BIRTH CONTROL IN BRITAIN DURING THE INTERWAR YEARS: Evidence From the Stopes Correspondence

Abstract

Responding to the call by historical demographers for "more empirical studies at the micro-level" of motives for using birth control, a single archival source—letters written to Marie Stopes, a major English advocate of contraception—are used to examine the contraceptive experiences and sexual problems of individual men and women during the later phase of the demographic transition in England (1918-1939). Various statistical assessments reveal that methods and motives for contraception were influenced by the correspondents' sex and social standing.