1,000)
    • Refined measure.
  • Age-specific fertility rates (ASFR):
    • Number of births to women of a specific age group (5-year interval) in a given year.
  • Total fertility rate (TFR):
    • Number of births per woman, given current age-specific fertility rates.

Population Policies

  • Pro-natalist
    • Response to declining fertility rate or population decline.
    • Examples:
      • Tax incentives for larger families.
      • Immigration policies.
      • Parental leave policies.
  • Anti-natalist
    • Response to high fertility/population growth.
    • Influenced by ideas of Thomas Malthus (neo-Malthusian).
    • Examples:
      • Tax incentives for smaller families.
      • Access to contraception/family planning.
      • Making abortion legal.
      • Restricting immigration.
      • Promoting sterilization.
  • Post World War II
    • Concern about world population growth (high levels of fertility and declines in mortality).
    • Increasing concern for birth rates in ”third world”.
    • Family planning programs as a solution (e.g., population/demographic research, technical assistance, policy development, health care services, contraceptive shipments, etc.).
      • International Planned Parenthood
      • Population Council
      • United Nations
      • USAID
    • Modern contraceptive methods (mid 1950s onwards)
      • Examples:
        • Birth control pill (1960s)
        • IUDs
        • Emergency contraception

Examples of Population Control Policies

  • China
  • India
    *Government mandated sterilization.

Eugenics and Forced Sterilization

  • Eugenics Movement in the U.S
    • 1880s: Sir Francis Galton
    • Early 1900s: Davenport
    • 1910: Eugenics Record Office (ERO) opened
    • 1913: 29 state laws forbid interracial marriage
    • 1915-mid 1920s: states passing laws to mandate sterilization of people in institutions
    • By 1920s – increasing immigration into Ellis Island; immigration restriction legislation (did not open again until 1960s)
    • 1926: Margaret Sanger – American Birth Control League
    • 1927: Buck v. Bell Supreme Court case
    • 1930: increasing sterilization of Americans (doubled)
    • [1929-1939]: Great Depression
    • 1930s – rise of Hitler, Nazi Germany – from sterilization to extermination
    • 1939: Eugenics Record Office closed, eugenics waning in popularity in U.S.
  • Involuntary sterilization in the United States
    • Marginalized racial/ethnic groups
    • Poor, rural women
    • Native American women
    • Black women
    • Mexican immigrant women
    • Women with limited mental capacity (guardians)
    • No longer about “faulty genes”
    • Assumptions of “fitness” for parenthood
    • Use of deceptive practices
    • Stratified reproduction

Global Infertility

*Millions of people around the globe suffer from infertility.
*Women in many low-resource settings continue to suffer from high rates of secondary infertility
*Africa continues to suffer from inordinately high rates of infertility
*High rates of infertility coexist with high rates of fertility – “barrenness amid plenty”
*Lack of infertility and prevention services is often justified as a form of population control, particularly in high fertility settings like SSA
*Those parts of the world with the highest rates of infertility are the least likely to offer reliable diagnosis and treatment, including IVF services

Assignments

  • Will be posted on Canvas, due June 18

What to do (Week 5) AND What’s up next (Week 6)

  • Discussion post for Week 5
  • Watch: No Mas Bebes + additional videos (pre-natal testing)
  • Next Week (Week 6): Pregnancy and Childbirth
    • Barker, K. K. (1998). “A ship upon a stormy sea: the medicalization of pregnancy.” Social Science & Medicine, 47(8), 1067-1076.
    • Armstrong, E. M. (2000). “Lessons in control: prenatal education in the hospital.” Social Problems, 47(4), 583- 605.
    • Morris, T. 2013. Cut It Out: The C-Section Epidemic in America. New York: New York University Press. Introduction
    • Martin, Karin A. “Giving Birth Like A Girl.” Gender & Society 17, no. 1 (February 1, 2003): 54–72.
  • To do:
    • Course Assignment #2 (due June 18)
    • Discussion post for Week 6