An engaging history of motherhood, demography, and infertility in twentieth-century France, this book explores fraught political and cultural meanings attached to the notion of an 'ideal' family size.
When statistics revealed a sustained drop in France's birthrate, pronatalist activists pushed for financial benefits, propaganda, and punitive measures to counter declining fertility. Situating infertility within this history, the author details innovations in fertility medicine, cultural awareness of artificial insemination, and changing laws on child adoption. These practices offered new ways of responding to infertility and formed part of a growing expectation of being able to control one's fertility and family size. This book presents the political and cultural context for understanding why private questions about when to start a family, how many children to have, and how to cope with involuntary childlessness, evolved and became part of state demographic policies.
By:
Margaret Cook Andersen Imprint: Manchester University Press Country of Publication: United Kingdom Dimensions:
Height: 216mm,
Width: 21mm,
Spine: 138mm
Weight: 546g ISBN:9781526177360 ISBN 10: 1526177366 Series:Studies in Modern French and Francophone History Pages: 344 Publication Date:01 June 2025 Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format:Hardback Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction 1: Influencing Population trends: motherhood and demographic thinking 2: Infertility in a pronatalist age: medical research and advice in the interwar period 3: Recovering Births for France: Infertility as a Pronatalist Issue 4: Adoption law reform: building families and promoting population growth 5: Gender, Nation, and the Family in the Post-War Era: Artificial Insemination in Question 6: Population growth with family planning? Demographic policy in the baby boom era Epilogue and conclusion -- .
Margaret Andersen is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Tennessee.
