Simon Szreter

Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain, 1860 1940

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Fertility, class and gender in Britain, 1860-1940 offers an original interpretation of the history of falling fertilities. It integrates the approaches of the social sciences and of demographic, gender and labour history with intellectual, social and political history. Dr Szreter excavates the history and exposes the statistical inadequacy of the long-standing orthodoxy of a national, unitary class-differential fertility decline. A new analysis of the famous 1911 fertility census presents evidence for over 200 occupational categories, showing many diverse fertility regimes, differentiated by distinctively gendered labour markets and changing family roles. Surprising and important findings emerge: births were spaced from early in marriage; sexual abstinence by married couples was far more significant than previously imagined. A new general approach to the study of fertility change is proposed; also a new conception of the relationship between class, community and fertility change; and a new evaluation of the positive role of feminism. Fertility, class and gender continually raises central issues concerning the relationship between history and social science.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Seitenzahl: 726
• Erscheinungstermin: 2. Juli 2010
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 235mm x 157mm x 47mm
• Gewicht: 1313g
• ISBN-13: 9780521343435
• ISBN-10: 0521343437
• Artikelnr.: 31199203

Autorenporträt

Simon Szreter is Professor of History and Public Policy, and Fellow of St John's College, University of Cambridge.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction; Part I. Historiographical Introduction: A Genealogy of
Approaches: 1. The construction and the study of the fertility decline in
Britain: social science and history; Part II. The Professional Model of
Social Classes: An Intellectual History: 2. Social classification of
occupations and the GRO in the nineteenth century; 3. Social classification
and nineteenth-century naturalistic social science; 4. The emergence of a
social explanation of class inequalities among environmentalists,
1901-1904; 5. The emergence of the professional model as the official
system of social classification, 1905-1928; Part III. A New Analysis of the
1911 Census Occupational Fertility Data: 6. A test of the coherence of the
professional model of class-differential fertility decline; 7. Multiple
fertility declines in Britain: occupational variation in completed
fertility and nuptiality; 8. How was fertility controlled? The spacing
versus stopping debate and the culture of abstinence; Part IV. Conceptions
and Refutations: 9. A general approach to fertility change and the history
of falling fertilities in England and Wales; 10. Social class, communities,
gender and nationalism in the study of fertility change; Appendices;
Bibliography; Index.